Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism

https://aeon.co/ideas/monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism

by jonbaer • 9 years ago

69 145 9 years ago

aeon.co

mrleiter• 9 years ago

From just reading the headline, one could assume this is bogus.

For anyone wondering: they are talking about the game 'Monopoly'.

owebmaster3• 9 years ago

You avoided a lot of comments replying only to the title. Thanks, I guess.

amelius3• 9 years ago

So next time someone invites you to join a game of Monopoly, here’s a thought. As you set out piles for the Chance and Community Chest cards, establish a third pile for Land-Value Tax, to which every property owner must contribute each time they charge rent to a fellow player. How high should that land tax be? And how should the resulting tax receipts be distributed? Such questions will no doubt lead to fiery debate around the Monopoly board – but then that is exactly what Magie had always hoped for.

Could a computer program (e.g. genetic programming) come up with a fair set of rules?

empath75• 9 years ago

The free parking rule that some people use and makes the game last for hours and hours is basically inflationary monetary policy by the central bank.

amelius3• 9 years ago

But does this rule make the game fair?

CuriousSkeptic• 9 years ago

One way to approach it, retaining the free market dynamics, is to have players bid on land with rent. Instead of paying the bank a big pile up front, agree on a rent to pay every turn to keep the land, highest bidder wins.

js82• 9 years ago

Reminds me of Czech game "Soudruhu, nezlob se!" (literally "Don't get angry, comrade", see http://www.deskove-hry.eu/soudruhu-nezlob-se), which is a version of more popular children game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch_%C3%A4rgere_dich_nicht

It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the communist party and emigrate abroad.

ourmandave2• 9 years ago

I would add rules so the other players had a small chance to make it so the winner emigrated to the wrong country.

tray56• 9 years ago

It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the communist party and emigrate abroad.

I can't read the Czech link (do you know if there's a translated link or something in English?) but that seems more like from your one sentence description (and my reading of the wikipedia link) a game satirizing the ridiculousness of playing politics rather than communism?

SyneRyder• 9 years ago

Try this link: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...

If you go to Google Translate, type in a URL and click translate, you can translate any webpage. (Chrome has the feature built-in.)

js82• 9 years ago

I didn't bother with translate link, because I thought it's actually quite hard to understand the jokes anyway, but someone else did, and I have to say, it turned out better than I expected.

Just to explain the most unclear things, "mina" means mine (explosive device), and "veksl" means illegal money exchange (with western currency).

Yes, it was more about ridiculousness of the real socialism, not the idea of communism.

geekamongus• 9 years ago

Played this game a couple of weeks ago with my family (my wife, an 11 year-old, and a 14 year-old.)

We quickly remembered why we hadn't played it in a year: you must be greedy to win, hopes & dreams get dashed, and someone always ends up angry and/or in tears.

thinkMOAR2• 9 years ago

Are you sure the 'we' and 'someone' shouldn't be read as 'I' and you just aren't so good at playing monopoly? :) (just kidding; almost weekend)

Though to be on topic again, are there many board games where the goal isn't to beat the other player by whatever means the rules of the board game allow? From tic-tac-toe to monopoly to card games, there will always be a loser, and if he or she can't handle that, they will cry/tirade.

brians• 9 years ago

Yes, there are! Hanabi, Pandemic, Sentinels of the Multiverse are three of the biggest games of the last decade. All are cooperative. You all win or lose together.

ourmandave2• 9 years ago

Rage quitting / table flipping was always a late game strategy when I was growing up. Especially playing Risk.

meri_dian5• 9 years ago

If a simple board game played with family leaves someone angry or in tears then that's a problem. Games like monopoly are actually great opportunities for children to learn self control and perspective.

mcableton• 9 years ago

Agreed my little brother and I played a game of monopoly that payed almost a whole summer when we were kids. Any time somebody ran out of money, we begged for "alms for the poor" and the other guy would give money to keep the game going. I suppose increased capacity for generosity is a good side of capitalism. Think about it now - many of the richest Americans have decided to give all their money away. I can guarantee that bill gates will do a better job with it than the government would.

pjc504• 9 years ago

Monopoly is especially bad for this. It's the game you introduce people to if you want to put them off board games. So many people have stories about games of monopoly disintegrating into arguments.

