Usurping Utopia

Lauren RosenOctober 2013

Duke UniversityGame Theory and Democracy

Professor Hubert Bray

Lauren Rosen October 2013Game Theory and Democracy Day 2 Summary

Usurping Utopia Summary

Cooperation became conflict in day two of the ‘Money and Politics’ game. What started as utopia morphed into a competitive, dog-eat-dog atmosphere where no player could rest assured. The premise on day two was equally simple to that of day one. Day one designed itself to be cooperative—working for the conglomerate. Day two’s rules called for competition—ripping the conglomerate into twenty-one pieces (for the twenty-one members of the class), pieces which stuck together and then ripped apart multiple times with the drop of a chip.

Day two’s results left nobody shocked. After all, we were expected to uphold the every-man-for-himself premise. Any competitive setting yields to conflict—and the class certainly delivered. The roller coaster ride twisted and turned, and ups and downs abounded. First, the utopia implemented by president Nick dissolved within seconds in favor of a capable and overpowering Party on the rise. But although this Party proved successful, it was not invincible—as another Party ascended to take over, it would soon lose power again to the former Party. Finally, instead of ending smoothly, the roller coaster skidded to a stop—its halt riddled by scheming players who used questionable morals to advance their positions.

A particularly interesting facet defining day two was the emergence of two distinct political parties. Let them be called The Major Party and The Minor Party: Major for the coalition that maintained overwhelming power throughout the majority of the rounds, and minor for the Party with occasional spurts of influence and dominance. An especially compelling dimension of these formations lies in the fact that each party distinguished itself from the other with conviction and passion. Even in a game with zero real value at stake, alliances were built and a competitive spirit was fostered—drawing a thought provoking parallel between these insignificant Parties and the Parties which govern the United States. Whereas Parties in Money and Politics have no real tangible might, the Democratic and Republican Parties are all-powerful, almost omnipotent in modern America. George Washington warned the young United States against the formation of political parties in his 1796 Farewell Address, writing, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”1 Washington prophesized that political parties would perpetuate problems, and the American people actively ignored his advice. On a smaller scale, the Parties formed on day two created a shockingly similar model to the United States’ political system. Two, no more and no fewer, distinct parties were formed. One allied the wealthy while the other united the poor. Each created largely comparable policies for the management of the government, but nonetheless refused to merge—perpetuating conflict.

All of this action took place in a short hour and fifteen minute period. It is worth noting that in the same timeframe, day one’s game produced the polar opposite—a simple, monotone, non-competitive game. Day one sent players home happy, while day two planted pits in most stomachs, be they of the duped or the dupers. The account that follows will attempt to investigate the goings on of day two in greater detail, to reveal its nuances and study its strategies.

1 George Washington, The Address of General Washington to the people of America, on his declining the Presidency of the United States.

Lauren Rosen October 2013Game Theory and Democracy Day 2 Summary

Usurping Utopia

The first two days of the Money and Politics Game created a stark contrast. Where day one was bountiful, day two was sparse. Multiple players who found day one lucrative found day two bleak. Day one’s strugglers thrived on day two. But most strikingly, the happiness and prosperity felt by all on day one became but a memory—a past experience looked back upon fondly—with a single rule change.

The aforementioned rule change was as follows: every man for himself. The players were encouraged to work not for the greater good—but instead for personal rank. The Peace Corps became Wall Street, and universal prosperity became impossible. As Thomas Hobbes argued, humans are driven by passion, and passion leads to competition—an argument exemplified by our Game Theory and Democracy class. Hobbes also said that to avoid a state of total chaos, an absolute ruler must be appointed, and the entire populace of the state must unanimously support this ruler, without parties or factions—yet another piece of sage advice ignored by the class.

The unanimity fostered on day one never made itself present on day two. The populace was never content as a whole because the entire day was spent in split parties. In history, the formation of parties has inevitably led to conflict, and our class proved to abide by this general rule. George Washington warned the United States in his 1796 Farewell Address never to split into political parties, as parties cause nothing but discord. Our class temporarily set aside our knowledge of early American history, and instead chose to engage in power-hungry chip hunting within seconds of beginning the game.

