Slate’s “The Big Money” section has a (slightly tongue-in-cheek) slideshow on board games that we played as kids, and how they are fundamentally flawed. The thesis of the slideshow is how these fundamental flaws can lead to illogical behaviour in the real market.
Take Monopoly, for example (I took the image above from Flickr user DaylandS’ photostream, which is the same place The Big Money got theirs, but I chose a different picture):
Monopoly has taught us that financial institutions are invincible. The game’s banker cannot go bankrupt, according to the rules: “The Bank never ‘goes broke.’ If the Bank runs out of money, the Banker may issue as much as needed by writing on any ordinary paper.”
Whoops?
They also take a look at The Game of Life, PayDay, Risk, and Mall Madness — as well as a game I’d never heard of called Acquire. Two games they didn’t examine, but which I played lots, were Pit and Stock Ticker.
One thing all these games do have in common — and which I think we’ve seen in the economy as well — is the concept of one winner, many losers.
Grant Hamilton
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