It’s #The End of the #Monopoly Game

The game of Monopoly is a lesson in capitalist economics. In the beginning of the game, the players have equal amounts of fake money and a playing piece. At the end of the game one guy has all the valuable properties. What happens then? The guy with the money will lend you money to keep you playing with your properties as collateral. In the end that guy will have all the properties and will economically own the rest of the players. Reminds one of Socialism.

One reason monopolies are illegal in our country because they control too many aspects of life and can unduly leverage government decisions. The point is that one big corporation (or just a few corporations) that owns all the businesses and having the government own all the businesses (socialism) really aren’t a whole lot different. The corporation becomes as powerful as the government. The next thing you know, corporations are dictating policy to the government instead of the other way around. Socialists say at least we get to vote for our government leaders. Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million. Socialism is simply disguises economic oligarchy.

Another reason monopolies are illegal is, if they fail the damage to the economy is too great. A damaged economy is a danger to our defense abilities. In a ship all the compartments are sealed when on alert. If the ship takes a torpedo only the compartments where the hit occurs flood. The rest of the ship is sealed off so it has a much better chance of staying afloat. If it’s too big to fail, it’s too big period.

Big corporations are going to get much bigger over the next few weeks. This New Republic article describes how the $500 billion part of the stimulus package for large corporations will have little oversight, Mr foreclosure Steven Mnuchen of the Treasury Departments will be handling the money. The Donald has stated he wouldn’t be honoring some of the transparency clauses.

Small businesses will fall and be bought up by large corporations, accelerating the pace toward the end of the monopoly game. New economic rules will be invented because of this crisis. the trends from the last few decades indicates those rules will benefit the super rich to the disadvantage of everyone else.

The New York Times article entitled “Jobs aren’t being destroyed this fast elsewhere, why is that?” by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, asks why the package doesn’t include a job preservation clause. So far there have been over 6 million unemployment claims. There is no guarantee those workers will be rehired by their former employers. When this is over many will be job hunting and lack health insurance. The article states it should be illegal to fire anyone for the time being and provide enough money for the workers to get through the crisis.

It may be the end of the monopoly game and economic freedom.