Friday, January 21, 2011

For those of you who never got it, the State IS the Monopoly

Spiegel Online:

A Polish research institute has developed a board game to teach young people about life under Communism. In the game, which is inspired by Monopoly, players must wait in endless lines at stores for scarce goods. For added realism, they have to put up with people cutting in line and products running out -- unless they have a "colleague in the government" card.


In the grand days before the Marxist-Leninist paradises ended, when every pot was full, and anyone marginally different was oppressed or contained in some way, playing or having the original Monopoly board-game (first offered in the US in 1934,) was unlawful because it was deemed a threat.
Just like in the original Monopoly, acquisition is the name of the game. In this case, however, that means struggling to get basic necessities such as food, clothing and furniture. "In the game, you send your family out to get items on a shopping list and they find that the five shops are sold out or that there hasn't been a delivery that day," the IPN's Karol Madaj told SPIEGEL ONLINE Thursday, explaining that the game "highlights the tough realities of life under Communism."
It’s a brilliant idea, and quite a good antedote to the numbing, crypto-collectives entitlement mentality now being passed on to our youts in sKoul - as if anyone at Spiegel Online was capable of doing a differential diagnosis of someone’s trained-in predilection to support a similar sort of mind-numbing socialism... so long as it’s stylish this time or something.

No comments: