Category: Neil Newman

Monopoly Rules

What is it that pulls us back from the solipsistic abyss of gamesmanship in life?

By Neil Newman

“When we were children, our mother made the board game Monopoly a little less cutthroat, by setting a house rule that properties could only be exchanged once all the properties had been sold. As there was then a general bargaining session, with the intended result being a more balanced outcome and a strong advantage for the child who would make most of a scene if they lost (my step-father), the game lost much of its potential chaos and randomness.

In the 50s/60s, when Game Theory was born, most board games were based on the battle scenario. The aim was to be the sole survivor. In a highly instructive lesson in self-fulfilling prophesies, the early Game theorists based all of their models (and therefore what they would theorise to test) on this ‘winner-takes-all’ design.

Game theorists based all of their models (and therefore what they would theorise to test) on this winner-takes-all design.

Naturally, (as post-Structuralist theory points out), while they thought they were being objective, their own models prevented this. In the 21st century, building upon late 20th German games, the gaming industry had a literal revolution – one that has had implications for Game Theory

Many years later, playing with my younger cousins at a gathering, I lead a rebellion against the home rule, saying that I had had enough of the ‘Soviet style gameplay’, to the delight of my cousins and the dark rage of the rest of the family playing.

Games have many purposes for those who play them, escapism obviously, but also role-playing, and even understanding basic and advanced life concepts.

Neil Newman

We had a home-modded game that could play up to 12, there were eight in the game. I had to leave the game after one session, but needless to say, the advantage the cooperative start gave them put my younger cousins in first and second place by the time the game ended – perhaps because they were playing the game as the rules were originally intended.

The cheapest property on the Monopoly board

The game Monopoly was originally created by Elizabeth Magie as “The Landlord game”, and was designed to be instructive to players as to the effects of rent upon an economic system. She also created a version based upon a less exploitative system, using the same board, so players could experience in game life the difference.

Needless to say, American financiers were not as supportive of the other model than the more vicious one they promoted.

Playing games teaches us the consequences of actions, without introducing real life consequences. People learn far quicker, and retain information longer, when the experience is wrapped in a game that they can explore by themselves.

What is it that pulls us back from the solipsistic abyss? Compassion.

The crucial point to recall here is that Monopoly is a game. Except for a loss of dopamine, there is no other pain – unless bad losers take to their fists or other revenge.

Sleeping rough in Covent Garden, photo by Mani, Wikimedia Commons

Behavior that is acceptable within a game – driving people into homelessness and penury is difficult to countenance outside the game board.

In real life, people suffer from homelessness, poverty, and despair. Changing rules within a game to make it nicer misses the point, as children know.

a few people regard all of existence as a game

But to end, the sad truth which must be accepted to understand Reality is this: a few people regard all of existence as a game. In fact, all of us have that potential to do so. What is it that pulls us back from the solipsistic abyss? Compassion.

people like to cooperate and few people like mean winners.

Compassion even for those who may only be a figment of our deranged imaginations. Compassion even for those we will never meet, but whom we can imagine being. Compassion even for those who will never help us, and never even know of us. Compassion even for the lowliest ant, or fly, and gratitude for what we have.

Game Theorists nowadays are quite different from their early 50s counterparts.

Game Theorists nowadays are quite different from their early 50s counterparts. New games today also have cooperative elements, and the game industry is booming like it never has before.

Because people like to cooperate and few people like mean winners. You can’t butter and jam a toasted slice of cake”.


Liberalism and Worker Ownership, not Das Kommunism.

The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, 1844, founders of the cooperative movement

By Neil Newman

One of the most striking facets of the secular religion Marxism is the almost complete lack of a model for the post-revolutionary society. What are the economic relations of that society? How does that society continue on from there? Towards what is it supposed to evolve? Marx had few answers to these questions and wrote down even fewer.

There are reasons for this. Marx knew that other political philosophies had answered those questions amply. To find these answers we first have to examine some definitions of common political words. Firstly, we enter the political definitions of Liberal Theory.

