<p>Hey, this is my essay from the June SAT. I don't want to tell you my score because I don't want you to be influenced by what score I received from the graders. This was my first SAT and I had no experience with the essay before, so please suggest improvements.</p>
<p>Prompt: When some people win, must others lose, or are there situations in which everyone wins?</p>
<p>If you're interested, here's the preamble they gave before the prompt:</p>
<p>Winning does not require people to be against someone else; people can reach their goals through cooperation just as well as they can through competition. Winning is not always the result of selfish individualism. People achieve happiness by cooperating with others to increase the happiness of all, rather than by winning at others' expense. Ours is not a world in which the price of one person's happiness is someone else's unhappiness. Adapted from Gilbert Brim, Ambition</p>
<p>And here's my Essay:</p>
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<p>The gain of one person invariably results in the loss of another. As humans, we are inherently self absorbed and often inadvertently reap the benefits of others' losses. This has not only become apparent in everyday life, but also in economics, war, politics and all forms of social interaction.</p>
<p>An economic theory known as Pareto Optimality states that at social efficiency, an individual is unable to gain without stripping another individual of some of his resources. In other words, even in the most thriving economies where all resources are distributed, we are forced to make compromises and settle for less.</p>
<p>Another economic example is the merger of the two airline companies Delta and Northwest. What is ostensibly a joining of forces - uniting to gain mutual benefits, where everyone gains - is actually quite different. At the gain of the newly merged powerhouse with greater powerhouse is the loss of smaller airline companies who must compete in the market. Their lack of pricing power as the industry moves towards an oligopoly leads to the loss of their jobs. Thus, someone has suffered for the gain of the merged company.</p>
<p>In the play 'A View from the Bridge' by Arthur Miller, Alfieri, the commentator, famously states that 'we must settle for half.' We are forced to make compromises because in our self absorbed pursuit of a goal, we hinder the progress of others and often take away what they have. As the protagonist Eddie experiences, we are better off settling for half because if we try to take everything for ourselves it can have grave consequences.</p>
<h2>In conclusion it is inevitable that there will be inequality in our world, and this is due to the stark fact that our gain is someone else's loss. Even if we were all equal socially and financially, Pareto Optimality would dictate that this gain-loss theory would still persist. It is the brutal way in which equilibrium is established.</h2>
<p>Please be as brutally frank as possible! Thanks!</p>