The following image depicts the state of the game at the opening of day two, on the heels of day one, when all were equal under the law.

Nick began the day as President. He had fostered the previously mentioned pseudo-utopian society quite well on day one, but his control rendered itself short-lived on day two. A smart and self aware man, Nick knew that his presidency would likely not endure the switch from teamwork to solo-work, saying that, his utopian system, “Wouldn’t hold any water with the new rules.”2 Nick arrived in class already aware of his slipping hold on the presidency, and his worries were confirmed when a group—which for the purposes of this paper will be known as the

2 Nick George, Recollections of day 2.

“Major Party”—united and overthrew his regime.

The Major Party was conceived well before class commenced. The previous night had been ridden with emails and gossip regarding a revolution of sorts—to overthrow Nick’s system of equality in favor of a system fostering competition. This effort was led by David who would later become known as the “Rich President” by members inside and out of his own party. He himself stated that he based his preconceived alliance on wealth (consisting of himself, Chi-Chi, Alex Merriman, Jenna, Benemet, and Gloria), as these players together “had the majority of the money on the table.”3 These five players conspired with, and ultimately joined forces with another group of five, lead by Hannah, and also preconceived. Under Hannah’s lead, she and her followers (Cameron, Tony Nader, Alec and Basil) decided to join Nick’s alliance. Unbeknownst to her team, Hannah made this decision solely from a fiscal standpoint—she was after her own personal advancement, as the rules encouraged. She herself admitted, “I knew that joining the richest group was my best shot for increasing my wealth (given how few chips I had).”4 The final members to the Major Party were added in class, Jenna and Hillary, and the Party thus had “a majority [of 12] with one person to spare.”5 With a scheming majority already in place, the game thus began.

Nick was ‘impeached’ per say about thirty seconds into the game. With the Major Party ready for action, twelve hands were raised in favor of a change in power well before Nick could even “[Finish] his opening remarks.”6 And so began the Major Party era—which would be the longest reign of the day—under the leadership of David. David was elected by the Major Party and implemented a tax policy that would go largely unchanged throughout his rule. In his own words, David, “Implemented a 50% for every person not in the party and 0% tax for everybody in the party. My hope was that this would keep the twelve together and not want to join the minority. I thought a 50% tax was a good number because it wouldn't completely [alienate] the non party members, and it would increase the party members wealth.” This strategy was largely effective, as it was maintained for four of seven rounds—thus demonstrating that the Major Party, which controlled the majority of the class, also controlled the majority of the rounds of play (hence the Major Party).

The hierarchy at this point, with each Party’s respective tax rate, was as follows.

3 David Boyer, Recollections of day 2. 4 Hannah Schwennesen, Recollections of day 2.5 Hannah Schwennesen, Recollections of day 2.6 David Boyer, Recollections of day 2.

Nonetheless, even the Major Party had its struggles. Within the Party of twelve, there emerged two subparties: one of eight and another of four. President David invested with the pool of eight, while the remaining third of the Party pooled in a similar fashion. Overall, the larger subdivision was more successful, thus causing David to worry about the maintained allegiance of the smaller sub-faction of the Party. His suspicions were warranted, as it ultimately became clear that Basil and Alec had arrived at the point of movement, choosing to jump ship. Though not necessarily the most strategic move, this duo were the swing votes moving the power away from the Major Party for the first time that day.

Once Basil became a member of what we will call the “Minor Party” he was ready for compensation. He suggested that he be elected the new president in return for his newfound allegiance. He admitted to, “Quickly us[ing] this opportunity as a chance to become president.”7 This was one of Basil’s more clever ideas, as he started the day using a box of Oreos as leverage against other players. Though theoretically, compensation via Oreo could have been quite influential, the class did not quite buy it. Overall, Basil’s presidency was similarly unsuccessful. A series of relatively weak rolls led to the lack of sufficient profits for growth. This absence of monetary success led to a presidency devoid of any significant prosperity. This lack of growth led to another shift in power, relatively quickly. The Minor Party did not have the same level of control over its members—they were all relatively open to the idea of changing parties if personal advancement could be gained.

