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John Rawls was a political philosopher who had a theory of economic justice. Basically, under his view, justice is what everybody would agree to if they didn't know what social status they would have. I have no idea how effective this is in the real world, but it adds a new dimension to a game of Monopoly.
Before
you start the game you will roll the dice: If you roll a 6 you are "rich", if you roll a 1 you are "poor", and if you roll anything else, you are "middle class". The "rich" players will start the game with a very high sum of money, the "poor" players will start the game with barely any money, and the "middle class" get the normal starting amount for Monopoly money. Also, at each trip past GO, the rich person receives the most, and the poor person receives the least.
But before anybody knows whether they are rich or poor, they have to decide whether there is going to be any equalization of wealth. Will the rich people have to give the poor people some of their money? Or will every body pay taxes, and then receive money back based on their income? Since all these decisions are made before anyone knows how rich they will be, they will be the most fair. At least, that's what John Rawls thought.
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monopoly is long enough as it is. |
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Interesting: If you play 1000 times, it's like using Monte Carlo simulation to test a philosophy. The same people will choose different votes on each of the 1000 games. You can tally them up to see how "true" Rawls's philosophy is. |
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I see a lottery roll incorporated to this. |
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Which country are we talking about here? I think the ratios should be more like 1 - rich, 2/3/4 - middle class, 5/6 - poor, and even then I think we are over-weighting the rich and under-weighting the poor. |
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Moreover, you need some rich and some poor people in each game, so maybe make the low roll the rich person, and the high rolls the poor people. (Which is intuitively the wrong way round, but no matter.) |
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There are plenty of computer games that model the economy (Ur, Sim City, etc.) - perhaps the engine from one of these could be repurposed? |
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Rawls sounds like an interesting read. |
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It's also helpful if your parents are born in parts of the country that have higher property values. |
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Don't see why the rich should get more every time they pass 'Go'. Mind you, there's no real good excuse for giving people money as the pass Go anyway, except that it moves the game along. |
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//that is theoretical // not so theoretical, really, [Pa've] - regressive tax systems are quite common. Value Added Tax (Purchase Tax) is a regressive tax. I think. |
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//Value Added Tax (Purchase Tax) is a regressive tax. I think.//
That rather depends on interpretation (and, to a greater extent, argumentation). A person who can only afford to buy food pays no VAT at all as food is exempt. A person who buys huge quantities of expensive consumer goods pays a lot of VAT. |
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But a person who's so rich they don't need to spend the money pays no VAT on it... you're right, [angel] that was a bad example. How about this: flat taxes (car tax, for example) are all regressive. |
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Again, it could be argued that really poor people don't have cars, slightly poor people have small cars (thus pay less car tax - in UK anyway), slightly rich people pay the normal rate and really rich people have several cars.
Incidentally, the term 'flat tax' generally refers to a tax which takes the same *percentage* regardless of salary, but I understand what you mean. |
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The trouble with that notion, [Pa've], is that, generally speaking, turkeys don't vote for Christmas (or Thanksgiving). If you're a slacker, living well off other people's taxes, would you vote for a system which requires you to get off your ass and work in order to maintain your lifestyle? |
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Hell no. Our system is corrupted enough by money. In yours, those who had the money would be the only ones with any voice as to how to write the rules. Guess who the rules would favor? |
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I haven't met any 'doomed' rich people lately. Have you? |
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Have you traveled to any countries lately where there is no effective middle class and the rich rule everything? It's not a pretty picture. |
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The rules would be restrictive on everyone else and designed to keep Mr. Romanov and family at the top no matter what cost. America would become an effective Feudalism, where folks would be locked in to their castes forever. 'Justice' would be only available to the wealthy, (even more so than it is today). |
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Let's not forget that many of the wealthy are so simply by the luck of their birth. You think that these people's voices somehow deserves more recognition for some stupid reason? |
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Your flat tax with no voting voice plan would stifle upward mobility, the drive for education, and innovation among the lower classes, and create the perfect setup for a revolution towards leftist socialism in 2 generations or less, or even worse, fundamentalism. |
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Make no mistake, flexibility, change, and turnover in the classes is a healthy thing for the country. Now I'll give you that our current tax code is too complex, and needs some revision. But the flat tax has all sorts of flaws that the idealogues who preach it don't or won't bother to see. |
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Hang on, this is fundamentally pointless, since in the game of Monopoly, victory is obtained only by being the richest... unlike life, where the relative level of "success" compared to key factors as "enough food", "enough X-box games", etc. is important. |
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In this monopoly variant, regardless of the pre-agreed rules your chance of victory depends pretty much on the same combination of luck & skill... it's just that a large chunk of the luck factor is parcelled up in one big roll at the start. |
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The entire concept only applies to a scenario where there are different levels of achievement, based on an absolute scale, rather than just a relative factor. Hence, the entire concept does nothing but make monopoly more tedious and complicated. Take a fish! |
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