Speaker 1: Hot Water History, Episode two, seventeen Wednesday night, Richard, What's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: I had a boomer walked by the house as that
Speaker 2: I was outside, and he was among the now several
Speaker 2: individuals who have felt bold enough to ask me are
Speaker 2: you Iranian? Because, as you know in our audience members
Speaker 2: who are faithful to the podcast know I have been
Speaker 2: flying the Iranian flag for several weeks now outside my home,
Speaker 2: and an individual, along with others in the past today
Speaker 2: just this evening, asked me are you Iranian? To which
Speaker 2: I responded. I was a little bit taken off guard
Speaker 2: because I didn't know what he was going to say.
Speaker 2: You know when you have those very quick passing moments
Speaker 2: when you don't know the person, You don't know if
Speaker 2: they're going to speak with you or what have you.
Speaker 2: But over the fence he said again, are you Uranian?
Speaker 2: I said no, but I really do side with winners,
Speaker 2: and he looked at me a bit strange, and then
Speaker 2: he look he chuckled a bit, so I thought that
Speaker 2: for a moment he was going to be a bit
Speaker 2: more amenable to what I might have to further say
Speaker 2: about why I'm flying the flag. He didn't ask me
Speaker 2: as to what the purpose was or the message. But
Speaker 2: he did say, boy, I wish that country would be
Speaker 2: able to free itself from those horrible clerics, to which
Speaker 2: all I could say, And maybe I don't know if
Speaker 2: this was entirely charitable, but I thought it was witty
Speaker 2: because it's true, and I hope he picked up on
Speaker 2: my sarcasm. But I said, well, I wish we could
Speaker 2: free ourselves from ourselves from our clerics, and I kind
Speaker 2: of wink winked and made it. Obviously I was speaking
Speaker 2: about the rabbinical clerics that run the country, but that
Speaker 2: might be lost on the on the boomer but he
Speaker 2: could just kept walking.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: So that was my exchange. I had to chuckle about
Speaker 2: it later, So I hope I wasn't uncharitable. How often
Speaker 2: does that happen? Once or twice a week the flag? Yeah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: Or I'll get a text from someone in the neighborhood
Speaker 2: or in the general area who's who's gone by the
Speaker 2: house or driven by the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got an awesome episode today.
Speaker 3: I'm dare I say pumped?
Speaker 2: You dared to say it?
Speaker 1: Our fourth Dark Notes episode, and this one I think
Speaker 1: I have the most amamo. Actually I know you took
Speaker 1: a bunch of notes. But we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: in breaking down Monopoly and the game that's always used
Speaker 1: as the example for see what happens when you don't
Speaker 1: have enough regulation. One person just takes everybody's money. Sure,
Speaker 1: dogg eat dog capitalism. The object of the game is
Speaker 1: to ruin everyone else, because that's what capitalism is about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, one one rich guy and we're all poor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one rich guy that looks like mister Peanut is
Speaker 2: the winner and the symbol for the game, and you're
Speaker 2: supposed to emulate that guy with his top hat and cane,
Speaker 2: who obviously resembles And it was patterned after JP Morgan.
Speaker 1: So before we get into it, why why do you
Speaker 1: want to talk about Monopoly? Is there anything that's specific
Speaker 1: that is an inspiration to you on why you want
Speaker 1: to talk about it?
Speaker 2: The inspiration came from someone an intellectual who posts a
Speaker 2: lot on in long form tweets on x or Twitter.
Speaker 2: I have to follow a number of French accounts because
Speaker 2: the French are extraordinarily interesting and I can read what
Speaker 2: they're saying and understanding what they're trying to convey. And
Speaker 2: it was AUGUSTE. Brudel or someone along those line. Baduek Or.
Speaker 2: I can't remember his last name, but his first name
Speaker 2: was August, and I've been following him, and he had
Speaker 2: this exposition of sorts about monopoly being from what I
Speaker 2: could gather and determine, he's of the more socialistic anarchist side,
Speaker 2: and so he railed against the corporatism involved with the
Speaker 2: development and history of the game. And what I was
Speaker 2: what piqued my interest was, more so, what were the
Speaker 2: origins of the game, what was it intended to convey?
Speaker 2: And more so, are there any subliminal, if not less
Speaker 2: than subliminal messaging that would lead us to become even
Speaker 2: more indoctrinated even in the parlors of American homes and
Speaker 2: after generation after generation, that this anti capitalist mentality might
Speaker 2: be conveyed and communicated in a board game, of all things.
Speaker 2: There's no safe room.
Speaker 3: In other words, right, do you want to go through
Speaker 3: your notes? Director? Did you have somewhere else you want
Speaker 3: to start?
Speaker 2: Oh, we could start with the notes. I'll try to
Speaker 2: spin a yarn here that and what I mean by
Speaker 2: spinning yarn does not give you any kind of fallacious
Speaker 2: or fictitious interpretation of past events, but just kind of
Speaker 2: what's on the historical record for the purpose of people
Speaker 2: who might want to follow along and can read my
Speaker 2: chicken scratch cursive. I just scanned all my notes and
Speaker 2: then put it in a blog post on the website,
Speaker 2: so you can feel free to dag along if you
Speaker 2: should be listening to the episode on the origins of Monopoly,
Speaker 2: it was not created, despite Hasbro and Parker Brothers, the
Speaker 2: owning company's story and narrative by Charles Darrow, at least
Speaker 2: originally speaking now, one could argue that Darrow was the
Speaker 2: original innovator and deserved all the eventual royalties that he
Speaker 2: received because his game departed significantly from the true originator.
Speaker 2: Originator's game, and that was Elizabeth or Lizzie, Maggie or
Speaker 2: Maggie who that was her maiden name. She was Nay
Speaker 2: Maggie and Phillips. This poor guy is we're going to
Speaker 2: turn come to know, was pretty lucky to have left
Speaker 2: this mortal coil early. Once we get to know his
Speaker 2: or know more about his wife, she's a real piece, Okay.
Speaker 2: So Elizabeth Maggie created the first version of what we
Speaker 2: would eventually call Monopoly, and she named it the landlord's game.
Speaker 2: That sounds fantastic. I can't wait to play the landlord's game.
Speaker 2: In nineteen oh three, she was a progressive feminist, and
Speaker 2: she was a Georgist aka follower of Henry George. And
Speaker 2: let me just speak for a moment about what it
Speaker 2: meant to be a Georgist at the end of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth into the early twentieth century in the progressive era. Now,
Speaker 2: George was supposedly an advocate for the poor, but in
Speaker 2: his career and in his i suppose what you might
Speaker 2: otherwise call his intellectual works, he reinforced state legitimacy by
Speaker 2: arguing for single tax ideas. So the Georges were really
Speaker 2: great in terms of their theories that often can be
Speaker 2: seen as very consistent with something like Rothbardian homesteading theory
Speaker 2: and what constitutes personal property and rightly gained property. So
Speaker 2: they were very much into utilization, proper utilization of the
Speaker 2: land so as to accrue property that would be your own.
Speaker 2: But where they depart from roth Bardian theory on property
Speaker 2: is just how you're able to utilize land, and then
Speaker 2: if you're able to, should you gain wealth or largest
Speaker 2: from it dispose of it? In whatever fashion you so desire,
Speaker 2: this is where they depart. Now. It just so happened,
Speaker 2: serendipity being what it is, that as I'm reading the
Speaker 2: Great Manifesto, the Libertary Manifesto by Rothbart for a New Liberty,
Speaker 2: he spoke of the Georges, and then I had to
Speaker 2: do the research. So this was almost simultaneous. As I'm
Speaker 2: reading through the book and Rothbart addresses the Georgios, sure enough,
Speaker 2: Henry George pops up in the life of Elizabeth Maggie,
Speaker 2: the original creator of what we would know as monopoly.
Speaker 2: The Georges claim that while individuals have a right to property,
Speaker 2: as I said, they do not have a right to
Speaker 2: the land. Now that might strike us as a bit odd.
Speaker 2: In other words, people cannot own real estate as we
Speaker 2: would understand owning real estate today. Since quote nature or
Speaker 2: God created the land itself, no individual has the right
Speaker 2: to assume ownership of that land. And that's Rothbard's explanation
Speaker 2: of Georgism. Again, since nature or God created the land itself,
Speaker 2: no individual has a right to assume ownership of the land.
