Sometimes I listen to the Sean Hannity radio show on my way home from work. Not because I like the guy, mind you, because I really can't stand him. I'm not normally a violent man, but if I ever meet that guy in a dark alley...
Anyway, I digress. So I was listening to the insanity of Hannity earlier this week and he was talking about how the government will never do anything to help the people, and that it's the wealthy and the innovative that create jobs and make America the great place that it is. As an example, he pointed out how the board game Monopoly was invented by a normal Joe named Charles Darrow in the 1930's, who of course went on to make tons of money and pull himself out of the depression. Now, never mind the fact that Hannity had the history of the game wrong: it's not like the guy never tells lies or fails to do proper research on his show, so no big surprise there. (Darrow put together the whole Atlantic City connection to the board, but the game was being played in similar versions for almost 30 years before he sold the idea to Parker Brothers in 1934. A simple Google search would have given him the facts in seconds, but when you're a Conservative you don't bother with the facts.) What I wanted to discuss here today is not whether or not Hannity is a huge piece of shit; what I wanted to discuss was Monopoly and how it relates to the basic ideology of our two major political parties. (By the way, Hannity is a HUGE piece of shit: no need for discussion.)
Monopoly got me thinking. You've played the game before, right? It's a pretty simple concept: get land, develop it, get people to stop by and stay in your hotels, and collect major amounts of rent. But have you ever played by the REAL rules before? Of course not! I don't know ANYONE that even knows the real rules. Everyone creates their own variations, the most common one being that you can "trade" real estate with others in the game to help yourself create your monopolies. Many times these trades include free rent and other such deals between the traders. Why is it that everyone changes the rules? Because if you don't, the game will last for eons. No one will ever win and no one will ever lose. Everyone will just go around the board fluctuating at about the same amount of money until everyone finally gets sick of playing.
And that, my friends, is exactly my point. Let's take a look at the current political spectrum in our country. Democrats favor government rules and restrictions to be placed on corporations so that they cannot take advantage of the market or the public. Republicans think that government should stay out of it and let the "free market" regulate itself. And what has become the result of the previous 12 years where the Republicans have been making up their own rules? The rich have gotten richer and the middle class and poor have gotten poorer! Just like Monopoly played with your own set of rules: someone eventually wins and someone loses. But if you played with the real regulations in place, it's not so much that no one wins as it is that no one ever loses! We've gone too long allowing the market to regulate itself. It's time to set regulations and make sure that everyone is playing by the same set of rules.
That's how you build an economy: create a level playing field where everyone gets the chance to continue to go around the board. When Charles Darrow sold "his" idea to Parker Brothers, he found himself a rich man that no longer had to worry about the Great Depression. But what good did it do anyone else? What good does it do our nation for one guy to win while the rest of us lose? Wouldn't it be a better world if we were all able to stay in the game?
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3 comments:
If you had read the Monopoly rules yourself you would find that the object of the game is as follows: "is to become the WEALTHIEST player through buying, renting and selling property" Should a capitalist system not work the same way To become wealthy through hard work and ingenuity so you can pay your OWN bills. The mess that we are in righ now is not democrat or republican. People have been for too long buying shit they can't afford. It's that simple! Now a hiccup in the economy has snowballed into this mess because everyone has been living from paycheck to paycheck. So what happens when they get laid off.... that's right, they lose their shit they couldnt afford in the first place. And God forbid anyone feels the pain of not being able to pay their bills. Let's just have all the people like you and me that live within their means and have savings pick up the tab. This way everything is even and the game can continue.
I wanted to add to my last comment with the following quote. I will warn you that yes, this guys is a conservitave and he is also a jesus freaker but I think the quote speaks for itself.
"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy
out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another
person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to
anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody
else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to
work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the
other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody
else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about
the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
Dr. Adrian Rogers
Here's something I can never understand: why do people that don't agree with the liberal philosophy always assume that we are talking about giving away free money to a bunch of lazy people?
I KNOW that the rules of Monopoly say that the goal is to become the wealthiest player. The message I'm trying to convey is that, if you follow the rules to a T, no one will ever get knocked out of the game and there will never be an all-out winner. (Unless you intend to play for something like 150 hours straight. Most board games are meant to last for about 1 hour.) I never said that YOU have to keep playing and that I'm going to go get a cup of coffee or something and just expect you to roll for me. If you own Boardwalk, a couple of dark green spaces, and 3 or 4 of the railroads, you're bound to get a little richer than me, but I'm still going to continue to play. You'll still have to come around and land on my light blue and purple spaces every once and a while. As the rules are written, Monopoly is a fair game. But the conservatives/Republicans don't want a fair game. They want to ignore the regulations and allow trades and back-room deals so that you can also get your hands on Park Place and develop hotels and kick my ass out of the game. If you're "working harder" by getting a better roll on the dice there's nothing wrong with you having a little more cash sitting in front of you, but I should still be able to stay in the game. The only way I should lose is if I just give up. If that happens, even the most liberal of us would agree that I'm out of the game and I get nothing.
My point here is that if we allow the regulations to stay and guarantee a level playing field, we will all stay in the game. Of course some of us will do better than others, but wouldn't it be a better world if we all got to play?
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