Liberal Theory holds that strong cultures/communities are composed of strong individuals.

Liberal Theory holds that strong cultures/communities are composed of strong individuals. To develop strong and confident individuals certain freedoms are required, both for the individual and for the society around them that helps shape them. Some freedoms are well known. All of these freedoms require rules to define and defend them. The Bill of Rights in the US is one such document, as is the European Convention of Human Rights. This must be understood. All liberal freedoms require rules to maintain them, not platitudes.

There are a few main Liberal Theory Freedoms

Freedom of Speech: The freedom to think and speak otherwise than the powerful would like you to
Freedom of Conscience/Religion: The freedom to be a part of a religious/moral community the powerful might not want you to be a part of
Freedom of Individual Wealth: The use of money in some form that the individual can save or spend as they wish, for their own improvement or betterment, without needing the agreement of the community or powerful
Freedom of Association: The freedom to join and form political parties, unions, from which collective power comes
Democracy: Also commonly associated with liberalism, democracy being the natural end result of a community of empowered individuals.

There is however a liberal freedom that is commonly misunderstood, not least by its loudest champions.

Freedom of Markets.

Now, a moment’s reflection on the preceding freedoms reveals that they all require rules – in fact, they are rules. Without rules, freedom of speech does not exist. Those with the loudest voices (or biggest fists) can prevent the quietest (or weakest) from speaking. Without freedom of conscience, the largest religion can enforce compliance to its own norms.

The liberal Philosopher Adam Smith laid out several rules for Free Markets – such as: ease of access, full and free information on goods, honesty in description, and equitable taxation. These are rules, not a free-for-all where only the powerful will win.

Marxism and its lack of vision.

Smith also laid out, precisely, that the most ‘perfect’ free market was an infinite number of producers and an infinite number of consumers. In other words, a monopoly is the opposite to a free market, but an economy of multiple small producers gets closer to the free market ideal.. It is important to say that this is theoretical.

When Karl Marx cropped up, the ruling wisdom of the Internationales was worker-ownership. Social–Democrat, or Anarchist visions. These were based upon the Liberal Theory premises. Essentially, by making every worker a capitalist, who can withdraw their capital and start a competing firm, the requirements for Smith’s free markets are best fulfilled.

an economy of multiple small producers gets closer to a better model for society

Marxist Communists however divided into two camps. On one side, were those who decried it as petite bourgeois. On the other, those who saw it as a common-sense path to full communism. (If you want to get somewhere, start walking towards it).

Marx earlier however, had realised that he needed to be different to the social democrats and the anarchists. And so 300 years of careful preparation were thrown out of the window in exchange for the excitement of revolution. And we are all very much poorer for it.

The capitalism of worker ownership

Capitalism is once again part of Liberal Theory. It holds that everyone owns their own capital. This is both financial capital, and every other type of capital too: labour capital, land capital, intellectual capital, and so on. In the time before capitalism, individuals themselves could be owned – they did not own their own capital. In capitalism there is actually no requirement that one must sell their labour for wages – this happens, sadly, only because of the pre-existing conditions of social haves and have nots.

An economy run on entirely worker co-ownership is possibly the purest form of Capitalism possible.

An economy run on entirely worker co-ownership is possibly the purest form of capitalism possible. If Marx had admitted that, would Marxism have ever happened? He of course knew about Worker-ownership, and even the early Soviets were based upon that model.

Instead, Marx chose to redefine capitalism as be something entirely different – the very pattern of exploitation that capitalism should replace. How the meaning of capitalism transformed so radically is a mystery that, sadly only political necromancers can answer now. But Marx knew.

And that can be why there is this gaping hole in Marxist Theory – what is to come afterwards? For what comes afterwards is the pathway laid down by the Social Democrats and Anarchists to get to that desirable future in the first place.

Hopefully, after 120 years of misdirection, humanity can once again find its feet upon the proper path towards the freedoms described by liberal theorists and worker ownership, if the climate destruction leaves enough time.

Featured picture from the Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) society

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