Speaker 2: In the George's conception, then it would almost be much
Speaker 2: more appropriate to However, many billion people exist in the
Speaker 2: land or in the land, that everyone has a right
Speaker 2: to that billionth of a parcel of arable or even
Speaker 2: just available land. The single tax idea was the notion
Speaker 2: that what was an epiphany for George in the late
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties was that he saw the at the time
Speaker 2: wild fluctuations in land values, especially stemming from panics like
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty four and then in the aftermath of
Speaker 2: the Civil War, the panic of eighteen seventy two and
Speaker 2: the like. So what he did was he theorized that
Speaker 2: the fairest tax idea, as it pertains to the general
Speaker 2: populace in any state, but especially in America or the
Speaker 2: United States, was to tax land in proportion to its
Speaker 2: increase in value. So, in other words, tax equity in
Speaker 2: real estate, which George then maintained would lead to the
Speaker 2: end of all land property rights entirely. This is very
Speaker 2: much akin to I write the notes. It reminds me
Speaker 2: of John Marshall's theory about the power to tax the
Speaker 2: power to destroy, as he articulated in McCulloch versus Maryland.
Speaker 2: So you see this progressivism redounding through the ages that
Speaker 2: civil law should intervene so as to create taxation codes
Speaker 2: that would bring about non ownership or in a sense,
Speaker 2: communal use of property in this case land for George.
Speaker 2: He thought that was much more equitable and fair. Now,
Speaker 2: all that being the case, it's clear that when Maggie,
Speaker 2: that is, say Elizabeth Maggie made the original game, The
Speaker 2: Landlord's Game, it's chocked full of references to Georgism.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was supposed to be an educational she
Speaker 2: designed this game. Think about how much fund and how
Speaker 2: exciting this. I just don't understand how people found this
Speaker 2: game to be exhilarating to play, because its entire objective,
Speaker 2: or the objective behind it, was to create an educational
Speaker 2: critique of land monopolies, of renter capitalism, and of general inequality.
Speaker 2: That imagine trying to advertise selling this game, right, Oh,
Speaker 2: play The Landlord's Game, where we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: Georgism and how land should be more equitably shared and
Speaker 2: that rentcher capitalism and general inequality might be resolved.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It struck me at that time, when I was doing
Speaker 2: research for this, that if William Jennings Bryan had built
Speaker 2: a board game this would be it would it be
Speaker 2: called like the or would they have a property on
Speaker 2: it called like the Cross of Gold Boulevard, something along
Speaker 2: those lines, just because he was so opposed to all
Speaker 2: of the frankly free market capitalistic conditions that had built
Speaker 2: up and created such wealth within the Gilded Age. So
Speaker 2: whether it was bimetallism, which to be sure, George's like
Speaker 2: Maggie would be in favor of, or any of the
Speaker 2: different from her point of view, progressive ideas that should
Speaker 2: be inculcated in any American adults, in American youth as well. Question,
Speaker 2: So far, Charlie, when intervene or no?
Speaker 3: This is good?
Speaker 2: Okay, So Maggie's game plan, let's talk about that. The
Speaker 2: game plan had originally a board with properties as well
Speaker 2: as wages for labor. Get this labor on Mother Earth.
Speaker 2: So we're already getting into near eco worship with the
Speaker 2: Monopoly game. And as I was reading and looking at
Speaker 2: perusing and you can do you want to show her
Speaker 2: original board from the nineteen oh three nineteen oh four patent.
Speaker 2: There it is. Boy, can't wait to dive into that one. Huh.
Speaker 3: So one dollar for rent must be.
Speaker 2: Ten dollars for sale, luxury fifty dollars, railroads cost you
Speaker 2: five and we'll be getting into how the essential parts
Speaker 2: of the monopoly i e. Landlord aka Landlord's Game were
Speaker 2: carried on. And it's the essential parts that are most problematic,
Speaker 2: especially for those of us who argue for free freedom,
Speaker 2: human freedom, agency, free markets, and other civil liberties, okay,
Speaker 2: or basic rights that should be enjoyed by the individual,
Speaker 2: meaning the image of God. So when I'm reading all
Speaker 2: these things, so for example, you could see at the
Speaker 2: in the top right corner, and obviously for those just
Speaker 2: listening to audio this is you're gonna have to rely
Speaker 2: upon our description. Here the gohot spot or the beginning
Speaker 2: is labor upon m is labeled labor upon mother Earth
Speaker 2: produces wages, and there's a kind of outline of a
Speaker 2: globe in circular fashion, and that's where you begin. This
Speaker 2: reminded me, this weird New agey progressive reverence for mother
Speaker 2: Earth and the like. It strikes me that Maggie was
Speaker 2: Maggie was probably very much like if you were to
Speaker 2: meet her, those early feminist suffragette types and that crowd
Speaker 2: who happened to be also into sorcery, the Elizabeth Katie
Speaker 2: Stanton's the Julia Ward Howse of the reform movements of
Speaker 2: previous decades. The whole game strikes me as a weird,
Speaker 2: calvinistic reprimand of people who wanted to engage in ambition
Speaker 2: and entrepreneurship and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Speaker 1: Damn them, right, So she's Greta Thunberg nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I do not think both the Georgists nor
Speaker 2: Maggie would have castigated Woodrow Wilson for trying to spread
Speaker 2: progressive ideas through imperialism. There's not much of that there.
Speaker 2: Although you know, as we know, by the time of
Speaker 2: World War One, or even before that, at the time
Speaker 2: in which Maggie was developing the game, you know, it's
Speaker 2: just this is just the dawning of American overseas imperialism,
Speaker 2: the Spanish American War. So I don't know what Georgia.
Speaker 2: And we do know, for example, that many of the
Speaker 2: historical progressives of that time, example Sam of Gompers, the
Speaker 2: labor leader, was adamantly against American imperialists. And now they
Speaker 2: had their own reasons for that. Gompers didn't want a
Speaker 2: flood of illegal immigrants coming and just diluting the labor
Speaker 2: pool and driving wages lower and there was a strange
Speaker 2: group of bedfellows that were in the anti imperial league,
Speaker 2: but they were on the right side, even if their
Speaker 2: motives were flowed. So it should be noted that this
Speaker 2: is kind of weird when I discovered it that Maggie's
Speaker 2: game eventually are actually in The original had two sets
Speaker 2: of rules. You could essentially play two different games. The
Speaker 2: first set of rules applied to the monopolists, so if
Speaker 2: you wanted to be a monopolist, you could play what's
Speaker 2: called the competitive version. However, if you wanted to be
Speaker 2: a Georgist and moral, you could play what's called the
Speaker 2: prosperity version. And it is a bit iron that the
Speaker 2: prosperity didn't version never really would in the real world,
Speaker 2: amount to any creation of real prosperity. But it was
Speaker 2: also ironic in that this was the anti monopolist cooperative version,
Speaker 2: and it's this one that the free market rejected, So
Speaker 2: eventually this one just went by the wayside, right. Maggie
Speaker 2: stated in her own writings that the intent of the
Speaker 2: game was to teach against what she called land grabbing,
Speaker 2: so ownership of land entered the scene. Charles brace Daro,
Speaker 2: So I should note that she filed for a patent
Speaker 2: of the game. It started to be played in Quaker
Speaker 2: left leaning university circles. Students love playing this game and
Speaker 2: in Quaker areas, especially in communities around southern and southeastern Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: And of all things, I didn't know that there was
Speaker 2: a sizeable Quaker community in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Quite
Speaker 2: the anomaly there and a fish out of water, But
Speaker 2: there there was, and in fact the eventual the eventual,
Speaker 2: and she was actually from Maryland. So it was also
Speaker 2: played by people in and around northern Virginia that area.
Speaker 2: So you could see a little bit why it would
Speaker 2: be popular for progressives who were working within or around
Speaker 2: on the margins of the national government. You see advocating
Speaker 2: for labor and the immense growth of government agencies that
Speaker 2: had never been extant before were coming to fruition in
Speaker 2: the wood in the Wilson and Progressive era, even under
Speaker 2: Roosevelt Taft Okay So enter the scene. By the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties in the Depression, Charles Bright Brace Darrow So Darrow
Speaker 2: learned a version of the game when he was visiting
Speaker 2: friends during the Great Depression. He had been out of work.