Why? Probably due to the extremely zero-sum randomly-driven parts of it, combined with the last-man-standing nature. People who have to drop out early end up disaffected. Someone who gets an early advantage will usually stay ahead, which isn't fun either.

There are games with more backstabbing in e.g. Diplomacy, but they're rightly seen as not for everyone. Whereas Monopoly has this odd status as "default board game" while not being very fun.

Pigo3• 9 years ago

I guess scrabble is a bad idea because it causes fights when someone doesn't understand the concept of proper nouns? Oh my gosh, conflict, let's just throw the game away to spare everyone's feelings.

jpttsn• 9 years ago

I suspect you inadvertently described all of life, not just Monopoly.

Nursie• 9 years ago

Well it certainly is evil, taking several hours, provoking family arguments, the slow grinding down of anyone that didn't get ahead quickly at the start.

There are reasons I don't play it very often!

emodendroket11• 9 years ago

It's mostly counting cash that takes forever; the one they sell with the fake debit cards goes way faster.

nandemo• 9 years ago

That's too kind an assessment. Monopoly sucks. It sucks as an educational tool and it sucks as a board game.

First, if it was meant to teach the evils of capitalism it has failed in many levels, as the article illustrates. Even if you were to play with the amended rules, it'd be moot; nobody cares about Georgist socialism anymore.

As a board game: there are literally hundreds of games better than Monopoly. Even we restrict ourselves to so-called "family" games. If there's something you like about Monopoly, I can assure you can find a better game that has that something but it's better designed:

https://boardgamegeek.com/familygames/browse/boardgame?sort=...

Many will be simpler and shorter too. Of course, you might like or dislike a particular game in that set, but consider that Monopoly is ranked at 1583 in the family category. There's no excuse to play Monopoly unless one somehow has managed to stay unaware of the existence of all these other games.

tray56• 9 years ago

Last time I played Monopoly it ended up two people who were too big to fail constantly running around the board passing money back and forth. A subtle jab by the universe at two party politics within capitalist societies?

justaman• 9 years ago

I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now. Its like "what the cool kids do".

You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.

The "cool kids" seem to be bashing capitalism today. Thats not cool.

emodendroket11• 9 years ago

Hm, yeah, can't think of any events in the past few decades that would make people angry and distrustful of our economic system.

chippy2• 9 years ago

You could say that of any bunch of decades in any part of history for the last three hundred years. I think it's a natural side effect of being human and living and perceiving in the present day. Every people in their own time think that they are living in the most crucial and important time ever, if one remembers that, and the perspective that history gives, we can temper our reactions.

noahth• 9 years ago

One thing I don't think enough people appreciate about history is how nothing got invented before capitalism.

emodendroket11• 9 years ago

The Romans really suffered because without capitalism they couldn't invent a way of distributing water, for instance.

pjc504• 9 years ago

Indeed. Capitalism built the Pyramids and the Parthenon; capitalism took us to the Moon; capitalism made Homer write the Iliad for the license fees and produced the most widely printed book of all time, the Bible.

More seriously, the lesson we should apply from Monopoly is that once the money is in few enough hands the "game" of capitalism is over.

FussyZeus• 9 years ago

I previously was a staunch pro-Capitalist person, but it really seems like we're approaching a point where it's not so much that it's a bad system, but that once we're in a post-scarcity economy, that it will no longer be required. We already have multiple products in the market that are so incredibly low-margin and so incredibly cheap to make that they barely retain value at all, and the market forces that put those products in that position are the same ones making everything from TV's to homes cheaper. At what point is the actual transaction of taking whatever token amount of money from me, so I can have the thing that cost you a haypenny to make, actually costing more than just giving me the thing?

