How is your son and daughter’s monopoly game relevant to national prosperity?
As a kid, my daughter accepted the idea of losing at Monopoly as long as she trusted that the game was fair. Once she started suspecting that my son was “selectively enforcing rules” she gave up. This is what an increasing number of people are feeling. It is hard enough to support a system where we end up being the loser, it is impossible to do so when we perceive the system as unfair.
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Consider Urban Renewal and existing business owners. When urban renewal is imposed in their city, new development will naturally occur where the city will spend money to make it happen. The increased value of the property in that area of town creates higher rents for those within the district, but existing business owners may not be able to make the same profit because of this. Also, property owners who are in the district have an unfair advantage over those who are not given the rise in value of their land within the district.
If these changing conditions were caused by market conditions only, the playing field would be perceived as fair. When governments give handouts to some developers, or create an environment that is considered to have a disproportionate advantage, the playing field has been skewed by government manipulation and the system is unfair.
The consequences for an unfair economic system are dire - cronyism, fraud, theft (of taxes), power lobbies, corruption, etc. Consider analogies to sports where the system picks winners and losers. Which teams would you bet on - the ones with the best players and/or ethical practices, or the ones with the best manipulated advantages? Is this a system that benefits the sport or the fans, and is this a system we should abandon? The answer is obvious: Our economic freedoms and democratic system of government depend on it.
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