Re: Wrong!!!
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I can promise you that for every two people who are percieved to be both profiting from a given transaction, there are others somewhere else in the world that are paying the price for this to be possible.
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That is absolutely not true. It is possible for such a win win situation to occur simply because we have preferences which can be translated into dollars.
Let's say you and I both like baseball, in particular one player. I really like Player A and you really like Player B. We also like collecting baseball cards. Now I see a card for Player B and think that it's a decent value, even though I am not as big of a fan for Player B. So I buy it and am moderately happy with my purchase--I think I got a deal even though I don't really love the card.
You find the same situation for Player A. Then later we meet and see that each of us has a card which the other would really enjoy, instead of moderately enjoy. We swap, and each of us thinks we got a great deal because we enjoy our new card much more than the previous one. The seller is happy--he sold his cards. And we are both happy.
At every point along the way, the happiness/profit level for every person in this scenario increased without taking away from somebody else.
This is what economics is about. Very often, situations can be improved to the benefit of everybody involved without detracting in any way from anybody else. And when this is not the case, the times that the deals do hurt others do not necessarily "make up" for the times they don't. It's not a zero sum type of deal. There is an overall positive expectation from making these kinds of transactions.
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