Monopoly Vs. Power Grid

Monopoly is a wonderful way to screw over friends and family and then bore yourself to death.

Monopoly, how do I hate thee?  Let me count the ways.

First of all, the game of Monopoly was designed to accentuate and highlight the problems with capitalism.  It's a mockery.  It's a mirror reflecting at least some of the absurd ridiculousness, such as the game theory concept of runaway leader.

You're already familiar with it.  At some point in the game, everyone knows who's going to win.  At that point, the game switches from "how can I win" to "how can I just survive the longest".  You begin making worse and worse long-term economic decisions just to stay afloat as the clear winner squeezes everyone else more and more.

(Hint: the real winners are the ones who, upon realizing they're not going to win, can figure out how to exit the game as quickly and gracefully as possible.)

Not.  Fun.  At all.

And that's not even taking into account how, in capitalism, corruption can seep in and take over.  This is like the game Nomic, where it might not be possible to re-write Rule A that would clearly favor the powerful, but it could be possible to first re-write Rule B that would then allow you to re-write Rule A.  This is how politics has become more and more corrupt over time, even seductively and insidiously by well-meaning politicians--and that's the best-case scenario!

The original game of Monopoly was actually created in 1903 by a leftwing feminist named Lizzy Magie.  The Landlord's Game, as she called it then, was a

"practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences,” she wrote in a political magazine. “It might well have been called the ‘Game of Life’, as it contains all the elements of success and failure in the real world, and the object is the same as the human race in general seem[s] to have, ie, the accumulation of wealth".

If you didn't quite catch that...

... she's criticizing our obsession of wealth and the power system we use over each other through wealth by means of her game.

Did you catch it this time?  I would repeat it, except it's already highlighted in bold and italicized, so I doubt repeating it would help at all.

But hey, let's break out that game of Monopoly for half an hour of arguing over trading for a color set and 3-1/2 hours of waiting to die.

The same concept of Monopoly is what is destroying our connection to our inner spiritual selves (if you're atheist, that's cool, just substitute spiritual for some comparable humanist word instead), our connections with each other (all of humanity life is one family), and our connection with the planet.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but our species is self-immolating.

We are eating ourselves alive and eating the very support system upon which we stand.  

It needs to stop.  Now.  Before it's too late.

The Great Law of the Iroquois is sometimes called the Seventh Generation of Sustainability, or the idea that our decisions need to take into account the effects it will have seven generations later.  How far into the future do shareholders consider when they demand corporate boards to clear cut forests or strip mine or sell you things you don't need or that are cheap and designed to break so that you come back buying more (planned obsolescence)?  Wake up:  they're stealing from everyone’s future to pay themselves today.

And, if my feelings about Monopoly were even the slightest bit ambiguous before, let me kill that idea with one last swift blow by calling in the experts:  Monopoly has the limp rating of 4.36 on boardgamegeek as of writing.  I mean, I'm not going to judge a game by the size of its rating, but if it still can't satisfy me then I'm done.

So if Monopoly is so terrible, then why is it so popular?  It's popular because it's popular.

Yes.  Herd mentality is.  That.  Stoopid.

We are so conditioned.  We play Monopoly because everyone has Monopoly.  We buy Monopoly because every store has Monopoly and we have played Monopoly and we have seen ads for Monopoly.

We are sheep, we are lemmings.  We follow the pack.  But if we are ever to survive, if we are ever to find world peace and social justice and environmental sustainability--and I believe we can!--then we need to start thinking outside the box.

I'm not saying be anarchists and break all the rules.  No, no, no--that won't work, either.  I'm saying hold leaders accountable (while also being understanding of their flaws and learning curve, too; we are all on a path).  Question their actions and intentions.  Don't let them get away with destroying our planet anymore.  And stop doing it ourselves.  Start treating each other better, even if it's "not the way we do things".  Great!  Because the way we do things is pretty damn awful.

More importantly, we need to start building something new.  I'm talking about ecological succession, both literally and figuratively.  Sure, some of the old institutions that no longer serve us will have to go.  Some might be able to stick around a while first, or for a long time with reform.  Others might serve a good purpose for one culture but not another.  Nothing is black and white.  But what's most important is that we begin establishing new venture capital start-ups and cottage industries, again literal and figurative, that sprout up in niche economic and cultural environments.

No need to tear down the old.  It will fade on its own if it fails to evolve and compete with the new.  The survival of the fittest means the most effective and efficient out-competes the rest.  Until now, that meant the species and cultures that could consume resources the fastest.  Now that we have more power than indigenous peoples once did, but are starting to wake up to the wisdom they also had, we are realizing that the most effective way is not the quickest consumption or a power grab from one another.  That's the path to a short and certain demise.

Instead of a Highlander “There can be only one,” type of consolidation of power to the last monolithic entity that subjugates the competition (the Empire of Star Wars), I propose instead the exact opposite: a democratization of decentralized power, coordinating organically and consensually (Galactic Republic), not compulsory or from coercion.

There would still be hierarchy to function, but it would be 3D like a neural net, not 2D like a ladder or a triangle. Diversity is beautiful and should be celebrated. There is strength when we all belong and work together, no matter how different we might be.

We're not going to get from here to there in one Great Leap, but we can take small steps, some jumps here and there, and even skip and dance along the way.  We may fall, too, but that's ok, as long as we get back up and continue making progress to... I don't know where, but that's what's so exciting.  This is the beginning of, not a revolution, but a Spiritual, Social, and Environmental Renaissance.  I'm betting the bank on it, because if it's not, there won't be a bank left pretty soon anyway.

Renaissances take a few hundred years or so to play out.  We won't see the fruits of our labors, but let's let the history books write about what we do now to save the planet and save our progeny.  Let's plant those seeds, literally and figuratively, in the ground now.  Jadav Payeng gets it.  Malala Yousafzai gets it.  Greta Thunberg gets it.  Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and others can also help us get there if they have the moral fortitude, but it will take all of us doing our part, great and small.

Oh yeah, didn't I mention Power Grid in the title?  What does all of this have to do with Power Grid?  Power Grid is another board game where players auction for property (power plants and resources) and competitively expand territory to power the most cities.

One of the things that sets Power Grid apart from Monopoly

is that it's fun.

There is usually no clear winner until the very end.  There's no winner-take-all while losers are slowly eliminated and then just sit on the sidelines, twiddle their thumbs, and look on disdainfully, as in Monopoly.  In Power Grid, all the players have fun and compete until the end, where everyone can earn a competitive score.

And more importantly, there are dampeners, or negative feedback loops, baked into the game mechanics, to establish what is called rubberbanding in game theory.  In other words, the leader is penalized slightly and the laggards are given a slight advantage, but only for that round.  It's not a lot, but it does minimize the runaway leader effect.

If you can get past knee-jerk fear-based programmed responses, you can see being fair to all is a good thing.  If it were you, you would want it too.  Something something Golden Rule.