Logically, everything will eventually be driven to that point. I'm not saying when it will happen, I'm not even saying it's a good or bad thing. I simply accept that at some point Capitalism is no longer going to be needed.

emodendroket11• 9 years ago

Well, personally I think we have the opposite problem, which is that endless growth is not compatible with a planet with finite resources.

yosito2• 9 years ago

You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.

You seem to believe that these things are exclusive to capitalism. But none of those things are capitalism, nor would they automatically be excluded in a non-capitalist system.

y4mi• 9 years ago

Capitalism is a terrible system. It's just better than all the other systems that any society tried at scale.

tray56• 9 years ago

I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now

People have been hating capitalism since the invention of capitalism, it's not new. Americans might just be starting to hate it but thats due to the fact that they really haven't been able to ever have a fair and honest discussion about the various economic systems of the world because of 80 years of capitalist propaganda and suppression of socialists and communists

13years8• 9 years ago

Because corrupt corporatism and crony capitalism has been effectively conflated with free market capitalism.

Most politicians who claim to support capitalism actually are supporting nothing of the sort. It then becomes convenient for the media to label capitalism as a corrupt system. It is true that our economic system has become quite corrupt and has abandoned free markets. So when politicians defend that system as a capitalism, then naturally that is where the association has been built.

illuminati1911• 9 years ago

This, times 1000.

The title of news article is funny because monopoly cannot even exist in real capitalism nor can corruption. Both are features of socialsm/communism.

Popularity of disliking/hating capitalism is probably due to the lack of proper basic education in the US.

emodendroket11• 9 years ago

I don't believe that there can really be a meaningful distinction between "free market capitalism" and "crony capitalism." Capitalism creates powerful private actors in whose interest it is to pursue regulatory capture.

fredley• 9 years ago

(Disclaimer: UK perspective) I think it's partly because the "cool kids" today have had to pay out hugely for their education, to find a non-existent job market on the other side, tremendous pressure on the housing market meaning it's completely unaffordable to live anywhere half-decent even if you do have a job. The generations above us benefitted hugely from a great wave of socialism following World War II - with the creation of the NHS, completely free university education, the ability to buy a house right out of university etc. There's a feeling (accurate or not) that this older generation, having benefitted hugely from socialist measures, are now 'pulling the ladder up behind them', entrenching their position of privilege while denying the same opportunities to younger people. It's not that capitalism is bad - it's probably one of the least bad economic systems - but that the swing away from socialism towards capitalism (it's not black and white - it's a smoothish gradient from one to the other) is exacerbating this situation. There is some evidence behind this - a report published recently showed that since tuition fees were introduced for universities, more children of wealthy people are attending and fewer from poorer backgrounds.

mrfusion• 9 years ago

Why don't you try joining a monopoly game in the middle of the game and see how much you still like capitalism?

That's what people born today face.

brightsize2• 9 years ago

Why don't you try joining a monopoly game in the middle of the game and see how much you still like capitalism?

And/or starting the game with sums of money that differ by orders of magnitude between players.

meri_dian5• 9 years ago

Most people aren't very good at nuanced appraisals of things.

While capitalism does have its weaknesses, it also seems to be one of the driving forces behind modernity, which I think most of us can agree is a supremely good thing.

We've tried tearing down the system before. Communism failed, not because of failed implementation, but because the concept itself is a bad one. This is not to say that we should close ourselves off from thinking of new ways to organize our societies, but it seems that capitalism and all that it encourages is responsible for the 'rising tide' of global human civilization we've witnessed over the course of the industrial revolution to now. Sure there is inequality, but as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. Would you want to be the average middle class or poor person 300 years ago, or today?

As innovation continues to change the material conditions of the world, our economic systems will evolve in response, probably for the better. Capitalism will not look the same in 100 years or 1000 years as it does today. But over time gradual development will improve the system, not some grand scheme that calls for tearing down capitalism and replacing it with something else.

tray56• 9 years ago

Communism failed, not because of failed implementation, but because the concept itself is a bad one.