With this in mind, both Nick and Lauren each made conscious decisions to switch parties in the interest of their own respective wealth. Lauren had little trouble defecting—as the Minor Party had done little to benefit her, and her particularly meager chip stack was in need of growth. Sure enough, as a result of pooling with the Major Party, her, “20 became 120, and all of a sudden [she] had more than doubled [her] initial chip count.”8 In this new era of Major Party rule, Tony Nader was elected president. This choice was particularly interesting because though Tony is indeed a smart and capable student and leader, his successful ascension to the presidency had nothing to do with his intellectual abilities. Instead, Tony was chosen largely based on geography—he was seated in the middle of the table (a long thin rectangle, depicted on the following page) making himself much more accessible to a larger portion of the Major Party than any other president. This strategy proved effective enough to carry the class through the remainder of the day, as Tony ended the day as president.

7 Basil Chaballout, Recollections of day 2.

8 Lauren Rosen, Recollections of day 2.

The closing minutes of the game also brought some interesting and morally questionable movement. Hannah and Tony Nader had fostered an alliance from the very beginning of the game, which compellingly resurfaced at the day’s close. “The alliance was mainly based upon the fact that we both hail from Northern Virginia and have some mutual friends,” proving that alliances in this game have very little to do with intellectual, political, or ideological preference, and have more to do with convenience or superficial commonalities. But regardless of how the bond was made, Hannah and Tony decided to take control of the game secretly—by hoarding chips during Tony’s presidency, and also throughout the earlier rule of the Major Party. They dealt Cameron into their alliance, due to both table placement and friendship, and these three players thrived considerably at the game’s close, when they each took about a thousand chips from the Party’s pool. Though the move was subtle, most of the Party ultimately realized what had taken place, as the “Party became quite angry, but they were not surprised.”9 This general lack of shock came as a result of the fact that the behavior exhibited by the president and his friends was completely legal within the parameters of the game, and was almost to be expected at some point.

But overall, shady behavior was limited. The integrity of the class as a whole, even on a day with much competition and rivalry, was relatively high. Sure, there was questionable behavior—from chip hoarding, to party hopping, to Oreo bribing—but the game was in no way plagued by devious behavior. Instead, the two Parties remained true to their own members, with very few exceptions, and worked as teams. Looking over the proceedings and data, it is clear that the Major Party reigned supreme over the Minor Party on these days and those proceeding. But that is not to say that with more rounds of the game, the underdogs might prevail. Politics has time and again proven that a single party cannot hold power indefinitely. Even after the period dominated by the Democratic Republican Party—holding four United States’ Presidencies from 1801-1829—the Democratic Party eventually took over and changed the nation’s course under the leadership of Andrew Jackson, “The man of the people.” This demonstrates the fact that elections and parties are fickle—ever changing and evolving based on the needs of the populace.

9 Hannah Schwennesen, Recollections of day 2.

Never can a single party hold power for an infinite amount of time, nor will any organized Party exist in utter silence.

The following table provides a thorough numerical and statistical summary of the game played in day two. It is worth noting that David, one of the day’s presidents was the overall winner, while Ben, Brian and Isaac—non Major Party members—brought up the rear. Players like Hannah found major success on day two, moving from fifteenth place to fifth place, while players like Ben hovered consistently around the bottom of the standings.

The information that follows includes the data set—emails providing direct recollections from each player as written to Professor Bray, the game’s master.

CameronFor my strategy, I initially began by forming a pact with Tony and Hannah prior to class.

Our strategy was going to involve getting a large pool of players (roughly 8) to bet together for most of the class. I was suggesting keeping Nick and Alec and adding three of four others outside of the wealthy five. My reasoning was if we had the president and kept taxes even, eventually the nine of us would surpass the top 5. Near the end of class, if Tony, Hannah, or I were in charge of rolling on a large bet and tripled for the group, we would keep the money to split amongst us three.

