"Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."

God help those children.

I can't help feeling that you're only saying this to comfort yourself.

The fundamental problem with their Lego trading game (and the original Legotown) is that they assume capitalism involves a fixed amount of resources that can only be traded. In reality, the resources are constantly growing. If it was really a fixed-resource system, it would always end like Monopoly, with one person owning everything, or owning enough to always be in power at the least.

All it takes is a second to stop and realize that wealth is created, not taken. If it was all really taken, then where in the heck did we take it from? (I mean we as in the whole world.) The world is immensely more wealthy than it was a thousand years ago, and all that wealth was created by the hard work of all those generations. Surely all the wealth creation done by startups is evidence of that.

I think this is generally an economic misunderstanding that a lot of people have. To them, it's "Every dollar Bill Gates has is a dollar less for everyone else, so that is unfair." In fact, PG made this argument much better than I can, here: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

That said, I did really enjoy how these teachers approached the art of teaching children. Challenging the children to examine and modify their own worldviews seems infinitely more effective than preaching to them about 'the right way.'

This is one of the best articles I've read here.

Initially, when left alone, the kids had a free-market society: they owned the resources (lego bricks) they found and exploited (stuff they built) but, nonetheless, they weren't excluding people for the sake of it. Hard-working and motivated kids had more power than other kids.

After months of hand-holding (I'm reluctant to say "brainwashing") by adults, they ended up building a "perfect", planned socialist society where everything was public and standard.

In future episodes:

Why We Banned Names "Individual, parent-assigned names can make children feel unique and special. We reassigned children names based on positive concepts and numbers, such as Equality 7-2521, Democracy 4-6998, and Unanimity 7-3304. Only then did children learn that we are one in all and all in one, there are no individuals but only the great we, one, indivisible and forever." †

Why We Introduced Mandatory Handicapping "Some children's varied talents and interests were causing disruption in the classroom. Each child was assigned a handicap, such as a headset playing random noises to level intelligence, ankle and wrist weights to offset strength, or masks to hide excess beauty. Everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way." ††

† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)

†† http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

Snore. I count 29 instances of the word "inheritance" on this page. [1]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/2005-09-22-forbes-list_x.htm

Whenever someone wants to attack capitalism, they always seem to attack people born into wealthy families. That has nothing to do with capitalism. Nothing whatsoever.

In fact, one of the GREATEST CHANGES to take place with the industrial revolution was the reduction in the prevailance of nepotism due to the importance of technical and managerial skills, rather than clannishness. Clannishness, family preferences, primogeniture, cousin marriages, etc, are all necessary to maintain feudalism, not capitalism.

If you really hate capitalism, go straight to the real alternative: Command economy. This is where some brain dead bureaucrat decides who gets wealth based upon adherance to political orthodoxy--which is essentially what the teachers did in the end. Works great with fixed resources like toys. Doesn't work so great when the fields need tilling.

[1] EDIT: Should be several higher. They only wrote "WalMart inheritence" once.

I certainly disagree.

Just because you weren't born into money doesn't mean you can't get there. That's the beauty of the free market, you have the OPPORTUNITY to succeed and get ahead.

If everyone and everything is the same, then why even bother doing anything better or trying?

Socialism scares me to no end because it is way easier to scream for support and get it than it is to actually make something out of yourself.

I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to have to live in a world that is built for the LCD.

I'm sorry, but i really am tired of this reddit content making the front page of Hacker News.

It's interesting that the children, when left to themselves, solved their own disputes peacefully through negotiation and a form of organically-grown community law. They had no cause to complain about unfairness until the teachers used arbitrary force to impose a solution that nobody wanted to a problem that nobody recognized as a problem.

I thought this was fascinating.

I know there have been a lot of new users lately, and a lot of us are concerned that the site will go downhill, but this is very interesting to me. I've never seen a more graphic demonstration of the huge size of the US economy.

To think, for example, that I grew up in fear of being nuked by New Jersey...

Thanks, everyone, for making it such a good first year.

http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html?19feb08