My little brother Rylon and I have a longstanding tradition
of Game Night. Not even my move to Augustana College has tampered with our
tradition. We’ve even played Battleship over Skype! We’ll play anything—Life,
Uno, MadGab, Connect 4, or Chess. But our favorite game is Monopoly. You’d
think a college freshman playing Monopoly against a 4th grader would
be unfair, but he holds his own (he’s beat me 5 of 7 times in the last year).
OBJECT: The object of the game is to become the wealthiest player through buying, renting, and selling property.
Over winter break, my mom, Rylon, and I played a
particularly cutthroat round of Monopoly. Although I had plenty of cash and a
more than steady income, when my mom landed on Boardwalk, I asked her to pay
up. The steep rent of $2,000 sent her plunging into bankruptcy. By the end of
the game, I owned half of the board with hotels and houses to boot—thanks to my acquisition of my mom’s properties. Rylon didn’t stand a
chance.
A win like this is a rarity for me. I know how excruciating
it is to lose to Monopoly. A few bad rolls at the beginning of the game can
spell disaster. In Monopoly, losing is a slow and painful process.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/
business/archive/2014/08/
seeing-the-great-depression/379238/
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Parker Brothers first sold monopoly in 1935—ironically, right
in the middle of the Great Depression—ten years after F. Scott Fitzgerald
published The Great Gatsby, a
scathing social critique of the American Dream. Integral to this dream is
Capitalism. Monopoly is Capitalism in
action. Each player is their own private corporation, buying, selling, and
renting properties for individual interests at the expense of their neighbors.
The object of the game is individual, material wealth—not the greatest good for
the greatest number, as people like John Stuart Mill would support, but rather the
greatest good (as long as “good” is defined as material wealth) for the
individual. Through the energies of the poor—my mother and my little brother—the rich become richer and richer. To win, I must become the oppressor; I must exploit.
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| http://www.thinglink.com/scene/523855885441695745 |
Great...this game that I have taught my little brother to play promotes exploitation.
But
Monopoly is not just a game, as my mother pointed out right before I sent her
into the depths of poverty: “This is way too much like real life!”
And she is right.
As a capitalist society, the American Dream is our
national ideology. The American Dream—that anyone who works hard will achieve
prosperity and material wealth—is crucial to our social narrative as American capitalists. As the American filmmaker and political activist Michael Moore once critiqued: “Capitalism is an organized
system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system
and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding
around thinking we can be that way, too - if we just work hard enough, sell
enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac.” However,
although the rugged
individualism sanctioned by Capitalism, the American Dream, and Monopoly
upholds many positive moral standards, such as self-sufficiency, diligence, and
a healthy self-esteem, it also celebrates sickening materialism and consumerism.
In the end, the
American Dream is merely material. In order to succeed, businesses must create a desire for more because more is what is needed to sustain our capitalist economy, which
thrives through virtually unrestricted production, consumption, and disposal of
goods and services. The very framework of our society’s social system promotes greed. Greed is the inventor of injustice.
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| https://tpzoo.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/ protecting-the-american-dream/ |
Desire is the cause of exploitation, whether it is through racism,
sexism, egoism, or elitism. Buddha knew this better than anyone, proclaiming
that desire is the cause of suffering.
Our system is a system based on greed, selfishness, and injustice—a system that justifies screwing my neighbor in order to get what I want. This is the system that we celebrate!
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| http://sathyasaibaba.wordpress.com/ 2010/06/16/zen-pictures-zen-buddhism-wallpapers/ |
Your notion that if we are capitalist we must not be compassionate is false. The fact is that some people are compassionate, and some people are not. Capitalism isn't the root of all greed, as you imply. People will find ways to suck, no matter what form of society they live in. Ending capitalism is not going to magically transform a society into a compassionate, generous, non-materialistic community. The problem lies within the heart of the people, not the wallet.
ReplyDeleteI partly agree. Greed existed long before Capitalism. I'm not trying to say that it is the root of ALL greed, but I do think that it unnecessarily promotes greed and desire. I'm not advocating for the fall of Capitalism because I think it will magically fix people's hearts--you're right, the problem lies within the hearts of people, not their wallets--but I do think that if we lived in a society that was not so focused on greed, materialism, and consumerism our hearts would be kinder, more generous, and compassionate.
ReplyDeleteI never would have thought a board game would be so encompassing of greed and oppression but now I will never look at monopoly the same again. I'd also never thought of the American Dream as being "merely material". You have a point that much of what we consider to be the American dream is material but I also think that the American Dream is also the ideas of freedom, love, and happiness. I don't know if Capitalism creates greed so much as is supports it and enhances it, but perhaps it also creates some of it as you say. I agree that a lot of greed comes from the hearts of people but that sometimes seems to be the human condition, to want more and never be satisfied.
ReplyDeletePersonally I agree with Victoria when she points out that "the American Dream is also the ideas of freedom, love, and happiness." But I also agree with you when you commented by saying, "if we lived in a society that was not focused on greed, materialism, and consumerism our hearts would be kinder,..." Although both of these ideas make sense, I personally believe that society reflects the individuals within it and reflects the drives of those individuals. Every American carries their own belief about the American Dream which in turn generates different drives for success. If one chooses to "screw their neighbor" to make a living, then that is what needs to be done. Would you call that particular action an action of greed or an action of desire to live? If you want to group greed and desire together that is fine, but I believe there is a difference between these two concepts that allows Americans to pursue their own American Dream. Greed refers to the instant gratification of fulfilling ones material want, while desire refers to something that we want but can wait for a period of time. Sure, in order to win at Monopoly sometimes you have to be greedy, but at the same time being greedy can have a positive outcome. So is being greedy and striving for a desire a bad way to live? I believe it all depends on the individual and situation. Just like the American Dream, in order to achieve freedom, love, and happiness we sometimes have to be greedy, but being greedy isn't necessary to fulfill one's life. Once in awhile, it does feel good to win, but at the expense of screwing your neighbor, maybe we should lean more on loving our neighbor instead. I will never look at Monopoly again in the same way!
ReplyDeleteYes, freedom is an ideal that I hold near and dear-- I am an American after all. However, I think that we should consider the cost of our freedom. In a world where resources are limited, should there be a limit to how much someone can and should consume. Ethically, I say yes.
ReplyDeleteMy argument would have been more nuanced if I would have made it clear that Capitalism isn't responsible for ALL greed. Actually the neoliberalism that it stems from thought they were just embracing human nature. But Capitalism is based on greed. How can it not be? "In order for businesses to succeed they must create desire for more because more is what is needed to sustain our capitalist economy, which thrives through virtually unrestricted production, consumption, and disposal of goods and services." The goal of business is profit, which is gained by the greed of the consumer (and sometimes the producer). Yes, sometimes that greed is motivated by one's own desire to live and to succeed--as Daniel points out--but at what cost to other human beings?
I'm reading this book for philosophy called Lost in Transition is like: "[Capitalism] must sustain continued growth at an acceptable rate or else it will contract and eventually collapse. Yet the growth needed to sustain the economy's health cannot be maintained on population growth alone. The economy needs to grow faster than the population grows. The economy, therefore, needs the limited number of its consumers themselves to desire to consume ever increasing amounts of goods and services and that has institutional and cultural consequences" like greed, cheap labor over seas, sickening materialism, and wholehearted unrestricted consumerism.
Caitlin and I were discussing this, and she pointed out that it's hard to see any better alternative to this system that is inherently focused on greed, so we must choose the lesser of 2 evils. It's a horrible situation to be in, but we should make sure that our actions are motivated by compassion. What can we do but control our own actions?