| There are different kinds of games. In some of them (such as "Pin the tail") anybody
and everybody can win, if they're good enough. If the rules are fair and the goal of the game is reasonable, and
each player does his or her best, there's no reason anyone needs to lose. In other games, such as musical chairs,
there has to be losers. That's the whole point of the game. There's nothing wrong with either type of game, as
long as you know which type you're playing. If you're playing "pin the tail" for example, it would not be a good thing to talk as if it were fated that a certain number of players must lose. That would only discourage the players, and some might quit who might have won the game if they had only worked harder. On the other hand, if you're playing musical chairs, it would be cruel to belittle the losers and make them feel like they just didn't try hard enough, because even if every single player tried just as hard and played just as well as he or she could, it would still be guaranteed that some number of them would get eliminated from the game each round, until no one except the winner (or winners) was left. That's the whole idea of a game like musical chairs. That's what makes it fun. One of the problems with politics in this country is that we often forget what kind of game we're talking about. Take the question of jobs, for example. We usually think of a job as something that anyone can get if he or she prepares and tries hard enough. We think of jobs as a game of pin the tail. However, the odd truth is that in our system, jobs are actually more like a game of musical chairs. This is because, in our system, we don't allow the unemployment rate to get either too high or too low. (That's right. Whenever the unemployment rate gets too low, the Federal Reserve Board takes actions that cause employers to lay people off, so the unemployment rate won't get any lower. I don't think anyone would argue with this fact. Most people seem to feel there are good reasons for doing this. I'm not going to argue about that just now. For now, I'm just accepting that that's the way our system works.) When you realize that employment is not a game of pin the tail, but a game of musical chairs in this country, you start to think about all kinds of issues differently. The whole idea of punishing people for not working and forcing them to eventually find a job, for example. Every single person in this country could be smart, motivated, well educated, and hard working, and yet, about four or five percent of us would still be unemployed, simply because that's how our system works. |