This evening the Bear and the Tiger were playing Cat-opoly. It's like Monopoly, except that instead of buying properties, you invest in cats. And instead of going to jail, you fall into the water.
Investing in cats is of course a dubious premise, even for a cat lover like me. Grey Kitty was strictly a source of outward cash flow. If anyone figures out how to make money by renting out cats - as mousers? - I'd love to know what I was missing.
Well, I suppose since the cats in the game are all fancy breeds, there might be stud fees. Hard to explain that one to a preschooler, though.
The Bear bankrupted the Tiger after convincing him to trade precisely the cat cards that the Bear needed for a monopoly. I thought about admonishing him for taking advantage of his four-year-old brother.
And then I thought: No, better couch this as an early lesson in economics. Because y'know, that's just about how real monopolists, war profiteers, Enrons, and Halliburtons become mega-rich. Add in a few price fixers, lobbyists, Abramoffs, and Cheneys, and you're good to go.
Now we just need to figure out how to get all of them - not just Abramoff - to fall into the water.
Image from Amazon.
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2 comments:
Very apt, since the earliest-verifiable predecessor to Monopoly was designed as an economics teaching tool (History of the board game Monopoly on Wikipedia).
Sunflower
Interesting reference - thanks, Sunflower! It looks like the people who invented it were generally left-leaning economic reformers, which puts a much more political spin on the game.
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