Days before, I had met some difficulties with my computer, and I didn't post what I thought about the interesting game we played in the class which related to wealth&power.
Here follows my ideas.
It is quiet an impressive class which gives us the opportunity to experience the wealth and power through an interesting game. The game is focused on wealth and the distribution based on the power of different classes. I have some ideas in personal about the game, and want to share them with my classmates.
First, people are not born fairly to gain money. At the very beginning, Jessica throws lots of pennies on the ground, about two hundred and fifty. We are required to try our best and use all the material available to pick up pennies as much as we can. Most people are able to use their hands. Some people are planning to use their cloth. But few of us can only use spoon to pursue the money on the ground because of some special reasons. In our game, the unlucky reason is just because black is their favorite color. All the people are in a circle, but everybody has different distance to the penny area. Maybe the circle is more like an oval. I am lucky to stand along the long side in front of the pennies, that’s why I can get as much as 22 pennies at beginning. But for some persons like Dong Wook and Paula who stand along the short side and have far more distance to the pennies just pick up 6 and 7 cents at first. I believe that happens in the real world. Some people are born to face lots of chances to own money, while some people have fewer opportunities or even have limited condition to earn money.
Then we came to the process to ask or donate the money personally. We can see various kinds of methods for people to ask for money, sometimes they even play trick on other people. I don’t ask for anything, but donate 5 cents. By different kinds of ways, some poor people soon surprise become rich man.
After this process, we are divided into three classes on the basis of different wealth. Like the real world, middle class occupies the largest amount of people, and the rich class contains least. The people in the same class also have different level of wealth, but the baseline is fixed: 14 for middle and 27 for rich. And I am in the middle class. Each class can put forward a program on how to distribute all the property in society. Of course, all classes will follow the rule of benefiting the most for themselves. The program rich people suggest is that middle class donate 27 cents and they donate 21 for the poor people. The middle want change the number as 13 and 32. The poor people prefer to get 17 cents from the middle class and 30 from the rich. All the people have the right to vote on each program, but different class has different power. Each rich people vote accounts 5 tickets, each middle cut down to 2, and each poor just equal to 1 ticket. Even through the rich people have the heaviest power, we reach an interesting and funny result that middle and poor combine together to win the most rich people. The program 2 becomes effective. Frankly speaking, I don’t think it’s realistic in the real world. Middle class and the poor class can’t be all standing at one side to get coordination, once if it shows some of these signs, the rich people will use any methods to separate them, and they will be the final winner. In the game, the rich people become less wealthy than middle class in the end, it is also not realistic and helpful. This phenomenon will lead to the overall economic level of recession, which does harm to the whole society.
At last, I want point out that if I were in the poor class, considering the entire situation, I may vote on the program 1 which the rich people offer. In total, program 1 can promise me to gain 48 cents, more than our program 47, even larger than middle class’s program which donates 45cents in total amount. Maybe I take less into consideration, but on the basis of total amount, the poor class may choose the worst one.
I really enjoy the process, and have gained much from the experience.
