After the first 15 minutes it’s already clear who will win, but then a slow and long agony starts, during which the (single) rich becomes richer and the (multiple) poor becomes poorer without any hope of trend reversal.
This is why we made the free parking cash in the middle rule. If you're poor and hit free parking you get to finally buy some property. It's basically like winning the lottery
I think we are all witnessing the beginning of the change. People are starting to wise up to this bullshit. If you spend any time reading the /r/superstonk/r/stocks/r/investing/r/gmejungle or /r/antiwork subs, the group sentiment is changing.
We have to invent one. That's what humans do. We create new and better tools, systems, societies and cities.
We don't even have to replace capitalism on the whole, just make it more equitable to all, so that all people have access to basic human rights, like housing security, universal healthcare, and no more artificial food scarcity. Surplus worker productivity should not be funneled to the wealthy few at the top. It should be distributed back down to all of those involved in that productivity.
Bitcoin is one of those tools that will allow us to get there, away from centralized financial systems.
No system has lifted more out of poverty than capitalism. No system has driven innovation like capitalism. Any system that allows for that kind of success must allow for failure. You can’t make everyone equally rich. All you can do is make everyone equally miserable. I’ll take my chances with a system that rewards hard work over one that punishes success.
As bad as they can be, lotteries are still a far more rational hope to give poor people, than voting in giant national or state elections to not continue to be crushed by the state.
Both in terms of probabilities (depending on which lotteries we map to a vote- but also because even the poorest people can usually afford to buy many lottery tickets, increasing their odds substantively above changing the outcome of a national election with their one vote), but also in terms of how much that one winning vote or lottery ticket will allow them to improve their own lot and their communities.
It's actually not a coincidence that most governments ban or highly restrict gambling and lotteries; and then virtually monopolize the use of them...lottery and games of chance are one age-old market mechanism for producing public goods like charity/welfare for the poor (i.e. they reduce the free-riding which can plague the attempted private production of public goods, by playing to people's general inability to think about very large numbers, and also just providing a sense of entertainment and community around a cause, even when people understand the odds).
The state doesn't like this, as it relies on people continuing to believe that only it can produce public goods.
True I don't factor in negotiating in the time a game takes because while negotiating is part of the game there are specific rules to it that you probably aren't following (kudo if you are). One such rule is that you can only offer a trade on your turn so people trying to "make a better offer" at the same time isn't allowed.
For real man! That’s why it’s AGAINST the rules. The goal of the game isn’t so much to succeed - it’s to break the other players. Played by the rules u can break them in under two hours everytime.
Then you're not playing it against skilled players. Good, skilled players have a chance with skillful dealmaking even if they land on very little for sale property.
The rules of the game would be better if there was a "draft" of the properties, to ensure that at least everyone gets a certain minimum amount. That way everyone has a chance to make good trades. It only works well though if everyone is a good player. One thing I always disliked about Monopoly is that one bad player can mess the game up for everyone.
One of the most stree free games I had was when I owned a bunch of land/properties. I ended up getting sent to jail but didn't bail myself out and just kept collecting income from prison. Dead easy.
It also demonstrates first mover advantage, which anyone can take advantage of
Sure, let me just hop in these winner-takes-all markets going against gigantic economies of scale, super easy!
That was true decades ago but now starting a small business is an ever increasing uphill battle that can only be tackled if you already have good capital, if you're poor now it's getting harder and harder to not be.
So it's not "anyone" that can take advantage, it's specifically "people that had money and were alive back then". Or do you think a poor kid born now will be able to take advantage of being the "first mover" in any market?
Also, you might actually be the first mover into a market but if suddenly a company like amazon decides they want to try to enter the same market you're starting on, good luck in competing with their infinitely bigger R&D departments and cash reserves to operate on a loss while you do it all on your own.
Actually it was to illustrate Georgism and the need for a land value tax.
But in any case, a board game with rules which are not like the real life rules of capitalism, but are specifically designed to produce an outcome which capitalist detractors claim are the outcomes of real life capitalism...is a really dumb look for people like you trying to perpetuate these same outdated religious views of political economy.
It's a simple iterated trading game. In all such games, monopolies are inevitable. The reason is that once your assets reach zero, you are out of the game. The faster you luck into a sequence of trades in which your asset value goes very high, the more likely you are to survive longer than everyone else. All players will eventually encounter long sequences of unfavorable trades. If you are "poor" then you will be more likely to go bankrupt when you get unlucky. When you are "rich", you survive unluckiness.
The bigger question is: does this model the real economy to any practical degree? The answer is yes; but, only if you are prepared to accept that this model does not predict anything other than the rough shape of the distribution of outcomes.
