"Zero-sum" interactions are not as competitive as they seem. #shorts
Interactions that we oftentimes think as zero-sum or competitive are not as competitive as they seem. Arms reduction treaties are a great example. The US and the USSR figured out that if they could find a way to cooperate, they could both save an enormous amount of money and effort.
One of the big problems that they had is how can you be sure that while you're eliminating nuclear weapons, your adversary is also eliminating nuclear weapons? So, rather than saying, "We're just going to get rid of some large percentage of our nuclear weapons and hope that the USSR would do so as well," they broke up the interaction into a bunch of little tiny ones.
So, the USSR would eliminate just a few nuclear weapons, then the U.S. would eliminate just a few nuclear weapons. They would check, and then they would go on to the next stage. Then, each would eliminate a few more, and they'd go on to the next stage.
This process of taking a big interaction and breaking it down into little small parts can change a bad social dilemma into a positive interaction.