Joyanna Adams

Monopoly or Mobopoly?

Nobody’s Opinion

“It has been demonstrated again and again, from Imperial Rome to Weimar Germany, that epidemic greed is a symptom not of reveling in present triumphs but of a fear that the game is winding down.”–Laurence Shames(1951) “Wall Street Greed is Fueled by Fear” 15 June 1989

Monopoly. Remember that game? I do. I hated it when I was a kid. It was long, it was boring, and my brother always won…every single time. And here I was too many years later…losing again.

Last Friday night it was a night of, “Let’s get away from the Television shall we?” for the family. We have been playing Monopoly on the Holidays gatherings and I always  lose. I was becoming the laughing stock of the family. So…Friday night, I was determined to win. To war. To kill. I was going to be ruthless, something that is completely against my character as a human being.  I watched the other player’s strategies, took the best from each player, and went for the throat.

And I was..ruthless. Not only was I the only player who had any buildings on their properties, I had all the money. ALL the $500 dollars were stacked high in my slots, after I had emptied out the bank with all my winnings.  I had all the railroads, all the utilities, just the right properties, and every time any player landed on my property, it cost them over $1,000. I had  hotels on every piece I owned.

As I watched the faces of my family, members that I have watched time and again…winning, I could see the surprise, the depression, the hopelessness drain from their faces. It wasn’t just a game anymore. I was winning. I was ecstatic, I wanted it all. I wanted to “do it again.”

Now, I’m no psychologist, but there is a theory that to “win” at anything, you must plan, strategize, and show no mercy. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Rockefeller…politicians… they all play that game.

And winning is the best feeling in the world. Why had I always never tried to win? Was it because I didn’t want to hurt others feelings? That was part of it. Somehow the Christian upbringing came into it. I didn’t like to make people feel bad. I wanted them to like me.

But, I did notice, that unlike when I was a kid, now, I really didn’t care that the other players felt bad … After all…it’s a game. I told myself.

Exactly.  It’s the game. And I thought…is this how it feels to grab the millions on Wall Street?

Whoa.

So, where did this game that everyone has played all over the world come from?

History reports that Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed the game to the executives of Parker Brothers, during the depression of 1934. It was very similar to one patented in 1904 by Lizzie J. Maggie, a Quaker woman from Virginia. The game was called,  The Landlord’s Game, and was based on the philosophy that the renting of land and real estate produced an unearned increase in land values that profited a few individuals (landlords) rather than the majority of the people (tenants). It was intended to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies.

Former Wall Streeter Derk Solko explains, “Monopoly has you grinding your opponents into dust. It’s a very negative experience. It’s all about cackling when your opponent lands on your space and you get to take all their money.”

And isn’t that what the world has witness these last few years? The bankers (with the help of our politicians) went wild, lost trillions, and the whole world collapsed. They did not go to jail, and they passed GO so many times they had to close hundreds of banks just to keep up.  

Or was this a planned collapsed?

Because of this tremendous greed that we have witnessed…there is a big push to get rid of capitalism, but it’s not capitalism that is bad, it’s the monopolies formed by governments with their hands in the pockets of multinational companies, some of whom have more money than most countries, that kicks us all off the board.

Nobody Thinks that there is definelty a  well planned global monopoly strategy.

The rest of us want the monopolies of global multinational companies to be broken up and allow more competition, and have us all get a piece of the pie that way. But that’s not part of the plan. Like in Monopoly, once you hold the most property, you almost always win.

Nobody Thinks that the sheer joy of winning and smashing your competition must be addicting. Heck, if I can get so ‘high’ off a simple game of Monoploy, what kind of “high” do people like George Soros get? Like synapses in your brain being formed to desire cocaine, the same desire to devour your competition to a pulp without caring a hoot about how many lives it destroys, might have started with that feeling that you got as a child winning Monopoly.

I’m not so sure it was a good thing that I never took the game seriously. If Monopoly was invented to teach children about the horrible effects of what can happen when one person has all the control to take all your money, it didn’t really do a very good job. Instead we got a lot of people addicted to winning at all costs, and then smashing everything else around them.  

In the United States, men running monopolies have broken the bank of America….just like I did, and I can bet you, every man guilty of that, Corzine, Bernanke, the Goldman Sacks, Barney Franks…—they all feel like they just won a game of Monopoly. Hoo-rah. It’s not about caring about the world, it’s about winning the game.

And the game is still on: Mobopoly. Pick your pieces, hold onto your money… and roll.

April 1, 2012 - Posted by Joyanna Adams | communism, corruption, economy, Global Government, Globalization, Goldman Sachs, History, Life, Presidents | American Culture, Barney Frank, corruption, Economy, global government, globalization, greed, life, Monopoly, New World Order, President, The rich elites, Wall Street