Economic philosophy of Monopoly

I have a small collection of Monopoly board games at home. I used to play them with my cousins, but haven't pulled them out for years.

Never really appreciated the philosophical aspects of the classic boardgame other than it's very important capitalistic overtones. I never knew it has "left-wing" roots and some have termed it as more "Georgist" as it's underlying philosophy.

Regardless until I read the article from the Washington Post which was published back in 2015, I never knew it had a longer history than when the game first became popular during the Great Depression.

To Lizzie Magie, a 30-something single woman working as a stenographer in Washington at the turn of the century, the monopolists who controlled banks, railroads and oil fields seemed almost impossible to challenge.

But, night after night, Magie drew and redrew a board game that she hoped would be a teaching tool for her left-wing political ideals and spark changes that would ease the economic injustices of society. In 1903, she walked into a patent office and applied for a legal claim for her Landlord’s Game, today known to millions as Monopoly.

An impassioned follower of political economist Henry George and his single-tax theory, Magie designed the game to be a “practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” she wrote in a 1902 issue of the Single Tax Review.

BTW, it's funny how through social media old articles come alive years after the fact. I thought this was a recent article, but know it's only at least four years old. Interesting

Fascinating

A series of links found on Instapundit. Different philosophies of Star Trek. Particularly political & legal philosophies. Questions about the Prime Directive, especially.

Better yet the philosophy of American when Star Trek premiered 50+ years ago. How did America go from a robust pro-liberal philosophy to a more UN-centric "moral relativism".

Then what if Star Trek was written by libertarians.

I can only image a different vision for Star Trek and different drama if someone decided to reboot the universe of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Check this video from reason which is what you see on Instapundit.

Classical liberalism superior to libertarianism?

The political philosopher in me is somewhat intrigued by this article found at Instapundit!. For a long-time I've considered myself a "classical-liberal" although there's not a certainty as to what that means. I've always equated that philosophy with libertarianism, however, it seems that you still can't. There are some differences as explored in this article.

One takeaway is that the discussion is centered around US Sen. Rand Paul who's only in his first term as a Senator and is something of a rising star. Let's not forget his father was Presidential contender and former US Congressman Ron Paul.

While I'm sure that this is not the only classical-liberal book out there, it's probably about time to read John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (which is a public domain book) again. Thankfully without the pressure of school! :P

I've been getting into the "Dallas" reboot...

You know the series as it concludes it's second season on TNT is just getting better. During the course of the current season the iconic character JR Ewing was put to rest having been murdered. Before his untimely demise he puts together his "masterpiece" that now his family has to piece together to defeat their enemies. JR's demise was precipitated by actor Larry Hagman's death from cancer late last year.

Anyway I'm disappointed that I couldn't find an extended version of the scene above to embed so I'll post a link in the brackets [VIDEO]. This scene is from the original series and shows Jock Ewing, Bobby's father having to teach his youngest son a lesson about life & business. Bobby was upset some funds were taken from Ewing Oil without his knowlege and Jock has to tell him! Tell him that although Jock gave Bobby the power to run the family-owned oil business, however, power isn't given to you. Power is something you TAKE!

If that's not a life lesson, I have little idea what else is. On this blog I seek to write a lot about politics and you know this is a political lesson as much as it is a business lesson. Being a political science major in college and having dabbled in political theory there is certainly a work out there that describes this lesson.

You know perhaps Machiavelli is the political theorist who could describe this dynamic more than anyone else I have read. In fact the episode of the new Dallas series where they read JR's will & testament one of the things he gave to his family mainly his nephew Christopher Ewing was some of Machiavelli's works. My first thought was his book The Prince which I have read, however, Machiavelli has written more books that I have yet to run into so far.

So if you believe that this scene may echo Machiavelli, it's very interesting to see it play out in a TV drama! Also looking forward to the last two episodes of the current season.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Huxley vs Orwell

You know I wanted to close Sunday out with that video posted earlier. Instead there's this comic that needs to be shared with you. At least for those of you who like to think philosophically.

What you will see is entitled: "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Huxley vs Orwell"

And the case is made amusing ourselves to death is what Aldous Huxley argues. Instead of fearing "big brother" he will entertain us and distract us from the issues we should really be concerned about.

It appears what George Orwell believes control over a populous will be more straightforward. That is some force will control our actions and our thoughts.

