The following is an excerpt from a podcast interview with President Barack Obama, in which he puts zero sum in the context of democracy. See the full transcript for more.

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: At each stage, then look, this led to, ultimately, the civil war. But even after the civil war, you get Jim Crow and reconstruction and the Klan. There’s always been this fight over, what is the true story of America. And I believe deeply in this story that, yeah, if we can pull this off, if we can actually treat everybody with decency and respect and compromise and make democracy work, it shines a light for the entire world.

MARC MARON: Right.

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: And the other path of tribe and a zero sum game and everything’s dog eat dog and a competition, and you try to take advantage of the other person, because they’re going to try to take advantage of you, and if they don’t look like you, and they don’t believe what you do, and they have a different faith than you, then they’re a threat to you, that is the path that leads to things like World War II and the Holocaust and slavery and Pol Pot and Rwanda. We see how that plays out.