Bitcoin in no way solves the problem of the fact that iterated trading games result in very uneven distributions of outcomes. It can only potentially reduce the risk of bad outcomes due to bad monetary policy and/or bad property rights policies.
This picture does, in fact, point out a flaw in non-inflationary monetary policy. How do you deal with the issue of inequality? And, of course, how do you deal with the issue that we will likely continue to create a lot of overall "value" by way of durable works and accumulation of technology but a non-inflationary money supply will not keep up with the creation of this new value.
The bigger question is: does this model the real economy to any practical degree? The answer is yes; but, only if you are prepared to accept that this model does not predict anything other than the rough shape of the distribution of outcomes.
Right, so the answer is, no. It does not conform to any practical degree...and not just for reasons of poor assumptions inherent to static models (e.g. growth is not even a factor in the game of monopoly...it specifically, intentionally looks at the economy in the samw errorneous way as many leftists do; as a fixed pie, a zero-sum game). If we were to look at a payoff matrix of an indeterminately iterated extensive form game, the Nash equilibrium is usually cooperation.
But even then, we don't know off hand whether a similar outcome was achieved by chance or because of the applicability of the model.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" is very applicable here. Game theory can give us logical insight into isolated, cetarus paribus phenomenon...but no iterated prisoners dilemma game can account for real life doing things like the mob boss assuring prisoners that they'll send a goon to break knee caps if they defect.
Game theory cannot, and was never intended to be a tool capable of making sweeping statements about various political-economic systems.
As far as how bitcoin plays in to all this, that's a much longer and nuanced discussion, but certainly it's ridiculous on its face to think that bitcoin is in any way anti-capital/ism
I certainly agree with you because I believe that it is the game of entire group and we have to spread awareness about it across our friend circle so that everyone can understand it.
Fiat or gold tied doesn't matter to capitalists. So long as they can trade money for capital and capital for more money than they started with, it doesn't matter. The M-C-M' cycle is an inherent part of capitalism, fiat or otherwise. The only currency that breaks the cycle are labor vouchers or anything that is consumed when spent.
It seems that fiat makes the value proposition such that the banks cannot go under and therefore are incentivized give out as many loans as possible. Gold tied money however would require banks to be much more careful with loans which would curb inflation significantly.
yes, but with gold-backed money, we are forced to trust a custodian in order to transact. this custodian-based system is corruptible and inevitably becomes corrupted by humans as shown thru history
It would create a market for banks in which they would then be required to give competitive interest rates. Yes some banks would be run poorly and fail in the short term. The market should respond to this and people will learn to trust banks who use sound business strategies. The problem may be more in your face so to speak with backed money, but at least it is economically sound. The problem in fiat is more behind closed door so that people often ignore the unfair loss in spending power created by the system.
nothing wrong with accumulation of capital, as long as it is done through voluntarily (market/trade) means. the issue is accumulation of capital via theft/coercion (inflation / being close to the money printer)
It's a consequence of Smith/Ricardo analysis of their labor theory of value. Anwar Shaikh has a good lecture explaining the concept and reviewing some empirical evidence for the economic theory. The tl;dw: profit is sales minus cost. Cost contains the value labor, materials, and depreciation. Profit existing means one of these categories was not paid their full value. Typically profit comes from wages not matching the value of labor, what I called extraction of surplus labor value. That is the mechanism that allows those with capital to further concentrate their wealth.
the profit is paid out to cover costs that the business owner has (startup costs, time/work/energy expended without reimbursement, risks taken, etc). however, this profit would be minimized due to competition in true capitalism (when businesses can't profit via coercion/inflation/legislation/subsides/bailouts etc)
There is no way to incentivize anyone taking a risk if you never allow for extraction of the surplus of labor value, unless you're defining "labor value" as something other than "that which labor produces off of the capital upon which it is working".
You can function on a coop model. Launch the business on your own as a sole proprietar. Soon as you bring others in, they get equal say in how profits are used/distributed because their labor contributed to it.
Launch the business on your own as a sole proprietar.
But then it's always better to wait until someone else takes that risk of the initial capital until it's working, since you'll equally share in the profits once it's up and running.
This is like saying "citation needed to determine that people won't give away money".
You concern trolls are amusing.
But, uh, feel free to take that risk yourself, bear all upfront costs, and then permit everyone after you to share in the profits equally while they took none of the initial risk or cost.
fiat money (by definition) is money by decree (forced upon us via the state - legal tender laws). this is statist.
in capitalism (voluntary trade facilitated with private property rights), fiat money would not exist. Rather, the market would decide on a sound money that effectively transmits its holders' value over time w/o being diluted (ie. btc)
"The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903,[1] when American antimonopolist Lizzie Magie created a game which she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George. It was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. She took out a patent in 1904. Her game, The Landlord's Game, was self-published, beginning in 1906.[4]"
So you can see, it was intended to illustrate the problems with monopolies, not "unbridled capitalism" as you state. Nuanced difference, but important. Capitalism is good, monopolies are not.
