Stick Game Update

Charity vs. Social Change

We played our stick game again today.  The results were very interesting.

A lot of laws were passed and all of them got voted away.

They passed the "No Taxes" law again, but it was repealed when they realized that the government would run out of money.

They then proposed that a person would get exactly 10 sticks every time they answered a question correctly.  I thought that this was a good law, but the students thought they would run out of sticks and repealed it on a vote.

When the concept of the injustice suffered by those that were persecuted for picking up sticks the government left on the floor came up, one of the persecuted teams passed a law that said, "If you are caught by ANYONE stealing sticks off of the floor, you have to give them back and pay a one stick fine."  Another good law, I thought.  Again repealed by the students that weren't being persecuted, for they outnumbered the ones that were.  They, interestingly enough, couldn't understand why everyone wouldn't want this law to go away.

 The system passed a law that if no one got the answer to a question correct then everyone owes 1stick.  The poorest team paid to get the law overturned. When the repeal of the law was vetoed, they didn't have enough sticks to pay to put it to a vote.  The other teams chipped in to pay for a vote.  It was repealed.

At one point, I started being very unfair with the wealth distribution and would only give a few sticks to one group while I paid other groups handfuls of sticks.  Soon one team ran clean out of sticks.  When I pointed this out, some people would give the poor team a few sticks.  Others said things like, "Why would I give them sticks? I like being rich."  No one even tried to pass a law that would overcome the injustice that made them poor in the first place.

I am curious to see what happens next week.