This is a frustrating and arrogant thing to say. If you can honestly go through and thoroughly criticize the core collective works of great socialist thinkers like Engels, Marx, Lenin, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman and the uncountable thousands who have poured thousands of hours into tomes which are freely available online to study and understand, then you should do so. I would love to read this! You'd probably become a very famous person! But coming out gung ho and so arrogantly conclude that all these people, and all the hard work they have done in both theory and praxis is kaput without a very strong argument behind you is pointless and childish. It stifles conversation and is the reason discussing economic systems with people who don't understand them is an exercise in futility.

Pigo3• 9 years ago

I think it's funny how this little trivia about Monopoly gets brought up constantly, I think just to spark a debate about economics. Is this really not common knowledge already?

bildung• 9 years ago

You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.

Not one of these points is limited to capitalism. Markets are a necessary but not a sufficient condition of capitalism. People's urge to create wonderful things did exist in the millenia before 1750, they did exist in the eastern bloc, and every day today multiple great things people do in their free time, making no economic sense at all, pop up on HN.

Even in capitalist societies many if not most of the groundbreaking inventions and discoveries were and are state-funded.

rayiner3• 9 years ago

Not one of these points is limited to capitalism.

The USSR beat us in almost every space milestone and would have beaten us to the moon if not for the untimely death of the guy running their space program.

AnimalMuppet3• 9 years ago

Capitalism didn't start in 1750. Look at Italy in, IIRC, the 1200s.

rainbowmverse2• 9 years ago

I'm willing to cut people working themselves to death at 2-3 jobs to make ends meet a little slack on the depth of their economic theories.

anguswithgusto• 9 years ago

Ah yes, that holy grail of humanity: starting a business.

Thank heavens that the czars of capitalism have given us such a generous outlet for all that latent human potential—unlike say, starting a family, starting a full-time art project, starting a humanities Ph.D without crippling debt, starting a round of chemo while unemployed, or starting our dinners at 6pm like our ancestors managed to do for ~200,000 years.

rayiner3• 9 years ago

What's really cool is the majority of people having a pleasant and comfortable life and a bright future for their kids. Maximizing the prosperity of the majority is the purpose of a democratic society.

People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather than as moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the capitalist.

problems10• 9 years ago

People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather than a moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the capitalist.

I think you've made a great point here - but I've seen people explicitly saying they want communism. Look at how often /r/LateStageCapitalism, an explicitly communist subreddit is on the frontpage of reddit.

If people were just pushing for a few more socialized services, I think they've got a good argument to make there. There are good tweaks that can be made. But if they're pushing for a complete change to the system I think they're off their rockers.

tptacek• 9 years ago

Who are you and what have you done with Rayiner?

Don't get me wrong: you can totally stay!

rglover• 9 years ago

You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people.

1000x yes. It's incredibly frustrating to see folks whining about capitalism all the while doing so using an iPhone and MacBook Pro, not understanding the irony.

emodendroket11• 9 years ago

"How can you criticize feudalism? You're eating food that was grown on the lord's land, you know."

phillnom• 9 years ago

Yeah people should only be able to critique capitalism if they strip themselves of all possessions and live in the woods /s

jesusthatsgreat• 9 years ago

People hate capitalism until they see what happens when you put the state in charge of everything. The grass is always greener. Always has been, always will be. If only we could get over to the other side, I could prove it to you...

mindcrime• 9 years ago

I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now. Its like "what the cool kids do".

A persistent campaign of propaganda aimed at capitalism. Because there are always either misguided "true believers" or corrupt glad-handers looking to exploit others for their own benefit, who are out there proselytizing for some socialist ideology and trying to tear down capitalism.

ionised7• 9 years ago

If you're only going to look at the positives and pretend the negatives don't exist then it's no wonder you're confused by people bashing unrestrained capitalism.

amelius3• 9 years ago

I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now. Its like "what the cool kids do".

You probably never played Monopoly as a child then :)

Also, perhaps you will find capitalism less cool when, say, Google decides to go into the exact same business as you are in now.

owebmaster3• 9 years ago

You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared elbow grease.