Speaker 2: He was a World War One vet. Interestingly enough, he
Speaker 2: had fought in France. He was a heater salesman and
Speaker 2: a heating and steam engineer. He lost a job early
Speaker 2: in the depression, as I had stated, and supported his
Speaker 2: family with odd jobs, including eventually adapting Maggie's game. He
Speaker 2: added different elements that I would deem it as so
Speaker 2: essential that while there were some aspects of Maggie's game
Speaker 2: that carried over, what Darrow's game was the pure monopolist
Speaker 2: competitive version, which people seem to like a lot more
Speaker 2: than the prosperity i e. Cooperative version that Maggie had created.
Speaker 2: And he added familiar elements that we would know today,
Speaker 2: the color coding, the wooden houses and hotels and other
Speaker 2: property names. So in the this came from the whether
Speaker 2: it's Marvin gardens or boardwalk or park place, this comes
Speaker 2: from the Philadelphia and Atlantic City area. He filed for
Speaker 2: a copyright of the game. By the way, he he
Speaker 2: and his wife made hand like, handmade versions of the game,
Speaker 2: and we could bring up we don't have to watch
Speaker 2: look at this terrible board that was a Maggie's original
Speaker 2: board from the Landlords game. There's a monopoly board that
Speaker 2: we're with which we're all familiar. That's different. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: go back. That's anti monopoly. That's something different. Okay, So
Speaker 2: this is the Monopoly board. This is, by the way,
Speaker 2: the Monopoly board as it appeared in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 2: That's a thirty five version of the Monopoly game. He copyrighted,
Speaker 2: filed for a copyright in nineteen thirty three, the patent
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty five, and eventually he sold it to
Speaker 2: the Parker Brothers Game Company for seven thousand dollars and
Speaker 2: royalties in nineteen thirty five, after he had attained the patent.
Speaker 2: Now a bit of analysis here, then, this is my
Speaker 2: own Even in the middle of the depression, players preferred
Speaker 2: the entrepreneurial and competitive aspects of the Darrow reversion or
Speaker 2: revision excuse me, but the game still reinforces, and this
Speaker 2: is what we're going to spend most of the time
Speaker 2: or with the episode today. The game still reinforces a
Speaker 2: decidedly anti capitalist mentality. What's amazing, I think is that, yes,
Speaker 2: first of all, the agency of Jarrow to take up
Speaker 2: this game and then modify it, making it what he
Speaker 2: thought was much more free market oriented and competitive, with
Speaker 2: the goal of essentially bankrupting all of your competitors and
Speaker 2: winning the game. But the holdover rules as well as
Speaker 2: some of the even novel ideas that were guidelines and
Speaker 2: rules for the game. We're not talking about the attendant
Speaker 2: sort of house rules that some people made up, but
Speaker 2: the actual rules that Darrow played the game and as
Speaker 2: he designed the game are still incredibly anti capitalistic, as
Speaker 2: we're going to see, whether it's in the gameplay, the
Speaker 2: chance cards, or just how how different ventures in the
Speaker 2: game are financed for example. All Right, so much of
Speaker 2: the gameplay from the original was left intact, so unlike
Speaker 2: what was popular, apparently at the turn of the century
Speaker 2: was to have board games that were linear. One of
Speaker 2: the Maggi's. One of Maggie's innovative features with You was
Speaker 2: that you went around a board. Interesting to note that
Speaker 2: the first board games weren't even board games. They were
Speaker 2: created on oil cloth, so you folded up the cloth
Speaker 2: and then carried it around. So Darrow's Darrow creates the
Speaker 2: board by the nineteen thirties. Okay, so a trip around
Speaker 2: the board merited each player just wages. Now that is
Speaker 2: essentially a carryover from Maggie's game. A trip around the
Speaker 2: board was to symbolize essentially a year of labor, and
Speaker 2: that labor you had to traverse the board and essentially
Speaker 2: survive all of the pitfalls that come from just and
Speaker 2: this is what's key going onto the areas where property
Speaker 2: is held. I'm gonna get to that a little bit
Speaker 2: more because this is a bit of a nuanced and
Speaker 2: I don't want to make it too so esoteric or
Speaker 2: anything like that. But there's something that always bothered me
Speaker 2: even as a kid playing Monopoly, and that is what
Speaker 2: does it mean to land on a place? What does
Speaker 2: it mean to have landed on both Avenue or Saint
Speaker 2: Charles Place. So we'll get to that in a moment. Okay,
Speaker 2: So sales prices and rent costs were assigned to each square,
Speaker 2: as you know and playing the game right, and these
Speaker 2: were mental reinforced that rent transactions are always involuntary railroads too,
Speaker 2: So this is where I'm getting to the problem of
Speaker 2: what it means to land on a place. To land
Speaker 2: on a place is not only mandatory you have to
Speaker 2: go to a place in the game, but there's no
Speaker 2: voluntary exchange or negotiation. That is to say, the rent
Speaker 2: transactions are mandatory they're involuntary. There's no exchange, there's no
Speaker 2: trade off if you will, and there's certainly no negotiation.
Speaker 2: There were, as in Maggie's version, no trust passing and
Speaker 2: go to jail squares and now eventually what Because Darrow
Speaker 2: thought that the no trust passing was a little bit
Speaker 2: to socialistic, just because it reinforced that this is property
Speaker 2: and that you're going to jail because you were truspassing
Speaker 2: just by being in a place, he removed the no
Speaker 2: trustpassing part, but he did keep the the go to
Speaker 2: jail square all right. Also in Maggie's version there was
Speaker 2: a square called the poorhouse. Uh. And again Darrel thought
Speaker 2: this was a little bit too facistic. I don't know
Speaker 2: what you would call it authoritarian, so he just put
Speaker 2: it as free parking. That was what it was changed.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: In the game, possessions are acquired mainly through luck. That's
Speaker 2: the other thing. It's not as though you answer questions
Speaker 2: in trivia or you do some sort of cranium like
Speaker 2: to cite another board game challenge by which you earn points.
Speaker 2: There's no competition vis v or as. There's no competition
Speaker 2: per se. You're you're essentially delegated. You win the game
Speaker 2: according to what we might call luck, and there's not
Speaker 2: too much strategy behind it. And this means that there's
Speaker 2: no consumer choice, as I mentioned earlier, nor consumer sovereignty,
Speaker 2: and this is replaced all by the roll of the dice.
Speaker 2: Landing on a property creates only loss that's interesting, but
Speaker 2: no mutual gain. And I want to talk to now
Speaker 2: about how that puzzled me as a kid. So even
Speaker 2: the first time I played in Monopoly, I couldn't ascertain
Speaker 2: for myself what does it mean to land on a place?
Speaker 2: Is that problem? Why would that be problematic? Boardwalk sounds
Speaker 2: like a nice place, you see.
Speaker 3: I can imagine you planning for the first time as
Speaker 3: a little kid.
Speaker 2: Right, But it just was entirely outside of my purview
Speaker 2: of how life was lived. And it's not as though,
Speaker 2: as I've grown into adult into adulthood that that question
Speaker 2: still doesn't or that that question is resolved. It's totally unresolved.
Speaker 2: So case in point, even if I go to just
Speaker 2: by chance, I drive down twenty sixth Street in Chicago
Speaker 2: and I get a flat tire at twenty sixth in California,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean I go to jail just by the
Speaker 2: luck of being approximate to that place and being in
Speaker 2: a sense stuck there. Sure, so why should that because
Speaker 2: in other words, I haven't engaged in any type of infraction,
Speaker 2: nor in the sense of a game, have I gotten
Speaker 2: a question wrong so I go back to the start
Speaker 2: of the game, or there's some competitive disadvantage that is
Speaker 2: forced upon me. It's just purely you roll the dice.
Speaker 2: There's a cost because you occupy a space that is
Speaker 2: owned by someone else. So it's always that your presence
Speaker 2: is like an assault on private property. And this is
Speaker 2: the that you could so you could see the George's
Speaker 2: conceptualization here. Everyone else is the thread to your property.
Speaker 2: If you just allow for ownership of land, do you see?