BTW, if you don't know who those two men are they are authors who primarily write science fiction stories. Huxley is know for Brave New World and I read somewhere that the film Demolition Man was allusion to that book.

On the other hand Orwell is mostly know for the book Nineteen Eighty-Four which was adapted into a film that was released in 1984! In fact the book was alluded to in a 1980s Apple Computers ad although it was unrelated to the movie.

It seems depressing, but this was a bit too powerful to not share. Something to consider.

Also I must admit, I'm not a voracious reader. It's time for me to read those books so that perhaps those references could be understood. And if you want to consider the arugments contained in comic, you're more than welcome to offer your two cents.

Via Instapundit!

Capitalism, Part 4

I wanted to do another capitalism post and then I thought about this movie I casually watched years ago entitled The Company Men. Lately I can relate to some of these movies that take place in the workplace or at least the job hunting arena whether serious or otherwise.

In any event The Company Men starred Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, and Kevin Kostner. Affleck's character is forced to take a job with his brother in law Kostner's character in order to make end meet after a downsizing. Jones is a long time employee of a company and after questioning the need for downsizing while the company is engaging in more spending on other projects he himself gets laid off. Cooper's character went from factory floor to a managing role at this company until he was laid off and is the most frustrated out of this whole group and he meets an unfortunate end in this movie.

In thinking about this film, I thought about how many people are faring in this era of slow economic growth. The recession of the last five or six years has been very difficult without a doubt and I'm sure it depends on where you may reside. It's also more difficult with the uncertainty coming from our elected officials who have to come to grips with various financial problems from taxes, new mandates, or even pensions.

With this uncertainty come the response for those of us who have jobs. Some may work at jobs that elect to cut their hours. Some may be concerned about being downsized. Right now it's not a very safe environment depending upon where you work today.

Also another thing to consider what you see in the movie is the battle with upper management as portrayed in this film by Craig T. Nelson. He's doing just fine, because he's stepping on his employees to keep himself in good shape and everyone else well their expendable as long as he's doing his job. One way to look at it is that he not only doing what's best for his company and the shareholders he's certainly doing what's best for himself.

That in and of itself is no big deal. What's problematic I suppose is how he's going about it. We could ask if it's OK for a CEO to take a paycut in a time of slow economic growth. Nothing says the man in charge has to make an inordinate amount of money and only to afford luxuries he doesn't necessarily need. Alas that mentality is out there and as long as anyone above him sees no problem, there isn't one.

BTW, I had to think. I don't follow business news as often as I should but it's still not often that we hear about layoffs. It used to be big news you could turn on the TV anytime and see some corporation downsizing people. In fact my mother herself was downsized from a downtown bank years ago and that round of downsizing was probably news in Chicago. Although let me take that back. It's news recently that the Sun-Times is downsizing their suburban operations to consolidate their downtown offices.

In any event even in this economy as we see in Company Men, Jones' character used many of the downsized people from his former company to staff his own venture. He was a high level executive so he's shouldn't have been struggling that much.

Knowing that a lot of ground was covered between a movie and some real life examples it still doesn't shake my belief in capitalism. Realizing the environment is tough right now that doesn't mean there aren't opportunities. Still here's to me wishing that in the future the environment will get much better for us all!

Since we were talking about Abraham Lincoln...

Especially since Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is currently in cinemas across the nation, we remember the Emancipation Proclamation. 150 years ago it was an executive order issued by President Lincoln that proclaimed that slaves that were held in the territory controlled by the Confederate States of America were freed. Now granted Confederate held territory not under the control of the Union this order didn't have any effect. It was on Confederate territory that were held by Union forces during the Civil War where this order took effect.

I'm only noting that because there are those out there who continue to argue that President Lincoln never freed any slaves. Surely there are others out there who are better able to argue that position that I'm able to at the moment.

In looking for materials on this subject I found this Forbes posting that asked one question, "150 Years After The Emancipation Proclamation, Are We Free?" It isn't so much an article that talks about equality amongst various "minority" groups in America as much as it is a philosophical argument about the freedom of the individual and its relationship with government. It notes the positives of the Proclamation even if while a segment of America's population were no longer enslaved they still had to fight for their freedom years after that fact.

Also you can read an article about the Proclamation courtesy of the Nation Archives.