You know what's really really cool? A lot of people inventing stuff. Not only the ones that have parents that can help them live until their late twenties without have to work for a living. Socialism/communism aims to fix this. What I see is that China is having a tremendous creative boom right now.

simon83• 9 years ago

I'm one of those hatin' cool kids, I guess. Coincidentally I'm also a millennial, one of those ignorant kinds who simply does not get what a Good Life™ we have, at this point in time, compared to the last decades and centuries. Yes, we have it better nowadays (but only some parts of the world), but it could also easily have been way, way better by now (or worse, of course).

Let me also say that I don't hate capitalism per se, it's more or less just a tool with no moral obligations. The problem with capitalism are the humans, like always, and Monopoly is perfect to experience the bad side of human nature: greed and the me vs. them attitude.

Do you think it would be possible to come up with rules for Monopoly, where everyone would be a winner, living in abundance? Absolutely, but that would be boring. If I can't be the best of all, then why bother. It's Me vs. Them, and totally screw Them...

Those people, whose families played Monopoly for long enough until now, and who were able to amass a lot of wealth and keep it within their small circle, they won't allow to change the rules. Because then they wouldn't be the Winner anymore. It's always Me First, and everyone else can die trying.

Edit: I've been really depressive the past 15 years, it started once I was old enough to realize how our world is run. The lack of empathy and social justice is really sickening. I tried to play the game, but I'm not good at it because I lack the attributes that are required to become good at it. I don't care about money, I just want to stay alive, take care of my family and code cool and useful things.

But I started to get a tiny little bit of hope that eventually things may drastically change in the future. Like I do think that we may be able to develop an AGI within this century. One that is rational and smarter than humans. I can totally understand Musks fear of an AGI that would try to destroy humanity (personally I hope it'd go only after the bad leadership :)), and while I think Musk has generally good intentions, he's still a hardcore capitalist, and I'm not sure if I want him and his buddies have too much say in this.

Another shorter term solution to some of the problems we have with capitalism is to setup systems based on Blockchain technologies. I'm really no expert in this area, but I believe it would be possible to set up a financial system that allows for transparency, privacy, but no anonymity and no speculations like we experience nowadays with cryptocurrencies. Something that prevents corruption, black money, etc.

Such blockchain technology could be also adapted for a voting system, where voter fraud then becomes impossible. One promising project I've recently discovered is Cardano SL [1], and the team behind it looks like they really want to make a change. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[1] https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl/

rosser2• 9 years ago

I didn't realize no one had "invented" anything before we "invented" capitalism.

cmurf• 9 years ago

They're bashing two things: crony capitalism where companies put up barriers to entry and try to weaken government anti-competition and consumer protection laws so they can f* people over, which makes people angry; and the "religious" idea that pure capitalism (sometimes also conflated with pure free market, no regulations) solves every single problem, the idea that all things are products, and if you can't afford a product, go f* yourself.

I think people understand the world is more complex than either planned economies, or pure free market ones, and hybrids are necessary. The question is how to make regulating them proactive rather than reactive which is how political based moderation of capitalism's excess are managed today.

And I think that's because people are becoming suspicious of absolute ideological positions that think they have everything figured out. And that's because things are more complex. Just because you can't explain that complexity doesn't mean it's intellectually honest to fall back on a hand waive of propaganda "we need less regulation and more free market solutions" which is binary logic.

Upon discovery that binary logic isn't how humans works, and maybe isn't how future computers will work, people are becoming more comfortable with nuance, layers, and dynamic approaches to problems, rather than tribal grunts of capitalism being perfection as if there's no such thing as market failure.

problems10• 9 years ago

Thank you, eugh, it's incredibly annoying, like people miss a hundred year history lesson and want to repeat the mistakes of the past here.

Even the bottom 20% that everyone is so concerned about in the western world are better off than any time in history - heck, I have no qualms saying I'd rather be bottom 20% today than top 1% just 200 years ago. That is the level of productivity we've had, and primarily thanks to our economic system.