Speaker 2: And so that justifies why because you're not doing anything
Speaker 2: with your land, as George says, And if it accruise
Speaker 2: in value or goes up and just simply goes up
Speaker 2: in value and increases, and you don't deserve that windfall
Speaker 2: of value once you go to sell the land. You see,
Speaker 2: you didn't do it. God made that, So why are
Speaker 2: you benefiting from it? It's an odd conception anyway, The
Speaker 2: so called monopolies, those are the color coded areas are
Speaker 2: very easily obtained. This is interesting to note, whereas in
Speaker 2: the real world monopolies only form in the market due
Speaker 2: to utter market superiority, customers prefer it. Now, of course
Speaker 2: we're talking about and I did think about the libertarian
Speaker 2: litmus test, because we have a question about this, namely,
Speaker 2: if you in the free market, completely free market operative,
Speaker 2: without governmental interference or externalities that would suppress its true
Speaker 2: operation and function, a monopoly only forms thanks to comparative advantage,
Speaker 2: or what I might go so far as I say,
Speaker 2: is competitive superiority. It's not eternal, it's only it's totally
Speaker 2: conditional upon continuing to offer a good or service at
Speaker 2: maximum value to the consumer. And this is where I
Speaker 2: hope that the muses quote that I'm going to read
Speaker 2: from Human Action at the end of this analysis will
Speaker 2: encapsulate why monopoly is such a perfidious game. But think
Speaker 2: about that just for a moment, namely that again, monopoly
Speaker 2: is seen as such a terrible it's the name of
Speaker 2: the game, but it's kind of like the board games Sorry,
Speaker 2: or any other board game that has a dark, an
Speaker 2: ominous name. In a way. The goal is to the
Speaker 2: objective of the game, at least this game, this version
Speaker 2: of the game, is to create as many monopolies as possible.
Speaker 2: But you don't do that by anything other than landing
Speaker 2: on a space and having the monopoly capital to purchase properties. Correct, Right,
Speaker 2: it's not. You don't have to do anything special like
Speaker 2: answer a trivia question.
Speaker 3: I'm trying.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm kind of stuck on the trivia question.
Speaker 2: I don't know what other means are there are there
Speaker 2: to kind of prove your metal outside of a or
Speaker 2: or do something creative, right, I'm thinking of really fun games,
Speaker 2: board games that I've played, Like have you ever played
Speaker 2: Boulderdash or Beyond Balderdash. No, it's a great game where
Speaker 2: you have to make up fake definitions of words or
Speaker 2: plots to movies, and then you all submit that, and
Speaker 2: the real plot of the movie or the real definition
Speaker 2: of the word, or the significance of a date for example,
Speaker 2: they're all gathered together with the real one, and then
Speaker 2: you have someone read and then everyone else picks what
Speaker 2: they think is the real one. But and you get
Speaker 2: points if you fool people see that there's a talent there.
Speaker 2: There's a creativity test yep, yeah, or knowledge test so anyway,
Speaker 2: so you don't have to do anything. The chance in
Speaker 2: community chess cards are better representatives of centralized regulatory and
Speaker 2: a larcenist state, or the activities of the centralized regulatory
Speaker 2: and larceness states. So you can when's last time you
Speaker 2: played Monopoly, Charlie.
Speaker 3: It's been a while.
Speaker 2: It's been years for me. But a lot of the
Speaker 2: community chest and chance cards. It's interesting that he calls it.
Speaker 2: He called it community chest as if by involuntary and
Speaker 2: course of action. For example, you have to pay fifteen
Speaker 2: dollars for your aunt to have surgery or something like
Speaker 2: that was a community chess card, or that's chance. But
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of oh, you had to pay a new
Speaker 2: park goes up in the in the area, you have
Speaker 2: to pay ten dollars tax. It's always this arbitrary thing
Speaker 2: that's taken from you but benefits the greater community. That's
Speaker 2: community chest, that's supposed to and those are gold cards.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to be happy about that. Now, sometimes you
Speaker 2: get a windfall like that. I remember a community chance
Speaker 2: card that says, like, oh, irs screws up on your taxes,
Speaker 2: you get ten dollars whoa okay, well again it's all
Speaker 2: the distant power of the internal revenue service that's operative
Speaker 2: in Washington, that bestows a grace upon you when you
Speaker 2: get ten dollars of no merit of your own. It's
Speaker 2: just that they screwed up, and they're so because the
Speaker 2: irs is synonymous with when they screw up, you get refunds. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that happens a long the time. The idea of central
Speaker 2: banking is reinforced and Monopoly. For example, the rule in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirty three version, the Darrow version that was
Speaker 2: carried over and it's still part of the official rules
Speaker 2: that has Bro and Parker Brothers maintain is in quote,
Speaker 2: no player can borrow from or lend money to another player.
Speaker 2: So the Monopoly bank is the centralized bank. It has
Speaker 2: complete control over the game or legal tender and can
Speaker 2: regulate it as such. And there's no wherewithal by which
Speaker 2: are there's no means by which someone could loan new
Speaker 2: money or vice versa within the game. Tenth point Here,
Speaker 2: all mortgages and price are price controlled to a ten
Speaker 2: percent interest rate, which is interesting, Now, why is that
Speaker 2: all mortgages in the game are price controlled to a
Speaker 2: ten percent interest rate? Again, this reinforces the George's perspective
Speaker 2: that you shouldn't be getting usurious funds from people because
Speaker 2: your land value went up, and then therefore you're able
Speaker 2: to charge a greater than ten percent interest rate. I
Speaker 2: thought of Tucker Carlson. He would be so proud right now,
Speaker 2: because everything else would be anything more than ten percent.
Speaker 2: Why ten percent? Who knows? But he doing that as
Speaker 2: being sinful and usurious.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: The eleven point here regarding inflation. Another rule, the bank
Speaker 2: never goes bankrupt. Now that's wild, right. The monopoly bank,
Speaker 2: according to the official rules, never goes bankrupt. In point
Speaker 2: of fact, if there comes to a point where money
Speaker 2: runs out, you're supposed to write notes and on scrap
Speaker 2: paper that the bank owes me. This and then when
Speaker 2: the bank accrues more money, or it's even allowed that
Speaker 2: you go get more monopoly money from another game, it'll
Speaker 2: pay you out. So it never gets it never goes bankrupt. Twelve.
Speaker 2: If it were verily monopoly, one could think that of
Speaker 2: each square as an individual monopoly grant. Only the government
Speaker 2: can give out such grants. So government was the original
Speaker 2: owner of all that. This is a point that's made
Speaker 2: by Ben poll In, an article entitled It's on Thesa's
Speaker 2: Institute's website, and I have the source here. Ben Pal's
Speaker 2: article is Monopoly. Parker Brothers gets it wrong, and so
Speaker 2: he writes this that if indeed monopoly, if you could
Speaker 2: think of each square as an individual monopoly grant, then
Speaker 2: only the government can give out such grants. So the
Speaker 2: government was the original owner of all things. Monopoly as
Speaker 2: a game would make more sense to an Ottoman Turk
Speaker 2: living under the sultanate in the nineteenth century than it
Speaker 2: does to an American kid in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: I e.
Speaker 2: Met see, because the conceptualization is that government owns all
Speaker 2: it provides these grants, or more so the ability to
Speaker 2: lobby for granted monopolies and special privileges, and the government
Speaker 2: has ownership of it, so it can doulve that out
Speaker 2: to individuals connected to it. All right, Oh, I have
Speaker 2: a wild instance about the history of monopoly that pertains
Speaker 2: to the whole central banking and inflation question around the game.
Speaker 2: I had no idea about this, but in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty one, at the University of Pittsburgh, there
Speaker 2: was a one one hundred and sixty one hour marathon
Speaker 2: monopoly game played by students at pitt in which the
Speaker 2: bank ran out of money. The players then wired Parker
Speaker 2: Brothers for a bailout, and the company sent extra game
Speaker 2: money on a plane to Pittsburgh. And even.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even had a truck, an armor truck, pick
Speaker 2: it up from the airport and deliver it, and and
Speaker 2: so doing. Of course, the inclusion of the new money
Speaker 2: devalued all the already extant money within the game. Okay, again,
Speaker 2: the bank cannot run out of money, all right. So
Speaker 2: going back to that conceptualization that every property monopoly is
Speaker 2: really kind of a government monopoly grant to the individual
Speaker 2: player who happens to land on at first and is
Speaker 2: able to purchase it, it's better to conceptualize the initial
Speaker 2: price in the idea that it's not so much ownership
Speaker 2: but the exclusive cost of lobbying the government for a
Speaker 2: special monopoly grant. That is to say, one of the
Speaker 2: main objections of the Georgis was that you could purchase
Speaker 2: what would otherwise be untainted and undeveloped land in real estate,
Speaker 2: and in so purchasing without doing anything to develop bid Again,
Speaker 2: they were really big into homesteading, good for them and
Speaker 2: mixing one's labor with the land so as to be productive.