What ended up happening at the outset of class was the formation of a new party with the five rich kids, our secret alliance of three people, and a select few others that gave us a majority and voted out Nick. I was all for this new strategy because it would help separate the top half of

the class from the bottom half of the class. The problem was that we weren't all sitting together so the resulting pools ended up being a pool of 8 on one side of the table and a pool of 4 on the other. Unfortunately, I was in the pool of four that didn't have the top five earners. We rolled poorly and they rolled well on the first turn so there was already a large discrepancy between the earnings of our party members. We fixed the problem by breaking into two groups of six at my suggestion so the pools would be more even but we were already behind.

I heavily contemplated joining the new party that was trying to form because I knew eventually they would get someone to turn against our original party. However, I didn't want to switch and alienate Hannah and Tony from our plan. Fortunately, the new party didn't last long, so it seems as though I made the right decision by sticking with the original party. We managed to get Tony elected president, which worked out nicely for our secret alliance of three. On the last turn of the game, Tony was in charge of several thousand chips in our pool and we stabbed everyone in the back and distributed them between Tony, Hannah, and myself.

In hindsight, I probably should have arrived a little earlier to sit closer to the middle, but the initial strategy of forming a large pool in the majority party and siphoning off earnings with Tony and Hannah worked quite well.

HannahFrom the very first day of class, Tony (Nader) and I established an alliance that was the

first priority for the both of us. The alliance was mainly based upon the fact that we both hail from Northern Virginia and have some mutual friends. We also befriended Cameron, and thus created a three person alliance. On the first day, our alliance didn't profit greatly during the game. However, I had made an agreement with Basil before today's game so that he would be in an alliance with Cameron, Tony, Alec, and I. Originally, we also had Nick in our group, but we decided that we would drop him from our alliance before today's game. Today, as we waited for class to start, I had a conversation with those in the richest group (one of whom I know quite well) and they asked me if my group would join theirs so that we would have a majority. They wanted to tax the minority party at 50% or 100% and then pool investments for the remainder of the game. I knew that joining the richest group was my best shot for increasing my wealth (given how few chips I had), and I discussed the plan with Tony. My group agreed almost immediately to the plan, but at that point we only had 10 people. Cameron recruited Jenna (because she was another extremely wealthy player) and Hilary, so that brought us to a majority with one person to spare.

As soon as the game began, our newly formed "majority" party began exchanging glances, waiting for the right time to bring the power into our hands. We elected David the president simply because he expressed interest (a bad idea in retrospect) and decided upon a 50% tax because we knew that a lower tax would still encourage the minority to invest and thus we could earn profit through taxes. Because of the spatial separation of our party, we split into two groups for pooling investments. The five richest, Tony, Basil, and I pooled our money, and Cameron, Alec, Hilary, and Jenna pooled their investments. However, we began doing much better than the other group, so Tony and Basil switched to the smaller group to level the playing field. I strategically stayed with the richer group because I knew that I would be more successful with their help. After a few turns, the other group in the majority party was making much less money than we were, so I told David and the other rich players that we needed to give them the taxes or pool our investments with theirs because otherwise they would leave the party. We distributed the taxes among them (although now I realize that David was taking most of the taxes) and decided to pool all of our money together. Despite our efforts, it was too complicated to

maintain such a large pool throughout the game, so it soon fell apart and we reverted back to our groups. Basil had very little money, and he began to waver as a party member. He knew that even if he did switch parties, the minority party would only have 10 people and would not be able to elect a new president. Basil offered Oreo cookies to anyone who would also switch parties, and Alec soon agreed. Therefore, we lost the majority and Basil became president.

Initially we were not very motivated to gain back the majority because we had already made such great profit. However, it was soon clear that we could easily bribe a member of the majority to join us, and one of the members of the majority offered to switch for 150 chips. Isaac soon caught on, however, and offered his alliance for 100 chips. We regained the majority, and Tony was elected president. In all of the chaos, I believe some additional people joined our party without unanimous approval. We began investing in separate groups again, and, because I knew the game was almost over, I told Tony (who had very little chips) that I would split my chips with him due to our alliance. Soon, though, it was clear to me that with his presidency, we could easily take huge portions of money from others. I continuously asked him to take the profits of pooled investments or taxes (which were more than 2000 chips) but he thought it was too early. My strategy was that we could each take 1000 chips or so and, with only a round remaining, we could pass on our turns and still win the game. Eventually, he listened to me and we split a large sum of chips between the two of us and Cameron. Our party became quite angry, but they were not surprised. Tony and I both felt bad about stealing, so we gave Jenna and Lauren each 300 chips. Tony had a little under 1000 chips, so I gave him whatever he needed to hit that point, but otherwise I kept the remainder of the chips.