Could it use some tweaks? Sure, if you want to advocate free healthcare or college, go for it, but the main concepts are still quite good.

ivanbakel6• 9 years ago

Better is not necessarily good enough. Why would people not want a system which furthers their quality of life even more? It's not at all convincing to suggest that you shouldn't complain since things have improved somewhat under capitalism.

problems10• 9 years ago

Things have improved immensely, more than any other time in history under capitalism. And we've watched other systems crash and burn. We don't need to experience it for ourselves, thanks.

pnutjam• 9 years ago

What good are things when you are powerless and feel forgotten? You comparison is poor.

problems10• 9 years ago

Quite a bit. I can live a much better life with some basic things in our modern society - modern medicine, a vehicle, a computer, easy access to good food for only a small part of my salary.

"Feeling powerless and forgotten" is something that just doesn't matter compared to those in my opinion.

dang2• 9 years ago

This thread was full of generic ideological comments but you and another user took it into ideological flamewar, which is something we definitely don't want on HN. Please don't do this again, and especially please don't cross into being uncivil, as you both did.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14820194 and marked it off-topic.

yosito2• 9 years ago

Are the original "prosperity rules" published anywhere? How much modification of a modern Monopoly board would it take to play?

dmichulke• 9 years ago

The problem with monopoly is that it's zero-sum.

Capitalism is not zero-sum.

DanCarvajal• 9 years ago

This is why my kids will only have PowerGrid, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers.

throw2016• 9 years ago

Capitalism benefits a few at the cost of many and it's designed too. Can any supporter articulate a scenario where capitalism enables prosperity for the majority without immediately resorting to bottom barrel comparisons to feudalism? The reality is we need to imagine a more evolved society without pandering to the greed and self interest of a few. This of course appears to be our eternal struggle.

The bigger problem with capitalism is it is designed to perpetuate entrenched interests and status quo. It origins from a time when few had capital or property, only the nobility did, convenient, and was obviously designed to perpetuate feudalism by proxy as they could direct economies and systems with their resources, and continue to.

A few examples of those who sacrifice their entire life to gain more capital offers eternal hope to the masses to hop on to the gravy train some already are on by birth, and those who sacrifice their life to accomplish this are obviously going to be overzealous supporters of 'the system', their entire identity and self worth riding on this achievement.

We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism. Human progress cannot depend on greed which is basically what capitalism boils down to, rewarding and perpetuating the base traits of humanity and leaving a soulless society unable to rise above basic greed in its wake.

Overtonwindow5• 9 years ago

"Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way."

-Milton Friedman

Sommersonn4• 9 years ago

Biggest problem with communism is that ALL communist countries decided to eradicate millions of 'enemies of the state'. See USSR, China, Cambodia.

brightsize2• 9 years ago

We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism

What, you mean this[0] isn't progress? /s

The surge in irregular jobs doesn’t just create problems for the people working those jobs. It’s also led companies to feel that they can treat their regular workers poorly, because those workers feel so lucky to have a job, Konno told me. Knowing that people in their 20s and 30s are desperate to get regular jobs, companies hire lots of young people and force them to work long hours for little to no overtime pay, assuming that most won’t be able to survive the harsh conditions, Konno said. Japan has long had a culture of overwork—there’s even a Japanese word, karoshi, for death by overwork—but Konno says that it has worsened since the Great Recession, as companies have realized that good jobs are hard to find in Japan, and so push their employees harder.

...

Though company employees left work at 7 p.m. on paper, Matsubara said he was required to work until late at night almost every day. Employees were required to sign off at 7 p.m., even if they were still working, and were given iPads so that they could do so even if they were out of the office at meetings. If they didn’t sign off, they’d get a call on their cellphones brusquely asking them to sign off immediately but keep working, he said. “The amount of time you're actually working and the amount of time that is recorded you're working have absolutely no relation to each other,”

[0] The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies https://goo.gl/zoHH6L (theatlantic.com)

alphapapa• 9 years ago

We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism. Human progress cannot depend on greed which is basically what capitalism boils down to, rewarding and perpetuating the base traits of humanity and leaving a soulless society unable to rise above basic greed in its wake.

That's exactly why capitalism works. You're exemplifying the standard flaw in leftist, utopian thinking: that you can overcome or change human nature.