Speaker 2: There were speculators the Georgis and Henry George himself were
Speaker 2: scanalized by that said, well, there's people that are benefiting
Speaker 2: that are just buying up land and then not doing
Speaker 2: anything with it that's not labor. So this for them
Speaker 2: was nothing sort of usually, but instead of using cash,
Speaker 2: they were using you were using land as a So
Speaker 2: what monopoly as a game and is a conceptualization of
Speaker 2: real life actually points to is a gigantic flaw in
Speaker 2: the George's reasoning, namely that well if the individual who
Speaker 2: obtains land or even rents it out without developing a
Speaker 2: great deal, or buys a building and doesn't improve its condition,
Speaker 2: but yet benefits from rent seeking, but not rent seeking
Speaker 2: from the government, just getting rent from private individuals, well,
Speaker 2: here's the thing. What the board shows is that all
Speaker 2: you gain is not the property itself, but a kind
Speaker 2: of grant to lobby the government or the power, a
Speaker 2: kind of entry point to lobby the government for more
Speaker 2: monopoly authority. So this is ben Powell's point. Other players
Speaker 2: are then mandated to pay you because not so much
Speaker 2: that you own the land or privilege, which is anathema
Speaker 2: to Georgis. But because you own the privilege of being
Speaker 2: connected to the government, who says you own the property?
Speaker 2: Follow yep, okay, So monopoly as and caps and you
Speaker 2: and I would define it, and Rothbard defined it in
Speaker 2: real life with government intervention rather than operative within the
Speaker 2: free market is truly defined as in quote, a special
Speaker 2: grant of privilege by the state. And that's really what
Speaker 2: we have here. You obtain it by luck and connection.
Speaker 2: You have the capacity at the beginning of the game
Speaker 2: to purchase the land, but you're really not purchasing the land,
Speaker 2: because that's again distasteful to the Georgies. You're simply gaining
Speaker 2: the right to gain more land and then charge rent
Speaker 2: to everyone else. Well, Jess is injurious. But it's a
Speaker 2: lot better than saying you have a property right to
Speaker 2: the land, as if the land and your property is
Speaker 2: an extension of your body. Okay again this is this
Speaker 2: struck me as a kid. I would wonder if, for example,
Speaker 2: one railroad service was better than the other. Notice how
Speaker 2: of course, because it's unavoidable, especially in Darrow's game, that
Speaker 2: as you progress through the board, Saint Charles place is
Speaker 2: not very expensive. Right, but as you progress to the
Speaker 2: board and get to park place on board walk, those
Speaker 2: are the most expensive properties. Well, what's determining the value
Speaker 2: of those properties? Well, the monopoly game has no real.
Speaker 3: Answer for that.
Speaker 2: In a sense, it allows you to imagine that living
Speaker 2: somewhere on St. Charles's Place, or being a renter there,
Speaker 2: or being forced to pace some fee because you happened
Speaker 2: upon that property. Well, that area really sucks. It would
Speaker 2: be terrible to live there. Correct? Or what is the
Speaker 2: other one Baltic Avenue or is Baltic Avenue a nice one?
Speaker 2: Baltic Avenue is in the green? I think? Are the
Speaker 2: other purple ones Baltics one of the Oh, Baltic's one
Speaker 2: of the shitty ones. Yeah, okay? And then what oh
Speaker 2: was Pacific Avenue was? Is one of the green ones?
Speaker 2: It was nice? So you're getting as you play the game, Oh,
Speaker 2: it must be nice to be in the green or
Speaker 2: the light blue. It sucks ass to be in Baltic
Speaker 2: Avenue or Mediterranean Avenue, right, right? Also you pick up
Speaker 2: like Baltics, Well the Baltics are you know, Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: way up in the boonies. Correct? Immigrants Mediterranean. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: those are Southern European Catholics. Awful, right, So you go
Speaker 2: from the kind of ethnic enclaves and then you get
Speaker 2: more and more lily white, lily white lily all the
Speaker 2: way down to boardwalk of park Place, which you might
Speaker 2: as well have a pew at the at the Methodist
Speaker 2: Church or or be a high Anglican by that point. Yeah,
Speaker 2: or at least you're going to be that if you
Speaker 2: want to fit in. So yeah, it The prices are
Speaker 2: avoidable because it forces you to determine what would be
Speaker 2: more advantageous to own, but there's no examination in the
Speaker 2: game as to why those properties are more expensive than others.
Speaker 2: You follow, Yes, Okay, Now I want to get to
Speaker 2: the mess quote that is at the heart of why
Speaker 2: this game is so problematic. And but before we do that,
Speaker 2: I did want to note that there were some other
Speaker 2: oddities that I wanted to go over. And you just
Speaker 2: take these for what the what you value them as,
Speaker 2: value them as in a subjective sense. Maggie what what
Speaker 2: was her what was her reaction to Monopoly blowing up? Well?
Speaker 2: When Parker Brothers purchased the patent and copyright for Darrow's
Speaker 2: Monopoly game. So as to ensure that there will be
Speaker 2: no competitive games, they went out and bought patents or
Speaker 2: bought up with the patents and made sure they had
Speaker 2: possess the copyrights of any other competitor games. And that's
Speaker 2: what they deemed Maggie's game the Landlord game. So she
Speaker 2: received five hundred dollars from Parker Brothers. Now when she
Speaker 2: began to see in I believe she was again living
Speaker 2: in the DC suburbs at the time, in the depression,
Speaker 2: which she began to see Monopoly games being played from
Speaker 2: Parker Brothers. And we have written proof of this because
Speaker 2: she was a progressive writer. She wrote in all these
Speaker 2: journals and stuff like that she rejoiced in the game's popularity,
Speaker 2: but only later when it made it really big, did
Speaker 2: she become indignant. She attempted to get more money and
Speaker 2: royalties from Parker Brothers, unsuccessful in that, and she died
Speaker 2: an embittered, childish widow who had worked at the of
Speaker 2: all Things, US Office of Education as a typist. Her
Speaker 2: coworkers commented that they remembered her as rather quiet, but
Speaker 2: she did speak up about a board games a lot.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, interesting to note here nineteen seventies. In fact,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, a professor from San Francisco State University,
Speaker 2: a leftist professor shocker teaching at San Francisco State University
Speaker 2: in the early seventies. His name was Ralph Ansbach. He,
Speaker 2: being a left wing academic, also sued Parker Brothers. And
Speaker 2: that's because he developed as a left wing academic and
Speaker 2: anti monopoly game and he called it such in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three. Now, just imagine how anti capitalistic that game is.