Overall, I would say that most of my strategy was created spontaneously, excluding my central alliance with Tony (and, to a lesser extent, Cameron). I knew that I would have to steal money from the investment pool at the end if I wanted to get ahead of some of the richest players, so I definitely kept that option in mind. I feel as though most of my luck came from my central location at the table right next to the richest group.

Tony NaderTo start the game, all players began with about the same amount of money they ended

with last class, rounded to the nearest 10. Five of the 21 players began with a significantly larger amount of "money" than the rest of the class. Nick, our President from the first day, started as the President. This did not last long, however. Nick tried to institute a progressive tax, which caused the top five players plus seven more to vote Nick out of power. I was part of the lower seven players, and we agreed to team up with the "rich kids" in order to create the best money making environment for us. Little did most players know, Hannah, Cameron, and I have had a semi-secret alliance since the first day.

As the game went on, the rich became richer and the poor did not gain much. I found myself in the middle of the table, and I acted as the money exchanger between the two sides of the rich party. David, the Rich President, seemed as though he was doing a good job redistributing the profits from our investments to all of the player in the rich group. However, after he was voted out of power, I realized I had only 110 chips, five times lower than most kids in the group. After the game was over, we speculated, based on his high chip count, that David was taking some of the profits from the group investments for himself. Hannah, my secret partner in crime, noticed this much sooner and warned me about it. Once our group was elected into power and I as President, Hannah and I schemed to take all of the profits from the rest of our investments for ourselves and Cameron, our other alliance.

At the end of the game, I kept what profit we made from the rich groups last few investments and split it between Hannah, Cameron and I. While we still did not come in first place, we were much higher in the rankings. We had another plan to give all of our chips to one of us three so the winner would be from our alliance, but Professor Bray would not tell if this was our last game or not.

HilaryAs soon as I entered the room, I realized that play would be a bit different today than it

was last class, because there was a clear divide right off the bat. I was in the top 10 going into the day and I was hoping to either hold onto my #10 spot or rise up if possible. Cameron approached Jenna and me about joining the party that was planning to overthrow Nick before class began. Nick did a really good job during the first day, but since the objective changed, I felt no reason to not join the majority. At the same time, I received a text message in the group chat that I had from last class with Alex Zrenner, Isaac, Brian, and Jenna, but I decided to turn on that group, because, essentially, they didn’t have as much money as Jenna and I did and I didn’t want to be left out of the group who was ruling the game. I was in the first ruling party and in the ruling party that finished the game. I decided to not join the second ruling party because they didn’t have nearly as much money as the first ruling party did collectively and I didn’t care enough about the Oreos to allow them to buy me over. While it was a nice feeling to have two groups of people begging me to join in with them, I decided to stay with one group for the entire class period because I felt that was in my best interest.

Jenna, Cameron, Tony and I stuck together for most of class and we pooled our money together on most of our turns. We had some really bad luck and lost everything on maybe 3 or 4 rolls in a row, so we were unfortunately getting poorer while the other groups were getting richer for a period of time. With that, we decided to join the group of 12 investors, but that was chaotic and might not have been the best idea either. My strategy throughout the whole class was to gain the most money that I could, while not making any enemies, but unfortunately, I was a little too trusting, and I think I lost a great sum of money as a result. In the last few rounds, I gave 200 chips away for a few turns in a row and realized that I was probably cheated and should have been a little more careful with my money and a bit more attentive to follow how my classmates were playing the game.

