Why Unlimited Wealth Is an Unassailable Advantage
by Steve Roth
Wealth Economics
Imagine a five-player poker game. Assume all the players have equal skill, so the flows across the table over the course of the game are just a random walk. “It’s just how the cards fall.”
All the players start with the same number of chips. But there’s one difference: four of the players don’t have any more assets/money to buy new chips. If they lose all their chips, they’re out.
The fifth player has unlimited assets. No matter how much or how often they lose, they can always buy more chips and stay in the game.
If the game continues indefinitely, the fifth player will always at some point end up with all of the other players’ chips, just due to the random flows across the table.
I’ll leave the implications of this to the thoughts of my gentle readers.
Image: Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, A Friend in Need, 1903. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
We are witnessing the card game played out in the political arena –Gen Flynn, Trump etc.
the Administrative State can usually employee unlimited funds to produce their political desire. The CCP in China enjoys unlimited funds and coercion to achieve their desired out comes.
Individuals do not have the resources of the State. When the State controls the judiciary — game is over early.
Jackson
I draw a different moral: You can’t beat city hall (or Citibank), so don’t play their game.
You could, of course, learn to co-operate with your fellow victims of “the system” and for a while at least force them to play YOUR game. but this rarely works, and always ends with “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
just by coincidence i was looking up the meaning of “amen” this morning. Google agrees with something i have been hearing lately, but did not like: it means “let it be so,” which sounds like giving orders to God. I prefer “let it be,” as sung by the Beatles.
Amen means you are agreeing with God what He says is True in my understanding.
Jackson
interesting. i am fairly sure it no longer means what it meant 2000 years ago, because like all words it means whatever people think it means, and i have no idea what people think it means. The Beatles never used the word, but “let it be” seems to me most consistent with what i hear a lot from the people i consider sane christians..not about the word, but about what they believe…if i am right about what i think they believe.
This is why casinos always have house limits.
You can also see how having greater assets turns economic power into other forms of power. Has any economists ever written on this. It falls out of Probability 101.