Wow. Reading the research on the real genesis of Monopoly, and the surprising finding that it was designed originally to teach the 99% about income inequality is fascinating to me, especially at this giving time of year. I meditate a lot on capitalism. I think it is an incredible system for a lot of reasons. But unbridled it seems far from complete. Despite myself, I reluctantly admire those expert practitioners of capitalism who have mastered what they humorously refer to as being assholes. Routinely people celebrate this perspective in Silicon Valley the TV series where they literally exhort (and we cheer for) the transformation of our inventor protagonist into an asshole, making light of a nasty state in which he is optimized for success. The Social Network movie, Wall Street the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, etc., they all do it, and they glamorize it when they arent laughing along with it. Where media doesnt convince us, the dream of being rich does. I hate to say it, but its the rare person among us who doesnt have a price. I often look at the cooperative model and how we began Bitcasters, our first company as a pseudo-coop. I consider how little financial worth we kept for ourselves and that is left twenty years later from a venture that employed dozens and dozens of people for decades. I think about how we mustnt have done our job right. We didnt play the system right, we didnt act enough like capitalists, we never mastered being assholes, we made art as well as business, we paid our debts and supported the creative experiments of our team. Sure some employees probably felt we were assholes despite all of this effort to be nice. Same as it ever was. Besides, employees rarely have even a vague understanding of what entrepreneurs sacrifice to create jobs and income for them and perhaps its not their role to even try. So if an employees job isnt to appreciate me, is it really my job to be nice? Now I am advising other start-ups and the truth is that if you want to succeed in Silicon Valley, there is a culture of expecting a certain amount of asshole in the equation or someone else will simply take your share. Another way to put this is survival of the fittest, or law of the jungle. In the valley, no one is more revered than Steve Jobs. In his success he seemed to prove to us all that not giving shares to some of his engineers was the right business decision. Shows like Silicon Valley parody this bitter reality, but it all ends up seeming correct. So I have thought many times about games like Monopoly that I wish I had played more aggressively, or the poker group I belonged to in NYC where I wish I had embraced the game and the spirit of winning-by-beating-someone so much more. Clearly I didnt learn enough from these things. Nothing proves this more than the fact that we tried to create a coop model for our company. So it comes as a surprise that Monopoly was really meant to teach about income inequality. Maybe therein lies the difference between myself and some of the more successful entrepreneurs I know... the difficulty I have of looking at this all as a TV joke, board game or hand of cards. And Im not being facetious, I have seriously tried and often envy those who do. In the end though, I am sure I want the process to be as meaningful as the result. My colleagues probably do too, but they seem to see through a different lens and I hope they will share with me what that looks like. I ponder at Christmas time, here in Victoria with my mom, what might be my ideal cultural model for success. An alternative to a system predicated on a false dichotomy of entrepreneur who is asshole-until-rich and then eventually becomes philanthropist-we-love. Dont get me wrong, I think some of the most incredible work is possible due to capitalism and free market competition and I deeply admire the billionaires who have signed the Giving Pledge and who have committed to giving the vast majority of their wealth away before they die. This is a profound movement that if it continues to spread voluntarily could perhaps help correct for the flaws (such as hording and the culturally prevalent phenomenon of financial inheritances that pass down to people who are not creating value for society) in an otherwise brilliant system. I am sure many of you are thinking as you read this of people that have lived and demonstrated a viable path with much more balance. I ask you to share these examples here. For 2015 I am hoping to see more of these folks on magazine covers. Instead of idolizing the asshole, lets seek out the heroes whose success in capitalism simultaneously bears positive social fruit. The ones who seek to impact the world but start in their home, their offices and in their communities. Capitalists who give as they go, through fairness, sharing and cooperation as well as competition. Capitalists who create, not horde. I am excited in 2015 to spend my time with entrepreneurs and capitalists whose very business ideas are predicated on having a positive social impact. I look forward to being a part of these journeys and contributing to the process as well as the results. Looking back at the Monopoly board, I am left to wonder - what if it said Clean Ocean instead of Park Place. What if this location was something you created instead of owned. What if Jail was where you went for stealing. What if it didnt devolve into a one-dimensional feel-good pseudo-hippy bore (I say that with love fellow Sundance alum and Burning Man friends) and you could still make obscene amounts of money? But what if you could only get rich by inventing things that made all the other players better off? And what if passing Go meant giving back? Best wishes to all my friends and fellow entrepreneurs, may 2015 be a year of abundance! smithsonianmag/arts-culture/monopoly-was-designed-teach-99-about-income-inequality-180953630/?no-ist
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 22:28:40 +0000
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