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Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

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Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#271

Post by rurp »

doggydogs94 wrote: post #25
nicoburns wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still mostly luck (and who-has-the-most-social-capital-to-persuade-the-other-to-let-them-win) based though. There are lot's of much better board games out there.

That’s like saying that poker is mostly luck.

Poker is mostly luck. Elite players sometimes lose for months at a time. It takes a LOT of hands before you can expect your real world results to converge to your EV results. It is certainly possible to win in the long term, but results from a single session are very loosely correlated with skill.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#272

Post by monocasa »

aeternum wrote: post #267
monocasa wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stats are you looking at? Real wages have been stagnant for the vast majority of workers in the US. And the "pulled people out of poverty" thing is such a BS stat. Converting subsistence farmers into sweat shop workers so that they they have $1.50/day instead of $0/day isn't a real metric of pulling people out of poverty. It's more a metric of how tied into the global system they are.

According to this real wages have been rising for the last 30 years: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/are-wages-rising-or-flat/

Average has, median has not.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#273

Post by refurb »

mytherin wrote: post #265
chungy wrote: post #10

Monopoly teaches people a view of economics being a zero-sum game and too many people learn the wrong lessons from it. Real life isn't a zero-sum game.

Monopoly is about land, and monopoly teaches people a correct view of land: land is a zero-sum game. It is striking how much real-life has mirrored monopoly: when the game starts and there is plenty of land to go around, there are no problems. After a while, the land runs out, and the wealthy hoard the land and charge the others for its use. The wealthy then get wealthier and the poor get poorer. We are now in the la…

There is still plenty of land to go around.

And of course, you ignore the cases where people bought land and the value dropped (e.g. Detroit).

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#274

Post by DubiousPusher »

legitster wrote: post #230
DubiousPusher wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, never said he was opposed to markets nor accumulation of capital. But capitalism as we know it is hugely influenced by our current system of private property. Georgeism would have many similarities to our present form of capitalism but it would also look very different.

I guess I don't see how it would look that different. A flat value tax on land seems less radical than a wealth tax (for example). But no one sells a wealth tax as an end to capitalism.

You can't see how land becoming a liability rather than an asset because of the significant tax burden it would bear might have drastic effects on modern Western capitalism? Nor how the collective ownership of resources produced from mines, forests, rivers and oceans would significantly change it?

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#275

Post by refurb »

monocasa wrote: post #272
aeternum wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this real wages have been rising for the last 30 years: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/are-wages-rising-or-flat/

Average has, median has not. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

Your ignoring total compensation as wages are only one part of it.

Total compensation at all income levels has vastly outstripped inflation over the past 50 years.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#276

Post by aeternum »

dkonofalski wrote: post #245
travisoneill1 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about negotiating better property trades. The dice have little to do with it.

That's not true at all. If you roll dice and only land on empty properties and corners, you'll have nothing to negotiate with. Negotiation only works if both parties have something of value and the dice determine whether players have something of value.

If you land on nothing, you have a large amount of cash compared to other players which you can leverage for negotiation.

The game isn't just who can get a monopoly first, but who can also improve it the fastest. In my experience, players often overvalue the expensive properties due to maximum rent but don't take into account the capital and therefore time required to improve them.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#277

Post by iso1210 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #243
sgift wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect example for survivorship bias. To live in a retirement community you have to have money. So, when you work in a retirement community you see retired people who have money. What you don't see are all the people who made the same decisions, did the same things, but for some reason didn't end up in a retirement community in Florida.

There's plenty of lower-income retirement communities in Florida too. You can buy homes there for $100K or so, so you don't even need to be a millionaire. I would say, that if 1 in 30 Americans are millionaires, that is direct evidence that it's not some impossible, unachievable dream. 1 in 3 have a net worth greater than $200K.

Of course it's not impossible

What you're saying is that the majority of people have a net worth

So working harder than the majority of people will still mean you end up with a tiny net worth, the fear of bankrupcy from medical bills at any point in life, the fear of losing your home (if you're lucky enough to get a home in the first place)

America is a country where cops arrest 6 year old girls for the crime of being black. The american dream? Hah. Look at the american reality.

1 in 30 'make it'. 29 in 30 don't, and life is hell for them.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#278

Post by chrisco255 »

monocasa wrote: post #252
chrisco255 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not holding my breath on self-driving semi trucks anytime soon. They will be the last type of vehicle to be automated. It takes a lot of skill to drive an 18 wheeler from warehouse to distribution center to warehouse. They are extremely dangerous machines if not handled properly and can easily kill dozens of people if a miscalculation occurs. In the meantime, you could make the same argument about farming equipme…

They're testing self driving trucks on I-70 outside of Denver specifically to test them in the worst conditions. They're not coming, they're already here. The issue though, isn't that a specific job is going away, but instead the whole class of "human as control theory implementation" is going away. That's way more disruptive. Like, people instead becoming control software for guillotines level disruptive. > And no,…

Out of curiosity, do you have a link to the test trials in Denver? They're not already here. Even if they're 95% of the way, if that last 5% is catastrophic failure that ends in death and destruction, it's not even close to ready for production.

I'm well aware of what real wages means in terms of inflation.

"From January 2019 to January 2020, real average hourly earnings increased 0.7 percent"

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#279

Post by refurb »

iso1210 wrote: post #192
dr_dshiv wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's really depressing. I thought hard work and good ideas were important and valuable contributions to society.

Yes, that's the american dream. The problem with america is too many people believe the american dream, that you can go 'rags to riches' with hard work and perseverance. The people working 90 hour weeks and barely able to make rent apparently aren't working hard enough.

The American Dream was never “rags to riches”. It was a comfortable middle class lifestyle.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#280

Post by chrisco255 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #243
sgift wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect example for survivorship bias. To live in a retirement community you have to have money. So, when you work in a retirement community you see retired people who have money. What you don't see are all the people who made the same decisions, did the same things, but for some reason didn't end up in a retirement community in Florida.

There's plenty of lower-income retirement communities in Florida too. You can buy homes there for $100K or so, so you don't even need to be a millionaire. I would say, that if 1 in 30 Americans are millionaires, that is direct evidence that it's not some impossible, unachievable dream. 1 in 3 have a net worth greater than $200K.

To the above comment I can't reply to, no, the median income in the U.S. is $63K. It's far from hell and no other country produces the abundance we have at the scale we do. Get outside the U.S. and go see the other 95% of the world.
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