Having thought a lot about the history of capitalism while teaching Advertising and Society last fall, it was interesting to play Monopoly with my kids this week.
They grasped the minutiae of playing but did not really get it. We helped them buy properties and houses, and then they started seeing how the values increased.
I admit that I missed the moment my 7-year-old “got it,” but my wife said she saw the twinkle in her eye. Ninety minutes later, Piper had cleaned us all out.
Mostly my girls played very lovingly. They didn’t want to bankrupt anyone, and they tried to be sweet.
But that’s not the story.
The story is when Piper dropped a $100 bill on the ground. She asked Chloé, 11, to pick it up.
“No,” Chloé says.
“I’ll let you keep it,” Piper says.
Chloé picks it up.
Then Piper takes another $100, holds it at arm’s length, wiggles it, flashes an evil grin, and drops it like popcorn for her pigeon sister to fetch.
A few minutes later, I landed on the hotel I helped her build, and I didn’t have that much cash. So I offered the electric utility up for auction.
“I’ll give you $500 for it,” Piper blurts out.
“Piper, you’ll go broke if you keep doing that,” Chloé insists.
Again, she’s 7, and she just leans back, gets a smug grin on her face, wave her open palms over her treasure trove of riches, as if to say, “When hell freezes over.”
So she had no payday loan predation in her, but when she had the chance to rub a sister’s face in it, power corrupted absolutely.
I'm a cognitive scientist and communication scholar who manages a psychophysiology lab at Texas Tech. I teach courses about the cognitive processing of media messages and research methods.
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As she dangled cash in front of her sister, maybe she realized those donations were tax deductible.