Capitalism, Part 3

I've been talking a lot about capitalism lately, but to be honest I haven't spent a lot of time reading up on the subject. There's one book that anyone should read up and that's Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and if you're lucky you can read that book for free thanks to the public domain! :P

Anyway it's one thing to philosophize about capitalism with all of it's benefits and faults, but it's absolutely another to actually practice it. That realization came to a eureka moment!

When I was in high school all the way through my college years there was one thing I failed to do, take a business course. In high school my counselor seemed interested in having me take another social studies my mistake was in rolling with it. It might have been in my best interest to take a bookkeeping/accounting class and it was something of interest, but it never happened for me for some reason.

I've spend a number of years in college starting off at a local community college and then of course attending Morehouse. During my time in college I never considered taking any business courses as my career goals still hadn't been determined and business struck me as very intimidating. When I was at Morehouse the least I did as far as a basic business course was in business law. It would've done me good to take an accounting course or two but I never did.

Now here's my eureka moment, would it do our young people a great service to require them to take some type of business class before they graduate high school. Just give them an intro course to business that teaches them all aspects of business especially accounting. That way, they will still have learned some business skills and hopefully it will serve them well when they start looking for a job which they will have to do at some point.

Perhaps there ought to be other classes before they leave high school if they want to take it further. Then of course there is college and they can take some basic courses electives permitting or they may choose to major in a business discipline. Hopefully if they excel in these endeavors the young people won't have a problem in their future careers.

Besides no matter where you go in your career - such as academia, church, science, government, politics, etc. - business skills are necessary. You must know where the money is going and how to manage resources. Also operations have to be able to continue operating and business skills could help that.

Capitalism, Part 2

Recently I watched this legendary movie entitled Wall Street. Story of a young stock broker who in the beginning of this film was struggling but got hooked up with the right connection and suddenly was rising high. It came at a cost however when he finds himself getting arrested for insider trading right after he pulled a fast one on his connection.

The message of this movie was regarding greed or at least the 1980s version of greedy excess. Charlie Sheen played Bud the young stock broker and Gordon was played by Michael Douglass who was Bud's connection into the higher echelons of the financial world. Bud had it all, but he decided to pull a fast one on Gordon when he found out what Gordon attempted to do!

A friend shared the film with me to show how it goes in corporate America. I really laughed when Bud was arrested in his office, the man who gave him the office went from "I knew you were something special" to "I always knew you were trouble". Turned his back on him just like that!

I don't necessarily look down on greed, but certainly we would look at a personally differently if they did whatever they could to get more. We could be talking about money and we could be talking about food. It could be anything that is very necessary.

My friend and I have talked about how today's titans take care of themselves and then forget about the people who toil under them. The titans may live in expensive pieces of real estate while the people under them may never get that luxury. Then the question comes up - How much is enough?

Everyone has an answer. We could talk about wealth and say you don't need two or more houses. We could also say you don't need all that money. The question is who are we to decide who has enough. The ones who are asking the questions about having enough wealth has very little themselves.

I could aspire to be a Mitt Romney although I have no idea if I'll ever get there. My aspirations isn't necessary regarding wealth, but certainly regarding attaining the middle-class lifestyle that I grew up in. To be comfortable enough to not be force to scrimp and save ever dime I earn. It seems easier said than done, I'm sure but it is what it is.

While it seems as if the past election was about the economy, the past election was about a rich man running for president. It wasn't Romney's time for that reason especially in an environment where we're asking the question about how much is enough. Obama had ads up about the rich paying their "fair share" of taxes and there are people out there who have buttons stating "tax the rich".

BTW, since I mentioned Wall Street there was a sequel release in 2010 called Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. An interesting update and certainly mentions today's young people's issues with regards to their debts. It could have been an update that addresses the real estate bubble but it doesn't appear to do that although it does touch upon some of the themes of the original.

It makes me wonder if there is a film today that could show the times we live in. One film comes to mind entitled The Company Men. People getting laid off so that the executives in the higher eschelons can think more about themselves than those under them. Surely there are other examples than that.

Still while I may continue to have faith in this system we call capitalism, sometimes we do have to take note of its various downsides.

Ward Room: The Party of Lincoln -- Again

In the wake of Mitt Romney's loss for the Presidency almost two weeks ago, we have heard or seen lots of analysis of why the Republican party didn't gain the White House. It involves the demographic changes this nation is seeing. In fact we can see evidence of this in the previous post as far as Illinois goes.

