> The trick is not to play zero sum games. This is what I have been saying the whole time. Go create value for others and don’t worry about the returns.

This strategy is highly effective but it's also difficult to tolerate as an ordinary advanced ape. Watching others play less noble games and obtain easier wins can be discouraging over time.

I have found that the less you care about money the easier it is to acquire. Risk aversion, greed and interpersonal drama will kill a good idea way before anything else. I sometimes like to reframe this one as "100% of $0 is still $0".

I care less about receiving the money and more about the implications people have regarding money.

For example, when I'd joined a company I did not get any travel expenses. They expected me to pay the 200 euros a month myself. I'd suggested it and they shrugged it off. The company is now firing people and others are leaving.

The current company just has a default rate of money you get per km. They don't need to, but they know people want this and will ask about it.

Its a small example but it gives you a view of how a company operates

What top players do in Age of Empires II:

They keep resources (money) at zero by spending them frequently unless they have something more expensive and more urgent to buy.

They are greedy because they want to pay the same amount (or less if possible) for better units (or upgrade them), which is why technology can be more urgent than creating more units.

They are very risk averse, but don't look like it. The more talented a player is, the more risky some of his decisions or actions may appear, but they're not riskier when you take talent into account. That being said, they do sometimes make very bold moves, even in tournaments, because they think the opponnent is not going to expect it.

Alright time to go back to being a villager.

> I have found that the less you care about money the easier it is to acquire.

That sounds cool but hasn't been my experience at all. I used to care about money, and used to earn well. These days I care less about money (which I can afford to, precisely because I used to care about money) and earn an order of magnitude less.

The problem is that you have to acquire money first to care less about it

> This strategy is highly effective but it's also difficult to tolerate as an ordinary advanced ape. Watching others play less noble games and obtain easier wins can be discouraging over time.

A noble man that spends all his time jealous of the things the men without scruples have is not so much far from doing what they did. It's also what the men that did it before him told themselves "why play the right game if everyone else doesn't".