Speaker 2: But we'll get into some of the things about that
Speaker 2: in a moment. Well, let's just get into anti monopoly
Speaker 2: game right now. In the anti Monopoly game by ants Bac,
Speaker 2: players took the role of federal case workers. Again, this
Speaker 2: what an exhilarating game. I can't wait to be a
Speaker 2: federal case worker in the game. And they could choose
Speaker 2: to be either competitors or a monopolists. Now, this is
Speaker 2: kind of an interesting twist that Antspac there he is
Speaker 2: with his anti monopoly game. Like, I like this to
Speaker 2: a degree because what Anspec was trying to point out,
Speaker 2: because ironically the goal of his game was returned to
Speaker 2: a truly free market system, was how anti competitive monopolies
Speaker 2: and large corporations had become so he was not deluded
Speaker 2: by the idea that all government activity would be advantageous
Speaker 2: for breaking up monopolies. He saw that government often colluded
Speaker 2: with big business, and thus he's seeing the praises he
Speaker 2: would be, I mean Murray Rothbart at the time if
Speaker 2: he had ever met Anspach. I don't know if he did,
Speaker 2: but that'd be interesting if they did me. But he'd
Speaker 2: probably shake his hand and say, you're right about you know,
Speaker 2: the free market doesn't work like this, especially with all
Speaker 2: this intervention and preferential treatment. So what is problematic, however,
Speaker 2: is that the anti Monopoly game is styled in such
Speaker 2: a way and its game plan and it's layout. Obviously
Speaker 2: it's a kickoff of the original Monopoly game. But he
Speaker 2: was really into and a big proponent proponent of large
Speaker 2: national antitrust laws. So it's one of those great weaknesses
Speaker 2: I suppose, or fault and mistakes or missteps of leftists
Speaker 2: who like the Georgia's got the first part right about
Speaker 2: how property is gained rightly, so in the most ethical
Speaker 2: and moral sense. And then rather than recognizing that the
Speaker 2: government is a great inhibitor to the enjoyment and then
Speaker 2: making that property, whether it be land or services provided
Speaker 2: or whatever, it might be beneficial to the masses if
Speaker 2: you will. Well, yeah, the government has to step in, right,
Speaker 2: and it often inhibits that individual enjoyment of property, and
Speaker 2: wherever the individual decides or elects to direct it the
Speaker 2: fruits of that labor and the Smithian sense. And what
Speaker 2: they do instead is, rather than calling upon the dissolution
Speaker 2: of governmental agencies, they double down and say, well, the
Speaker 2: problem is state or local governments. So we need national
Speaker 2: plans like larger anti trust laws, like we just have
Speaker 2: to strengthen the Wagner Act, and then the union unions
Speaker 2: labor unions will be even stronger, even though the Wagner
Speaker 2: Act hadn't achieved any of the socialistic ambitions of the
Speaker 2: new Deal. Okay, let's see another oddity, the last one.
Speaker 2: This is probably the last oddity I'll share, and that
Speaker 2: is that. And speaking at trivia, I'll have you a guest.
Speaker 2: See if you can land on this one. What The
Speaker 2: day that Maggie filed her patent for the Landlord's Game
Speaker 2: was the same day that really famous innovators from North
Speaker 2: Carolina or at least that's where they were working filed
Speaker 2: their patent. I'll give you a hint. They were relatives.
Speaker 3: You're talking about the Parker brothers.
Speaker 2: Nope, the Right brothers. Wow. Yeah, the Right brothers filed
Speaker 2: the patent for their plane the same day, the same
Speaker 2: day in nineteen oh four, nineteen oh three or nineteen
Speaker 2: oh four. Isn't that wild?
Speaker 1: Is that just something you put together or was it
Speaker 1: in a similar location you're saying, Oh.
Speaker 2: No, no, I found it in a story. I found
Speaker 2: it in the Guardian article by Actually this woman, wrote
Speaker 2: Mary Pillen. She wrote a whole book about this ream
Speaker 2: of the game. So but she had an article in
Speaker 2: Guardian that disclosed that Okay, should we get to the
Speaker 2: muses quote. Let me read it and hopefully it summarizes
Speaker 2: what all that's wrong with the board game Monopoly and
Speaker 2: the messages that it entails or tries to instill in us.
Speaker 2: So here's what means wrote in Human Action. Neither the
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs and this is about real life, but it could be,
Speaker 2: it could be said of Monopoly, neither the entrepreneurs, nor
Speaker 2: the farmers, nor the capitalists determine what has to be purchased,
Speaker 2: whereas a monopoly, the everything, your luck or lack thereof,
Speaker 2: determines what has to be purchased. The consumers do that,
Speaker 2: their buying and their abstention from buying, decides who should
Speaker 2: own and run the plants and farms. They make poor
Speaker 2: people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what
Speaker 2: should be produced, in what quality and in what quantities.
Speaker 2: They are merciless bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable
Speaker 2: and unpredictable, whereas essentially everything in monopoly is very well
Speaker 2: static and predictable. I love that quote, along with the
Speaker 2: other quote that we featured so heavily when we had
Speaker 2: our episodes on human action after I had read it
Speaker 2: through from cover to cover. What was that about a
Speaker 2: year and a half ago, eighteen months ago? And that
Speaker 2: quote about you have really a choice in human living
Speaker 2: and in social operation? Can only there's really two choices.
Speaker 2: You can have some extrinsic force to the public, be
Speaker 2: the king of setting what is valuable. Or you can
Speaker 2: have the individual consumer, or more so individual consumers, acting
Speaker 2: in simultaneous and multifaceted ways, determine what is of value.
Speaker 2: They are the kings. A king is someone who goes
Speaker 2: to an appliance store to buy a washer. A king
Speaker 2: is someone who is able to go and choose from
Speaker 2: a whole host of varieties of chewing gum in a
Speaker 2: supermarket line. Why, because of the choices a lotted to
Speaker 2: him and the fact that all of the competitive enterprises
Speaker 2: seeking that exchange, seeking that capital and value from that
Speaker 2: individual consumer, they're all warring with each other just to
Speaker 2: get that and so therefore they have the power that
Speaker 2: a medieval king might well be envious of.
Speaker 3: Have you ever played Monopoly with the free parking role?
Speaker 2: Yes, where all I forget what money goes there. It's
Speaker 2: like the money that you get from or you get
Speaker 2: charged from chance or community Chess cards goes into free parking,
Speaker 2: and then if you land in free parking you get
Speaker 2: the money. Yeah, yes, yes, that's actually not part of
Speaker 2: the official game, but those are.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: It's a famous house role that somehow made it made
Speaker 1: its way around. Yes, talk about hyperinflation. That's how you
Speaker 1: get a game to last two hours longer than it should.
Speaker 1: For sure, there's so many dollars in circulation that all
Speaker 1: the people are asking for five hundred dollars to complete
Speaker 1: their monopoly on Mediterranean.
Speaker 2: Yes, And the restriction against loaning to each other is
Speaker 2: really problematic too, because it is one area where you
Speaker 2: could see that there could be mutual benefit from cooperation,
Speaker 2: and anytime in Monopoly that there is just the possibility
Speaker 2: of mutual benefit from voluntary exchange, the game just squashes that.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Not only that, I think the biggest sigh of about
Speaker 1: Monopoly is that when something like that comes up.
Speaker 3: Let's say.
Speaker 1: My brother and I are playing against another pair of
Speaker 1: brothers and and we say, hey, I'll let you go
Speaker 1: on this rent payment. But when I come back around
Speaker 1: on when you land on mind yell collusion that they
Speaker 1: say that's cheating, correct, that's right.
Speaker 2: So yes, again, you're you're making it a voluntary exchange
Speaker 2: of delaying a payment if you should land on this
Speaker 2: property for mutual benefit, because you could, and in.
Speaker 3: A way I don't There was.
Speaker 2: That reference to you can only charge ten percent interest
Speaker 2: on mortgages, right, but I don't remember ever having to
Speaker 2: pay extra. Do you remember that as part of the game.
Speaker 3: I think when you unmortgage something.
Speaker 2: You do okay, okay, because it's been so long since
Speaker 2: I actually played.
Speaker 1: It, Because that was the one thing that you were
Speaker 1: saying that I don't. I didn't remember from the game either.
Speaker 1: Is the ten percent law. I do believe that it's
Speaker 1: so got it and monopoly. To unmortgage a property, you
Speaker 1: must pay the bank the original mortgage value printed on
Speaker 1: the card plus ten percent interest.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: Okay, got it.
Speaker 1: So if I take you out and I want to
Speaker 1: take your properties, you probably had a mortgage a bunch
Speaker 1: of properties just to stay alive, right, but you're it's
Speaker 1: knock out of time you got knocked out or wanted
Speaker 1: to trade, Yeah, would have to un mortgage.
Speaker 3: I got to add ten percent.
Speaker 2: Right, But why couldn't Why does the game expressly prohibit
Speaker 2: before you get knocked out you trading with uh, someone
Speaker 2: who happens to be just because of the roll of
Speaker 2: the dice, a wash with capital and you get that
Speaker 2: property for a time or something like that.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you can. I think you can still
Speaker 1: trade mortgaged properties. But if I wanted to unmortgage the
Speaker 1: property you just traded me to collect the rent on
Speaker 1: it or to build a monopoly, I've got to pay
Speaker 1: that ten percent fee.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, the game sucks. I mean I never totally
Speaker 2: enjoyed playing it anyway.
