The Game Of Money

Although humanity has come to embrace it as a necessity, the monetary system is a game. It is not a bad game or a good game, but does have further reaching consequences than most games because the majority of players don’t realize it’s a game. The origins of the game have been woven throughout various cultures and generations as the game has been upgraded with complexities and higher stakes since it began, each generation finding more ways to incorporate the game into more and more facets of their lives.

Like chess, football, freeze tag, or tiddlywinks, the game is filled with highs and lows, moments of glory and moments of defeat. There are particular rules of play in order to establish boundaries within which the game makes sense, and there are those who will sometimes stretch those boundaries to their own advantage, thereby making the game much less conducive toward happiness for the other players.

While success in this game can often facilitate happiness, the game itself is not mandatory for establishing happiness. Because the monetary game is based upon a competitive model with a loser for every winner, unfortunately, the game can also do as much to deter happiness as it can to facilitate it. Due to the extreme competitiveness and severity of some of the players, sometimes, even for the grandest winners, the game is just no fun at all.

As with the more recent development of virtual computer games, the monetary game can be quite addictive, and players often get so consumed with the playing of the game that they neglect…