So here's the anaylsis (again) from Ed McClelland:

There’s an argument in the movie Lincoln about whether the Republican Party was intended to be a progressive or a conservative outfit. Francis Preston Blair, who boasts that he founded the party in his living room, insists that it’s conservative and anti-slavery, but shouldn’t be taken over by radical abolitionists. President Lincoln, who is trying to persuade Blair to support a constitutional amendment banning slavery, obviously wants it to be progressive.

For the first hundred years of the Republican Party’s existence, Lincoln’s vision was ascendant. Republicans were in the forefront of the great social issue of the 19th and 20th centuries: abolitionism, environmentalism, women’s suffrage, civil rights. The Democrats, a confederation of Southern whites and Northern Catholics, were the socially conservative party. William Jennings Bryan, who lost three presidential elections on the Democratic ticket, ended his career by defending creationism at the Scopes Monkey Trial. Even in the 1970s, most of the judges who signed on to Roe v. Wade were Republican appointees. And President Ford supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

By then, though, the Republican Party had begun to change, into a party of reaction, whose purpose was resisting the social movements of the 1960s: civil rights, feminism, pacifism, environmentalism. The Republicans basically switched bases with the Democrats, becoming the party of the South and Northern white ethnics -- a coalition assembled by Richard Nixon, whose “Southern Strategy” made the Republicans the dominant party of the 1970s and 1980s.

Mitt Romney’s defeat demonstrated that this iteration of the Republican Party has run its course. The changes that began in the 1960s have become ingrained in American life. Campaigning against them marks the Republicans as a party of memory, not a party of hope or progress. Even conservative commentator Wayne Allyn Root admitted, on the Fox News website, that the Republicans have lost the culture wars, and need to give up on a political solution to the abortion issue.

Seriously, the real answer is to run candidates who are fiscally conservative and principled, but socially moderate and modern. The GOP needs candidates that say “Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. I will uphold it, even though my personal views are pro-life. And I will ALWAYS support exceptions for rape, incest, and when a mother’s life is in danger. Period.” The issue is off the table -- forever. What's left? The economy and jobs -- winning issues for the GOP.

That explain why an image of the Lincoln movie poster is shown in this post. This analysis makes sense to me in fact.

I consider myself pro-life, but my position isn't exactly ban all abortions. Social issues don't matter to me at this point primarily because I have a different set of issues. Jobs being one of them. I may not be able to stake a solid claim on abortion primarily because I'm not going out of my way to have children and have never been in a situation where there had been an unwanted pregnancy. Though for abortion all I can say is that hey whether the child is unborn or not it's not THERE fault that they're in the situation their in. I try to remember that.

Another piece of analysis is that Republicans must find a way to attract people of other ethnicity into their party. It doesn't matter if they're Black, white, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Chinese or whatever. Also how do they attract more women to their party?

There is some soul searching to do there, where to start? Start with their history as the party of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States?

Capitalism

Over four years ago I wrote a post about Karl Marx. That post proclaimed my faith in capitalism with the belief that the individual could succeed the best under such a system than Marx's capitalist system. It's still my belief although it's still easy to complain about the excesses and abuse that the practitioners of this system utilizes.

A friend of mine and myself talked about why some of the rich here in this nation owns and they complain about being forced to provide health care to their workers in their companies. That is often a complain about many who aren't in the higher echelons of our economic brackets. Do they need to own big houses or serveral houses or even several cars or even their net worth?

My only answer to that is to say that is not for us to decide. In my case, I can only dream of having those luxuries. That's not to say I would want to buy so much stuff because I have the money. Whether my earnings are middle-class or wealthy, my goal is only to live simply and that I could live without having a big house or anything else the wealthy could want.

As I've stated capitalism is hard and it's doubtful anyone can truly succeed under Marxism because it's hard for me to see how better off the individual will be. Under capitalism at least the individual can find their worth as a worker or entrepreneur. Besides capitalism is all about what you put into the system you can't get a lot if you have very little to offer.


While I may have great faith in the capitalist system, this is not to say that capitalism doesn't have its faults. We're seeing some of it's faults come out into the light. Even when times are good, surely we've seen some of it's faults during those times as well.

Still there is one question that must be answered. How does an individual make out under a socialist system? At this moment I'm having a hard time seeing that.