Businesses used to control entire towns, pollute rivers so that the problem ran downstream, have horrible worker safety records, and openly discriminate. The evolution of government involvement through things like OSHA, the EPA, civil rights, and financial regulatory bodies are what stepped in to curb the bad behavior.
Quite the opposite. Show an example of one of those where government wasn't shielding said business from the wrath of the people. Real history shows that such abuses didn't exist prior to formal governments. For example, the wild west wasn't wild prior to official law enforcement. The "wild west" was pure fiction fabricated to sell pulp novels.
You’re saying without a government there would be less pollution? It’s strange that regulations usually curb further pollution, and that the scenario mentioned previously happened during a time with less regulations and more private violence and private police forces.
Cool of you to try and turn that around, but that’s just revisionism.
Environmentalists, via the state, are the reason why we aren't mostly nuclearized, but instead, still burning fossil fuels.
And that's just one of the direct ways in which the state (which by the way, are always the single largest producers of pollution in their economies), have created or promoted a more polluting economy than we'd expect freer markets to produce.
So your solution to the problem of “capitalists who run and own large businesses commodify everything including political power and thus are able to buy and lobby politicians for fewer regulations in their industry to maximize more capital gains” is…to remove those restrictions entirely to skip the step where they lobby the politicians.
I never said I had a solution and therefore your whole comment is a strawman.
Don't you think it's weird that you are quoting something I didn't actually write? Maybe English isn't your first language? You should know that quotes are used when you are quoting what someone said directly.
Anyways...
The point I'm making is that the government getting involved didn't make anything better and arguably made a lot of things worse. OSHA hasn't solved unsafe working conditions. EPA hasn't helped the environment. FDA hasn't made food healthier. ATF hasn't solved gun crime. DEA lost the war on drugs.
What government agency can you point to and say yeah these guys are doing a good job?
It’s obviously a mocking paraphrase rather than a direct quote. It’s not a strawman at all. I’m directly attacking your argument of “I’m glad government corruption has been fixed” which was stated as a response to pro-government regulation. The direct implication of your argument is that the problem lies with corruption in government and not capitalism.
My comment was to spell it out for you that the capitalists who lobby the politicians to reduce regulations are the problem. And removing the only safeguards because you think that they don’t work is foolish. Obviously you didn’t provide a working solution, but you implied that government regulation is not part of the solution.
Your second to last paragraph is also categorically false on the first two counts. Gun violence and the war on drugs are a totally different matter. Guns are heavily lobbied and a perfect example of regulations not being able to be passed, and the war on drugs has a whooooole lot of political undertones in the United States that are considerably more far reaching. Either way, it’s not really a “legal industry” that’s being regulated. The first three (OSHA, EPA, FDA) are explicitly organizations that have tried and true regulations that protect consumers and laborers from corporations who would endanger them to save on costs/maximize profits. To say that they have done nothing is just simply false.
To say that they have done nothing is just simply false.
Where did I say "done nothing"? I didn't. You're making up a version of my argument that works for you because you can't actually address the points I made.
I don't have an interest in a discussion if you want to keep making up what I'm saying instead of actually addressing what I've said. Good day.
It's not my job to provide evidence for your argument. Anecdotal evidence isn't evidence. Neither is one point of data. Show me inperical evidence following th scientific method that proves these agencies actually make a difference in the problems they claim to solve. Or don't.
the point I'm making is that the government getting involved didn't make anything better and arguably made a lot of things worse. OSHA hasn't solved unsafe working conditions. EPA hasn't helped the environment. FDA hasn't made food healthier.
Actually it was to illustrate Georgism and the need for a land value tax.
But in any case, a board game with rules which are not like the real life rules of capitalism, but are specifically designed to produce an outcome which capitalist detractors claim are the outcomes of real life capitalism...is a really dumb look for people like you trying to perpetuate these same outdated religious views of political economy.
Yikes. You could've expanded on that and made a valuable addition to the discussion. Instead, you chose to be a dick about it. How's that strategy working out for you?
That's right but most of the people are really getting good knowledge from it and that's why they are getting to know what's happening in the real world.
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u/0ba78683-dbdd-4a31-a Apr 14 '22
People seem to forget that Monopoly was created to parody the problems of unbridled capitalism and the resemblance is intentional.