Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Monopoly [the game] Was Invented to Reveal the Toxic Greed of Capitalism — Kate Raworth

In addition to confronting gender politics, Magie decided to take on the capitalist system of property ownership – this time not through a publicity stunt but in the form of a board game. The inspiration began with a book that her father, the anti-monopolist politician James Magie, had handed to her. In the pages of Henry George’s classic, Progress and Poverty (1879), she encountered his conviction that ‘the equal right of all men to use the land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air – it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence’....
Evonomics
Monopoly Was Invented to Reveal the Toxic Greed of Capitalism
Kate Raworth | senior visiting research associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, senior associate of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and author of Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist

12 comments:

Kaivey said...

I loved Monopoly for a while as a boy, as the game has a majestic beauty, but I soon learned to hate it, as it is a slow agonising death most of the time. It does give a good understanding of how monopolies form, though.

mike norman said...

No one can play the game until the game distributes the money. That means, if you roll the dice and land on Community Chest and it says "pay taxes," you can't until the game first distributes the money. This is MMT.

And if you read the Monopoly rules that come with the game it says, if you run out of the printed money (bills) just write new denominations on paper and distribute. MMT, again.

Matt Franko said...

Risk was better....

Peter Pan said...

And when a game of Monopoly comes to an end, we all lose.

Andrew Anderson said...

if you run out of the printed money (bills) just write new denominations on paper and distribute. MMT, again. Michael Norman

Really? So the MMT School has embraced a Citizen's Dividend?

Don't think so.

Instead I see INCREASED* privileges for the banks with government provided wage-slavery for their victims.

And even MMT's permanent ZIRP doesn't go far enough since the MOST inherently risk-free sovereign debt should return is ZERO percent MINUS overhead costs = NEGATIVE. Otherwise we have welfare proporional to account balance balance, a moral abomination.

In other words, the MMT School's abolition of Gold Standard thinking is incomplete and flawed.

*e.g. unlimited deposit guarantees FOR FREE.
*e.g. unlimited, unsecured loans at ZERO percent interest.

Matt Franko said...

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/government-interest-rate-goes-negative-in-550m-treasury-note-sale-20201210-p56maq.html

Aus has gone negative...

mike norman said...

"Really? So the MMT School has embraced a Citizen's Dividend?

AA

That's a political decision. C'mon, man.

Matt Franko said...

Aus central bank buying a bunch of the Govt bonds under QE so banks who have to possess a certain % of govt bonds as assets bidding them up to negative yield.., aus is probably going to crash the whole thing...

Andrew Anderson said...

That's a political decision. Mike

So are increased privileges for the banks and a JG for their victims.

Yet you won't pry either from MMT advocates. And that's just lame (at best) for people who claim to understand fiat.

Matt Franko said...

Yeah it’s a great privilege to have morons regulating you who put so many reserve assets on your balance sheet that they make your whole bank insolvent...

Andrew Anderson said...

So banks are forced to sell their bonds to the Central Bank, Franko? Don't think so.

Besides, selling those bonds at a premium increases a bank's Equity and thus improves its Supplemental Leverage Ratio.

True, when the Central Bank buys bonds from the non-bank private sector that does increase bank reserves without increasing bank Equity but the solution for that is simple - sell more bank stock to increase bank Equity.

So what's the problem? Banks don't like more democratic ownership?

And besides that, if banks don't like all those new reserves thrust on them then they should lobby that all citizens, at least, be allowed "reserve" accounts of their own at the Central Bank. That and that all other privileges for banks such as deposit guarantees be abolished too.

Otherwise, banks should stop whining about regulation.

Andrew Anderson said...

Bank regulation is the price banks pay for bank privileges.

Abolish the privileges and the regulations can be abolished too.

And before anyone says that that was tried during the "Free Banking Era" the answer is No! since, for example, all citizens have never been allowed to use their Nation's fiat in account form but have instead been forced to rely on private bank deposits or else be limited to grubby coins and paper Treasury or Central Bank Notes.