by J. Young

Created on: September 22, 2008   Last Updated: October 24, 2008

I don't understand why there is so much fuss about government bailouts for banks. Maybe you people don't understand economics. I do. My wife is a master economist. When I own Baltic Avenue, for example, but I don't have enough cash to be able to purchase Mediterranean Avenue, my wife is kind enough to lend me the cash (with the proper collateral, of course), and if I can't pay her back at her adjusted rate, she is kind enough to smile at me while she takes the property back, plus the collateral, and recoups any money she lost in the transaction from the bank. This just makes sense. It's a 'win-win' situation.

She wins because she gets all of her money back from the bank and I win because I get to stay in the game, at least, for a while. It's not her fault if I'm not smart enough not to pay $1,000 for a property that's only worth $60, even if she was the one who drove the price up in the first place. If I really want Mediterranean Avenue, then it's just fair that she would be able to bury me in debt so that I could get it. The fact that I can't pay it back is my own stupid fault, not hers, and the bank should be willing to bail her out if I can't meet my obligations.

And if the game were to end because of her altruistic lending habits and my disgusting inability to pay, that wouldn't help anybody. As she explains to me time and time again: "It's best for everybody that the game keeps going." Of course, she could always decrease the amount that I owed on the loan, because it probably wasn't completely fair to begin with; but is that really her responsibility? It's definitely not the bank's responsibility to manage such things, they should protect people like my wife with all of their might.

We should do everything in our power to ensure that those in power stay in power. Otherwise we might end up with a bunch of free-market capitalists. And if they gain enough power, god help us, they might try to make it so that everybody has an equal opportunity to participate. They might even be so brash as insisting that they should have the ability to play a role in the government. That wouldn't be good for anybody. We have to preserve the smart peoples' ability to lead us. 'Cause we're not smart enough to do it ourselves. Imagine me questioning my wife about the rationale of spending too much money on a property. She would crush me with her intellectual superiority. So I don't question it. And neither should you.

Oh, by the way: I'm living in my car now, and if I am lucky enough to land on 'free' parking, I have to pay a fee. I think my copy of Monopoly is broken.

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