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                     MONOPLY WOULD BE A BORING GAME

                                   GP
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                            <2026-09-01 Tue>


Today I was talking to my son about Rappi, a Colombian equivalent of
uber-eats, and how it promoted a lot of inequality. The conversation
built over a conversation we had yesterday about how ridiculous was the
difference between what a CEO earned and a bottom-level employer earned
at the same organization. I think he understood that it's not only
unfair, but that it makes very little sense to have someone earning 2, 3
*thousand* times what someone else does. There's a difference in
education, roles, responsibilities, etc., but that difference is not
that big.

So today we were talking about why I don't use Rappi, and how Rappi made
money from the users (by selling their data), from the restaurant owners
(by getting a big cut of the sale) and from the most vulnerable of all:
the delivery guys. I explained to him that a lot of road accidents were
caused by the draconian clauses they imposed on the delivery people, and
how those accidents cost us, as a society. And more than that, I
explained to him that all of that meant a transfer of money from the
poorest (the delivery people, the users, even the restaurants) to the
richest (the owners of Rappi), compounding the inequality and unfairness
we had discussed yesterday.

But something felt off, he wasn't *fully* understanding the whole issue.
Something was missing from the picture.

Then I offered him a parallel scenario: Imagine, I said, that we are
playing Monopoly. Imagine that you own all the properties and I own
none. How long is going to last this game? And more importantly, how fun
would it be? Wouldn't it be boring even for you, even though you're
"winning"?

He opened his big, brown eyes and let that idea fall on him like a
shower.

Life is (it actually shouldn't be, but that's matter for another phlog)
in some way, similar to Monopoly. If only a few concentrate all of the
resources, then it's going to be a boring game.

"We can implement some rules", he said. "We could limit the number of
properties someone has. Or have them pay the bank instead of receiving
money each turn. And we could give a temporary extra allowance to those
who have lost their properties to a bad dice-roll."

I think he understands it now. He understands now that if we keep
walking the same walk, this is bound to be a boring game.