Welcome and Congratulations! Dropping the course now might result in administrative fees. For our first lesson, we’ll spend about 4 mins exploring:
How much a dollar cost?
There’s this survival-horror game I really enjoyed playing. I had to run it on the highest “performance” settings—which makes it significantly less horror and a lot more geometry—but I had a blast regardless. In Metro Last Light (I know its part of a trilogy, but it’s the only one I played) you play as a vaguely Russian survivor of a vague nuclear apocalypse in a vaguely Russian region that has found sanctuary in—you guessed it—the metro.
The economy feels like it’s evolved out of some barter system as bullets are used as the de facto currency. More than being just a narrative flourish, it presents the player with some interesting decisions. During the missions you try to save bullets to buy supplies and upgrades in the hub world. Then in the hub world, you try to save bullets to survive during the mission. And although there might be a listed bullet-price for specific items, as the player, you have to try to figure out how much a bullet really costs.
It’s not only a fun challenge, but it also helps smooth out the difficulty curve. Especially in the survival genre, you want to establish a resource floor to guarantee enough supplies to be playable, but not too much to allow resource hoarding. You want the game to be possible but challenging, to build a sense of progression without the player snowballing out of control. Unfortunately, our politicians (AKA the balance team of our survival game) seem to have skipped that class.
In this unit of Commie Curriculum, we’re going to ask what’s so bad about capitalism? Does it have to lead to current levels of wealth inequality? Does it make sense that the world’s richest 26 people have the same wealth as the bottom 50%? Or how about America, the richest nation by far, where the cumulative wealth of the 50th percentile is less than the wealth of the three richest families? Is wealth inequality really that bad? Contrary to what people might expect from the ‘Commie’ part of the Curriculum, I don’t want a Harrison-Bergeron-esque equality. Maybe some people are more equal than others. Regardless, there probably should be an equality floor and maybe even an equality ceiling.
In the following unit, we can ask how we got here; this line between cause and effect is pretty spotted, but I figure it might be a good teaching tool. For now, though, let’s start with the less depressing, rich side of the equation.
In case you missed it, a lot of the world went into a lockdown for the last few months. We were told to shelter in place. But the bills start coming and they don’t stop coming. And that’s pretty problematic when owning a shelter costs almost 90% of the median income like in Vancouver. That cost is definitely going to trickle down to renters even if savings don’t necessarily. Government handouts help, but they’re not giving anywhere near the median income which got people worried about how to pay for their shelter to stay in place in. Then I heard about the approach Nordstrom (and a bunch of other big retailers) took. They just didn’t pay (or paid a partial amount).
But, to be fair and balanced, maybe Nordstrom deserves not to pay. They worked hard, right? They played by the rules and respected the basic rights of their workers, right? And any time there were rules they wanted to change, they did so through legitimate channels, right? Even left-leaning liberals, tend to take this positivist position. Rules are rules, if they got in through a fair process, they must be fair, right? So, who’s to say Nordstrom can’t throw around their weight a little. They earned it, right?
Let’s assume that that’s right. Give Nordstrom and the rest the benefit of the doubt. Even so—and this may be a little too radical for our first real class—I just think that maybe those “legitimate” channels for changing the rules are disproportionately accessible to the rich. And, personally, if I had to choose, I would prioritize a democracy over meritocracy—cap that equality a little so not even Nordstrom is that much more equal than us regular persons. Even if Nordstrom deserved the wealth they have, I don’t think—and, again, maybe just me—an unelected corporation should have the power to play by different rules, have a disproportionate say in changing the rules, or be the ones actively writing them [see links on model legislation in the additional readings].
But I get it, it’s hard to give up the satirically-forrmed idea of meritocracy. Even my fellow left-swingers like the technocrats and benevolent billionaires. Epistemocracy gained a lot of traction after a certain orangutan demagogue got elected to be the 45th of some thing. At that rate, even I’m likely to start calling out “liberal elites” that want some sort of philosopher king. But I do get it, democracy can be kind of disappointing, especially given the current situation. This isn’t the only time that our “democracies”—which really aren’t the most democratic—have put fascists in power.
Honestly, maybe I’m being petty. Nordstrom’s just playing the game. It just made me a little mad to see Nordstrom act so entitled as to just not pay rent when there’s an eviction crisis looming. But that’s what excessive wealth does. Excessive wealth tends to make persons—even non-human, strictly-legal persons like Nordstrom—look a little more inward, feel a little more entitled, and care a little less about others. And these effects aren’t good for anyone involved—it’s a lot less good for society, obviously, but it’s not good for whoever’s in Nordstrom’s shoes. No one wants to be that guy.
Even Monopoly wealth, unfairly gained, can have an observable impact. In an experiment at UC Berkley, Dr. Paul Piff got two students, let’s call them Student A and Tonald Drumpf, to play Monopoly. Student A started with $1000, only collected $100 at Go, and only got to use one die. Drumpf started with a small gift of $2000, got to collect $200 at Go, and got to use both dice—giving him a chance to rolls doubles and go again. When Tonald would eventually run circles around Student A, he attributed his success to his very, very large brain. It’s easy (and fun) to make fun of people like Tonald, but it seems like we got a little Drumpf in us all.
So, how much a dollar cost?
As we’ve just discussed, wealth can influence people to act a little more presidential. One study found that nominal power made people eat cookies like monsters. Another found luxury-car drivers tend not to respect crosswalks. And another found people in higher socioeconomic statuses literally took more candies from babies. Not to be overly dramatic, but between becoming a Sesame Street character, a memeable Beemer driver, and acting out a bad-guy cliché, it seems like an extra dollar can cost you your humanity.
Additional Reading
On the Media, Myth of Meritocracy: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-myth-of-meritocracy
Entitlement: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167213501699
Being richer makes you focus more on yourself: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-56298-001
Cookie Monster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvl46PmCfE
Mean driving, taking candies from babies, Monopoly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuqGrz-Y_Lc
Other anti-social and unethical things that rich people do more of: https://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.full
Nordstrom Not Paying Rent: https://therealdeal.com/2020/04/22/retailers-exposed-whos-paying-rent-and-whos-not/
Model Legislation or How the Unelected Write Laws: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/03/abortion-gun-laws-stand-your-ground-model-bills-conservatives-liberal-corporate-influence-lobbyists/3162173002/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIMgfBZrrZ8;
How Money Makes Representatives Less Representatives: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/17/members-of-congress-follow-the-money-not-the-voters-heres-the-evidence/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Domination: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/domination/
Wake Up Sheeple! 