Utopia would come at an enormous cost, and everyone who's tried has gone bankrupt--morally, ethically, and financially. But we'll get it right This Time.

Please read a history book. Maybe start with The Gulag Archipelago.

fiatjaf• 9 years ago

There was a thread about boardgames here on HN two days ago and someone commented that Monopoly wasn't just a bad game, but a game created with that purpose (so that being "bad" was an intended feature).

The comment sparked a lot of discussion and most people didn't know about that original goal of Monopoly.

Now this article appear on a major magazine. It's very suspicious. Unless this is a huge coincidence, these writers must think again about their intellectual honesty.

brudgers• 9 years ago

Monopoly as the basis for how Louis CK tells a joke, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufdvYrTeTuU

matthewmarkus3• 9 years ago

Monopoly is a board game in which you shuffle around finite resources.

Capitalism is the reason why there isn't a single copy of the board game Monopoly.

ionised7• 9 years ago

People being better off now than earlier times in history is a straw man argument. That would be true regardless of the system we were under.

That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being passed down through generations.

So people now get to live a little longer, travel farther and faster, and absorb more banal entertainment than ever before. Who gives a fuck? None of that matters in this context.

The point you should focus on is how much of a share in the overall wealth and prosperity of their nation does a person have today? How much power and personal freedom?

Is it growing or shrinking?

It's shrinking and has been for decades. It's the increasing consolidation of wealth and the power and influence that naturally comes with that is why people are raging against a system that they can see has become totally unrestrained and rigged against them from birth.

GDP is held up as the gold standard metric of measuring how well a nation is doing, but all it really tells you is how prosperous it ther 'country' is as on the macro level.

It doesn't tell you that most of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people that are becoming obscenely wealthy while the lowest classes in society are becoming objectively poorer and less empowered to act.

You rephrase the argument and a working class stiff what he wants more, a shinier, faster car and a higher-resolution TV , or a greater stake in the economy and the resulting benefits that naturally occur as part of that and he will tell you the latter every damn time.

The problem is thinking like yours, where the proles should be happy that they get to be more consumerist and materialistic than ever before while the ones filling the world with shit nobody needs steal away the actual benefits of our system and entrench themselves for generations.

problems10• 9 years ago

That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being passed down through generations.

We have direct evidence that that is incorrect and any high school student knows it. Many, many times have we failed to progress due to being in systems that don't allow for it.

Is it growing or shrinking?

Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth is increasing, I don't care. I don't need to be making more than my neighbor to be happy with my life. As long as I still get the goods, I'm quite happy with this deal.

This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my life.

ionised7• 9 years ago

We have direct evidence that that is incorrect

Post it.

Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth is increasing

That's my point. It isn't, it just appears that way because you haven't looked past the shin y surface.

This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my life.

Subjective.

There are a lot of ordinary people who would say your way of thinking is wrong. Some actually want a stake in society, not an extra handful of rice per generation while a few at the top get an extra plantation.

dang2• 9 years ago

Ideological flamewars are definitely not wanted here, and incivility (which you both cross into) doubly not wanted here. Would you please not do these things on Hacker News again?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14820286 and marked it off-topic.

Overtonwindow5• 9 years ago

"[T]he record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system."

-Milton Friedman

dragonwriter3• 9 years ago

A pretty quote, but—unless one defines “the free enterprise system” so that it encompasses democratic socialism, social democracy, other versions of the modern mixed economy rather than just classical capitalism as targeted by Monopoly (which, unlike Friedman's statement, predates the widespread emergence of the various forms of the modern mixed economy and the Communist-originated-but-eagerly-adopted-in-the-West conflation of it with “capitalism”), it is rather obviously false, and that was clear even at the time he said it, since the whole reason various forms of the modern mixed economy displaced classical capitalism everywhere in the developed world is that they are generally superior on the point in question.

Overtonwindow5• 9 years ago

Capitalism is the most productive system that humanity has produced because it leads to individual entrepreneurship. Exhibit one: Grumpy Cat is a millionaire.

Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism

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