Skip to main content

Monopoly Part 1

It's hard sometimes keeping faith in mankind, but you know that every now and then if we look hard enough we can find something that sort of proves to us that no matter how fucked up this world gets somewhere someday everything will be alright.

Monopoly is one of those sort of universal experiences that we all have and something therein I believe is very bolstering in the faith department. Say we've been playing for a while and most of the properties are out. And you know, some of the players have houses and hotels by now and others are just barely hanging on, playing the dice version of Russian Roulette every time they turn the corner after Marvin Gardens.

It's a really cutthroat game too sometimes. An "in it to win it" mentality if I do say so, but I digress. Very competitive. Sometimes dangerously so in fact. But you know after the dice are rolled and your fate is set in stone, Pacific Avenue and that big old red roofed inn, you don't balk out of your responsibility. I sure don't. So we lose everything. Whoop-dee-do. There will be other games. It's not that important after all.

I'm not going to launch a stealth attack on their Light Blues. No one does. You pay the person. There's no debate. There's no bullshitting Mr. Moneybags. It doesn't work that way.

Imagine... A board game doesn't work that way. Wouldn't it be nice if real life worked that way from time to time. A little honesty in practice. A little responsibility. Even a six year old cops to having rolled that seven and landing on your hotel. They don't deny it. They don't pretend to miscount. They don't threaten you. Or bully you. Or otherwise try to convince you to otherwise drop your rental fee. It doesn't happen.

Oh what would life be like if we played it a little more like Monopoly?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reagan, Deregulation, and the Fruit It Now Bears

President Reagan had an idea about how the world should run. He deregulated Big Business. That is, he removed the restrictions put in place that kept companies from cheating. He removed, primarily economic oversight. He said that it was unAmerican that in this capitalist society that such oversight, such restrictions should exist. To him, these concepts flew in the face of that illusive, figmentary idea we like to call freedom. He wanted Big Business to have the freedom to do what it will and believed that in doing so, said companies would check themselves. They would check themselves because it was in their best economic interest to do so. Yet, what he didn't realize is that what was in the best interest of Corporate America could be unknown to Corporate America itself! That Big Business could be akin to a compulsive gambler who as they fall further and further into the hole panic and begin making riskier and riskier bets, thus then subjecting themselves to even more debt ...

My Last

 My previous post was found as a blank page in draft form this evening.  I found the existence of it to be rather poetic.  So I published it blank as is over a year later.  Seems fitting to be honest.

There's a Reason Why There Are No Good Politicians

That is to say there is a reason why there are no politicians with genuine interests at heart. Genuine interests can be defined as points of view on which you are inflexible to opposition. For instance, you are either for human rights or you're not for human rights. You don't have to be AGAINST human rights necessarily to not be for them. Politicians are not political activists. A political activist's interest is the success of a point of view. A politician's is not. There comes a point where a political activist, which I believe all worthwhile politicians begin as, cease to be an activist for an issue and begin to be a politician whose focus is politicking. There are of course politicians from different lines of work, particularly corporate America, but that plague is best left for discussion at a different time. The crux of the difference between an activist and a politician is flexibility. Activists are inflexible on their positions. Politicians are born o...