547 What Are Taxes Really For?

[Speaker to Animals]

It occurs to me a clever entrepreneur could take the classic monopoly game, reverse game play, and call it Socialism. The game starts with everybody having random monopolies scattered around the board. Each turn a roll of the dice determines which properties become expended. Each property hit will lose a hotel, then houses, and the rent is always going down. Also each turn some property gets socialized and the player forfeits ownership and no rent is paid, but all the development on the property drops each turn until there is nothing there and if anybody lands on it when all the properties fall apart, they go to jail.

[Martin Hash]

Socialists don’t play competitive games.

[Speaker to Animals]

The good news about the game of Socialism is that there are no winners. It just goes on and on until all the properties are destroyed and the players are in the gulag.

[Martin Hash]

But at least they’re all equal.

[brewster]

It occurs to me a clever entrepreneur could take the classic monopoly game, reverse game play, and call it Socialism. The game starts with everybody having random monopolies scattered around the board. Each turn a roll of the dice determines which properties become expended. Each property hit will lose a hotel, then houses, and the rent is always going down. Also each turn some property gets socialized and the player forfeits ownership and no rent is paid, but all the development on the property drops each turn until there is nothing there and if anybody lands on it when all the properties fall apart, they go to jail.

Interesting idea, if you're scored on the overall well being of the citizens rather than who's got the assets. Properly done the winner would be the one who hits the sweet spot between the extremes of kleptocracy capitalism, where most people starve, and Marxism, where most people starve.

One way would be tax based, you get your assets taxed, and if it's taxed too high it's foreclosed. It could actually be done with regular monopoly, just with redistributive taxes. You play a certain number of rounds, you can't win if anyone goes broke. If inequality hits a certain benchmark like 10:1, a progressive tax kicks in.

[Fife]

Muh sweet spot