Speaker 3: I had some fun times playing it, did you.
Speaker 2: I've had some fun times playing I know that a
Speaker 2: lot of there's just innumerable people who play the digital version, right,
Speaker 2: But I guess the digital version bears little resemblance or
Speaker 2: some of them bear a little resemblance the actual game.
Speaker 2: So anyway, there you go, Dark notes on Monopoly.
Speaker 3: That was great work. Oh thanks.
Speaker 2: I hope I didn't get too philosophical or into the
Speaker 2: problem the economic irrealities that the game kind of professes
Speaker 2: and which I find problematic.
Speaker 1: But well, I think the biggest problem of it all
Speaker 1: is it treats cooperation as cheating.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, it treats cooperation as cheating, and there there's
Speaker 2: no everything is getting through luck in fact, good or bad.
Speaker 2: And beyond that, there's no sense of kind of trade
Speaker 2: offs that landing on a spot. There isn't there shouldn't
Speaker 2: there be a mutual benefit there. I mean, for example,
Speaker 2: if I if I envision and maybe this is what
Speaker 2: was on my mind when I was a kid. Let's
Speaker 2: say I just start the game, and I'm just starting off,
Speaker 2: I only have whatever allotment they give you at the beginning,
Speaker 2: was it two hundred bucks or something like that, and
Speaker 2: I'm just starting off in life and I land on
Speaker 2: Mediterranean and there's a restaurant that's underneath this three flat
Speaker 2: and I need something to eat. Well, why is it
Speaker 2: that don't I get something for landing on there? And
Speaker 2: you should get something too, because I'm paying for a
Speaker 2: meal in your restaurant, they have to pay rent to you.
Speaker 3: Or what have you.
Speaker 2: It just seems it's just very It's a conceptualization that
Speaker 2: is just doggy dog as luck should have it the
Speaker 2: cell and in a lot of ways, if we're just
Speaker 2: gonna extend it, and maybe this is an extrapolation too far,
Speaker 2: but it just strikes you as you're just weirdly sympathetic
Speaker 2: for people who are either truspassers or should be seen
Speaker 2: as visitors. It can't be. In other words, why is
Speaker 2: it that landing on a property renders you a truspasser
Speaker 2: or a benign visitor or someone who has to is
Speaker 2: desirous of owning the property? Right, There's a trillion different
Speaker 2: relations that are in between those two polls, if you
Speaker 2: will yes, which are mutually beneficial to Demonstrative preference is
Speaker 2: not a part of monopoly, correct, other than you're I
Speaker 2: guess the board the game allows you to imagine that
Speaker 2: boardwalk is better than Mediterranean place.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: Also, this is the same for fantasy football. But when
Speaker 1: you're trading with people, you are trying to beat them.
Speaker 1: Yes in the trade in the end, in the end, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: right in the end. This you might be able to
Speaker 1: make a short term win win trade here, but it's
Speaker 1: not about a long term win for both sides ever,
Speaker 1: because you're trying to beat the people that you're.
Speaker 3: You're trading with.
Speaker 2: Well, except in fantasy football, when there are circumstances where
Speaker 2: if you have if you play every year with the
Speaker 2: same league and you're able to, for example, carry over
Speaker 2: a number of players might be one or two players.
Speaker 1: The dynasty leagues are more dynasty leagues, yes, so more
Speaker 1: cooperative for sure, or.
Speaker 2: Or you also have the instances where you might be
Speaker 2: out of it, but a guy who you want to
Speaker 2: see win maybe hasn't won in the dynasty league. You
Speaker 2: might engage in a trade that Again, time preference will
Speaker 2: be beneficial for you in the long run, but in
Speaker 2: short term, just like any other kind of trade in baseball,
Speaker 2: for example, is going to be advantageous for him in
Speaker 2: the here and now, right and it's allowed, although again
Speaker 2: a lot of fantasy football and fantasy baseball or fantasy
Speaker 2: sports commissioners will have the power to disallow a trade.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's patently unfair.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about a town that doesn't
Speaker 1: like cooperation and.
Speaker 2: Has a lot of talk about zoning.
Speaker 3: A lot of talk about zoning. Yes, let's talk about it. Okay,
Speaker 3: the people segment mean wili in oak Park? You should
Speaker 3: go to your gay subub now. Meanwhile in oak Park,
Speaker 3: brought to you by Trent teen Brewing.
Speaker 1: One opinion in one semi opinion one here Okay news
Speaker 1: Israel boycott petitions submitted now challenged. Oak Park Electoral Board
Speaker 1: will review signature challenge. I don't know what that is?
Speaker 1: Did they abs the signatures? Community Canvasseries representing oak Parkers
Speaker 1: for Free Speech collected more than thirty five hundred signatures
Speaker 1: in support of a proposed November advisory referendum regarding whether
Speaker 1: Illinois should repeal laws that ban state investment in businesses
Speaker 1: that boycott Israel.
Speaker 2: Hey, all right, boycott divest movement.
Speaker 1: The notarized signatures, far more than minimum required number of
Speaker 1: about two thousand, were collected over twelve weeks, and the
Speaker 1: group met in August third Village of Oak Park deadline
Speaker 1: for submission, but one objection to the petition signatures was
Speaker 1: filed by the Monday, August tenth deadline, which will prompt
Speaker 1: a three village electoral board to determine whether that objection
Speaker 1: will be upheld.
Speaker 2: The village board existing of Rabbi Shmooley, Haverstein and Rothschild.
Speaker 1: Michael Casper, an attorney with the Chicago government relations law
Speaker 1: firm Casper, Holmes and Dring, is representing objectors. In a
Speaker 1: call from Wednesday Journal, Casper would not comment on the
Speaker 1: basis of the objection.
Speaker 2: It's anti semitic. All those signatures are anti Semitic.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: I have a long standing pattern of not commenting on
Speaker 1: my cases, he said. The Jewish Community and Friends for
Speaker 1: Democracy group noted in a prepared statement to Wednesday Journal
Speaker 1: that quote, the objectors in this matter are private citizens
Speaker 1: and registered.
Speaker 3: Oak Park voters.
Speaker 1: Will they have no formal affiliation with Jewish Community and
Speaker 1: Friends for Democracy. We support their decision to object as
Speaker 1: an integral part of the democratic process. Illinois law has
Speaker 1: long allowed objections to ensure only petitions meeting legal requirements
Speaker 1: reached the ballot.
Speaker 2: Well, they got thirty five hundred of them. How many
Speaker 2: of them are fake?
Speaker 3: Quote?
Speaker 1: Jewish commit Unity and Friends for Democracy JCFD believes that
Speaker 1: questions about a long standing Middle East conflict do.
Speaker 3: Not belong on a local Oak Park ballot.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, this ballot measure is divisive and distracts our
Speaker 1: community from pressing local issues like access to healthcare and
Speaker 1: affordable housing.
Speaker 2: Because that's what Oak Park is about.
Speaker 1: Process for ELEC approximate process for electoral Board. According to
Speaker 1: the village, the Illinois election Code requires the village's municipal
Speaker 1: electoral board to hear an issue a decision on any
Speaker 1: objection to petitions for public questions. In this case, village
Speaker 1: President Vicki Schaiman will be chair of the electoral board.
Speaker 1: Village Clerk Christina Waters will serve as secretary, and Jim Taglia,
Speaker 1: the longest tenured village board member, will also participate. However,
Speaker 1: Scheme is out of state on a personal matter, and
Speaker 1: she said Tsday morning she is still working to determine
Speaker 1: whether she will be able to participate via zoom. She added,
Speaker 1: the village attorney will determine whether her remote participation would
Speaker 1: be legal quote, no one has contacted me from village
Speaker 1: Halls came and said, if not, the pro tempo war
Speaker 1: replacement will likely be trustee Chibuke and yea, she said,
Speaker 1: pro temporary, pro temporary.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 1: Taglia said Tuesday morning he hadn't seen the objection quote.
Speaker 1: The electoral Board is focused on the process and whether
Speaker 1: the process is followed and correct and appropriate. That's what
Speaker 1: the focus is, not the subject of the referenda, he said.
