Date:  28 February 1983 14:53 mst
From:  Lippard.DSOP (James J. Lippard)
Subject:  Miscellaneous Digest V2 #12
Reply-To:  misc
To:   (Miscellaneous Mailing List)

Miscellaneous Digest                              Volume 2 : Issue 12

Today's topics:
		Monopoly
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Date:     28 February 1983 1103-mst
From:     Ron Harvey
Subject:  Monopoly

From the Poli-Sci digest (JoSH at Rutgers):


Some people seem to think that the economy works like a game of
Monopoly, where one player gets richer and richer and drives all the
other players bankrupt.  But despite its capitalist trappings,
Monopoly is really a model of *political* interaction.  The
transactions are forced: in real life, you don't stay in a hotel on
Boardwalk instead of a shack on Mediterranian Ave unless you can
afford it.  The basic law of the market, that every voluntary
transaction makes both parties better off, doesn't operate.
Furthermore, there is no production.  In real life, when you spend
money to build a hotel, you must pay it to the other "players" in the
economy.  In Monopoly, it disappears from the game, and all you have
left is a token that allows one player to take money from the others
without their consent.  In real life this most closely corresponds to
a special-interest law--for all the effort wasted lobbying, no goods
or services are produced, but merely a token allowing one group to
take money from the rest of society (funnelled through the government,
of course).  It's no wonder that one Monopoly player gains the upper
hand-- in spite of the $200 dole backed by a central bank able to
issue limitless amounts of worthless paper money...

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End of Miscellaneous Digest
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