When Cameron admitted that he had been involved in a plan to ultimately take all of the money that people had been pooling together on various turns, Jenna and I were angry and forced him to give us some of the money he collected. I think this was a reflection of true economic investments that become corrupt. While their intention might not have been to steal the money for the entire class period, once they realized that we were willing to throw our money at the group and we weren’t watching them incredibly closely, they probably decided that they could just pocket our money and return whatever was “enough to shut us up.” They (mostly David) would come over occasionally and give us money, claiming “it was everything they owed us,” but, although we were skeptical, there wasn’t much that we could really do to get back what we put in. We decided to join in with those who were richer than we were, and while they found themselves becoming richer and richer, we were not in the same boat. I ended up 10 th in the class rank, which was the same spot I started at. It was a very fun day and I look forward to discussing further!

JennaToday I began the game in third place.  Although I was not in the five person alliance

from last game who made up the other six richest members of the class, I was able to stay wealthy with lucky rolls and the head start I had by being one of the two people given fifty chips to start off the game.  When Nick was president and proposed a higher tax for the top six people,

I immediately rose my hand and he was quickly overthrown by a group of us who had discussed this earlier.  We elected David as president and began pooling our money together.

The strategy sounded ideal because I imagined that as all members of the ruling party became exponentially richer, I would remain on top being that I had started as number three. However, we quickly realized it was difficult to pool the money of twelve people on each turn and we split our ruling party into two groups of six based on our seating arrangements.  The group in the middle of the table was very lucky in their rolls, doubling or tripling almost every turn, while my half was not so lucky.  In total today, I only doubled my investment once and tripled my investment once.  I became frustrated with this and the lack of communication with the middle of the table but our ruling party was then overthrown.  

With Basil as president and taxes at 100% for the non-ruling party, we all stopped investing and quietly bribed some people to raise their hands and join our party.  We took over power again and elected Tony as president.  With Tony as president, the entire party started investing together again.  Being on the end of the table, it was difficult for me to communicate with some of the other members about what was being invested, how much we were making, and when the chips were being distributed.  At the end of the game when I realized that Tony and Hannah were being secretive about the money, I insisted they give me some of the money they had stolen because I had been allies with Tony all day and deserved the chips.  I ended up convincing Hannah to give me a red 300 chip from the pool that they had claimed for themselves. Overall, I feel that my position at the table, lack of communication, and pure bad luck are what led me to drop from third to ninth in the game today.

Alex ZrennerMy initial strategy in the game was to continue working with Isaac and Brian to create a

bank and to invest 40%. Since the bank idea was failing, we tried pooling our money- at this point Ben joined our trio and invested his 20 chips with us. It was then my turn to invest, and I lost the investment. Since the ruling party was investing and making such large profits, I became very concerned with investing anymore since I had lost 40% of what I had. Eventually I made back what I had lost, but was still making very small amounts in comparison to the ruling party.

Around this time, the ends of the table (myself included) began to work towards a majority. My side was dependent on Nick for maintaining some of the majority so when we did overthrow we would have enough votes. My side convinced Basil to join, and Basil gave Alec an oreo which solidified the majority. Basil was elected and we were in the majority, but did not have enough time to pool our funds and make any meaningful profits.

The majority changed once again, which I think happened because both Alec, Brian and Isaac joined the party. Since I was still trying to figure out how to set up the new party, the alliance between Brian, Isaac and I broke once they switched to the ruling party. I am a competitive person-even though I wasn't set on wining this game, I did not want to be last- and somewhat of a bitter person. As a result, I essentially gave up on the market. I had 70 chips, I figured I would not be last, and with taxes I had no reason to invest. Luckily, breaking the alliance with Brian and Isaac saved me from the final top ranking individuals from stealing the funds I did have.