Speaker 1: My understanding is I will be on it if it happens.
Speaker 1: The Electoral Board can only war will probably be over.
Speaker 2: The Palestinians will be cleared out of West Bank by
Speaker 2: the time they get a referendum on divest and boycott.
Speaker 1: The Electoral Board can only determine the procedural viability of
Speaker 1: the petitions on the basis raised and the objection. It
Speaker 1: does not review or decide on the substance or legality
Speaker 1: of the proposed referendu question.
Speaker 2: These people would love to play the landlord's game.
Speaker 3: They would.
Speaker 1: August seventeenth is the deadline for the Village Board, not
Speaker 1: the Electoral Board, to adopt an ordinance initiating a public question.
Speaker 1: If the Electoral Board sustains the objection, it may remove
Speaker 1: the question from the ballot. The Illinois Election Code notes
Speaker 1: the Electoral Board's decision quote shall be final, subject to
Speaker 1: judicial review. The village also said August twenty seventh is
Speaker 1: the certification deadline, or the final day Waters can submit
Speaker 1: the public question to the Cook County Clerk so that
Speaker 1: the question can appear on the November ballot. A certified
Speaker 1: copy of the question is the finalized, unchangeable version of
Speaker 1: the question that allows the Cook County Clerk to prepare
Speaker 1: the ballot in advance of the November third election.
Speaker 2: This is all very exhilarating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously. Quote the process is the purpose.
Speaker 2: Oooh, that's government right there.
Speaker 3: Karen with a C.
Speaker 1: Karen Vince, like a leader of Oak Parker's for Free Speech,
Speaker 1: was a Canvasser and said the community response to its
Speaker 1: outreach was generally positive.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: I think people were really surprised and shocked Illinois has
Speaker 1: a law that has an anti boycott thing to it.
Speaker 3: She said. We explain what.
Speaker 1: That law did, shielded Israel and only Israel, and gave
Speaker 1: it impunity for its human rights abuses. We wanted it
Speaker 1: to be on the ballot. We thought the public should
Speaker 1: have say in this and they were enthusiastic about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Still, Van Slikes said there was pushback and in some
Speaker 1: cases it was vitriolic.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: It's sad, but I will say it's very few.
Speaker 3: She said.
Speaker 1: I also take as a good thing that it was
Speaker 1: so few, because I think it's a really good thing
Speaker 1: that we can have a discussion about important issues in
Speaker 1: Oak Park.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: I also felt that some of it was pretty vicious
Speaker 1: and unbecoming to our community. It was small, but really unpleasant.
Speaker 1: Jesse Bauer is a core co organizer of Oak Parker's
Speaker 1: for Free Speech and was another Canvasser quote. I think
Speaker 1: ninety to ninety five percent was positive. He said, most
Speaker 1: people were really surprised that process of educating the public
Speaker 1: was well worthwhile, and getting it on the ballot is
Speaker 1: important because people didn't know this quote.
Speaker 3: We've said the process is the purpose boring, boring.
Speaker 1: Last one who benefits, Michael Dixon, we bone them. As
Speaker 1: a former resident of River Forest, we moved to a
Speaker 1: small college town in Ohio a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3: There are many things I miss.
Speaker 1: Great neighbors, a vibrant community, terrific schools, proximity to the
Speaker 1: many things the village has to offer, et cetera. What
Speaker 1: I don't miss is what seems to be an orchestrated
Speaker 1: lack of concern by the village board when it comes
Speaker 1: to matters that most impact residents, like high rise developments
Speaker 1: deeply affecting the neighborhoods in which they are proposed, the
Speaker 1: cutting down of beautiful mature trees, et cetera, as a
Speaker 1: matter of interest for a place we dearly loved living.
Speaker 1: I keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening
Speaker 1: in the village, and one has to wonder about the
Speaker 1: deaf ear turned to homeowners when voting on such things
Speaker 1: as every cop show on television, opins when trying to
Speaker 1: solve a crime. Who benefits clearly not the residence. When
Speaker 1: a development is unanimously approved after a kangaroo court version
Speaker 1: of listening to the concerns of the local population. Is
Speaker 1: it all about the money?
Speaker 2: It usually is. Hmmm, look at how he signs it.
Speaker 2: Michael Dixon, former longtime resident, now living in a small
Speaker 2: town where elected officials actively engaged with the community.
Speaker 3: That's the people's segment there. It is mean Wilian Oak Park.
Speaker 1: What would have happened if I'd gone for it and
Speaker 1: just said, no, I'm gay.
Speaker 2: What can I say? What can I add?
Speaker 3: Boring? Boring? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it just boring because it's the summer.
Speaker 1: It does pick up when school comes back around, yeah,
Speaker 1: or election season.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, it's not the same.
Speaker 1: It's not the same without Robbie. I miss Robbie.
Speaker 2: Yeah he was. He stirred the pod a little bit.
Speaker 2: God bless him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I wonder if we could do something to spice things
Speaker 2: up in oak Park. If only we could just broadcast
Speaker 2: this across different have a way to pirate the oak
Speaker 2: Park Library.
Speaker 3: That would be awesome.
Speaker 2: You have to watch this.
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Well, I thought that was a great Darknouts Darkness number
Speaker 1: four Monopoly, Yeah it was.
Speaker 2: It was dark to it was dark to go down
Speaker 2: that rabbit hole of determining just how icky it always
Speaker 2: and the problems with the game itself.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it it.
Speaker 1: Is super interesting that Maggie just became an employee that
Speaker 1: was quiet but loved for games. And yeah, she talked
Speaker 1: a lot about boards created Monopoly.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine that exactly?
Speaker 2: But uh, how she I liked to how when she
Speaker 2: saw how popular the arrow version became. She was initially elated.
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, look at that, it's so popular, that
Speaker 2: that was my game and stuff like that. And then
Speaker 2: when she realized it was that Darrow was getting millions
Speaker 2: and millions in royalties, that's what she became indignant.
Speaker 1: That might be the darkest of all the dark knights
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so where did her georgeism? You know, once once
Speaker 2: the dollars start showing up for other people, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, Henry George and prosperity and power, just as
Speaker 2: his book got tossed out the window.
Speaker 3: I'm sewing.
Speaker 2: I'm sewing another maybe interesting episode and I have to
Speaker 2: admittedly read more about it. Is the whole idea of
Speaker 2: do you in in Campistan or according to a narco
Speaker 2: capitalist theory, do you have the right to ownership of
Speaker 2: an idea? It should there be patent ip Yes, So
Speaker 2: intellectual property is a huge subject matter. I tend to
Speaker 2: side with Stephen Concella on this one that you don't
Speaker 2: you and Rothbart said the same thing. You cannot own
Speaker 2: an idea. It's it's not it's not yours, it's not tangible.
Speaker 2: You can't mix your labor with it. Now, if you
Speaker 2: happen to use that idea and create an artifact or
Speaker 2: some product from it with your own labor. Well, then
Speaker 2: bully for you. You deserve that. But otherwise you don't own
Speaker 2: that property, So you don't own an idea.
Speaker 3: I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah, I have to look into the
Speaker 1: second part though. Do we have too many patents? How
Speaker 1: many patents? Is too many?
Speaker 2: Well? Sure, but I mean the consulate ideas that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't have any patents at all. I mean you came up,
Speaker 2: let's say you came up with a better way to
Speaker 2: refine metholene. I'm rewatching baking bad right now. So you
Speaker 2: came up with a process that is able to you're
Speaker 2: able to create methylene or suit a fedrin or whatever
Speaker 2: with its cheaper and greater speed. You shouldn't. You don't
Speaker 2: own that idea. If you went and head and did
Speaker 2: the process and gained the materials and the capital goods
Speaker 2: required to create a product, then you own that product
Speaker 2: because you're mixing your labor with some resources. But otherwise
Speaker 2: you don't. You can't own a conception. Just like you don't.
Speaker 2: You don't own your reputation. Correct, your reputation is actually
Speaker 2: owned by other people. It's the thoughts of other people,
Speaker 2: so if anyone has a proper claim to your reputation,
Speaker 2: it's other people. Anything else, No, that's it, and looking
Speaker 2: forward as I always do at the end of each episode,
Speaker 2: the next week. Until then, peace,