I get your point, but I don't think a board game is a good abstraction to collapse the real world into. The world is not a fixed, closed system with finite resources. In a board game, expansion and innovation are not possible, only trading and strategy, as you mentioned, can optimise the system to some extent. Moreover, winning in a board game happens solely because of its rules, whereas in the real world, one person's success does not necessarily mean another's loss. Trade can be mutually beneficial, driven by each party's ambitions.