David BoyerI went into today's round of the game with the same five that I left day one of the game

with. We didn't have a precise strategy going into the game, but I knew a few things to be true. 1 - The five of us had the majority of the money on the table. 2 - It would definitely be beneficial to continue to invest together. And 3 - In order to succeed we would have to be in the majoring, and

I also knew that we as a group and me as an individual would have to adapt to the goings on during the game. At the beginning of the class I discretely conversed with Hannah who also had a group of five. All we needed was one more person to join us and we had the majority, and this was even before class had officially started. We quickly got a group of two to join our party. Before Nick, the current president, finished his opening remarks the twelve of our hands were in the air. I quickly volunteered myself for president (I knew that later this would prove beneficial, I'll explain later). So, I became president with a majority of 12. To not be completely ridiculous but still make my part happy, I implemented a 50% for every person not in the party and 0% tax for everybody in the party. My hope was that this would keep the twelve together and not want to join the minority. I thought a 50% tax was a good number because it wouldn't completely disincentivize the non party members, and it would increase the party members wealth. My plan was to evenly distribute the taxes gained throughout the twelve of us. For the next four rounds our chips increased dramatically. I am a little unclear about the way the twelve split up the investing. For a while at the beginning that was close to me invested together and the four on the other side invested together. My eight was gaining money at a quicker pace so the other four wanted to change the numbers up a little bit. My strategy was to keep the twelve happy so we could remain the majority. For those four rounds when I was president I evenly distributed the profits and the taxes. When I saw it was clear that Alec and Basil were going to switch over I (which wasn't a smart decision for them, especially if you switch for Oreos), without anyone noticing didn't fully distribute a rather large profit to the my party members. When we lost power my five saw that I had more money than them, so to keep them happy I gave them each enough money to be at 1100 chips. At that point I started doing something that was very helpful. The rule was that the chips had to be on the table, but I made sure that the people that were on 'my side' didn't see all my chips.

After 'my side' was out of power for a little less than one round I went to the other side, with permission, and convinced a person with very low wealth to join our party for only 100 chips, which was a minuscule compared to the amount that we had. At that point things got a little out of control. It was a little unclear who was in the majority party and who was investing in which round. This is why I really paid attention to what I was investing and how much the profits were (not so much to who was investing and who was in the party or who was president), and this is where my wealth got much larger than everyone's else. I made sure that I got everyone of my profits and investments. It was also helpful to be the one distributing. On one of my turns that had a rather big profit (this is when Tony was president), I didn't fully distribute all the profit. Besides this time, I didn't really take money from other people. It was more me making sure that I got what was supposed to be mine. Also, on the last leg of the game when Hannah, Tony and one other took that big profit pot, I maid sure I got mine. I actually got six hundred chips from that profit. This was because the profit pot was so big that Hannah got flustered and I was given more than I deserved.

I think in the end if I were to sum up the ways that led me to being ranked number one, here is what I would have to say:1. It helped to be president, because I controlled distribution of the profits and the taxes. 2. Make sure you have a small group that you are close with and that you won't break up with. (Toward the end of today's round, our group was cracking because of the difference in the chip counts. If we played again it would be important to have that group reman intact.)3. It really helped me to be relatively in the middle of the room, and be close to the majority of the majority. Meaning that there was eight of the original twelve majority that was close to me. 4. If you have control (being the president) and investments are happening on the other side of room from you, pay close attention to what goes in and what comes out. Make sure you get your profits. This is what really helped me.

5. If your not part of the majority party do anything you can to become part of it. You can't do anything if your not in the majority. Even if it comes to bribery.

BenemetI made sure to get to class 45 minutes early to get a middle seat. When I got there, Gloria

and Alex had already saved David, Chi Chi, and me a seat. Ben was there, too, but he still didn't seem interested in pooling with us. I made sure that we, as in the group of five, were still going to work together since we hadn't seen each other since Thursday of the previous week. David and Hannah walked in soon after I did and that's when the strategizing began. I originally opposed incorporating anyone else in our five person pool, but Alex seemed to be trying to get Hannah in our group. The problem was that Hannah had already formed an alliance with some people on her side of the room. Once the everyone started coming in, it was clear that Alex and Hannah were trying to form a majority so I finally gave in and supported their idea. By the time Nick announced his new progressive tax law, the other side of the room had already formed an alliance, with the exception of Alex (the girl), Ben, and another guy whose name I can't remember. We immediately elected David as our new president and set a 50% tax on those who weren't part of our group. We all agreed, or at least my side understood, that we would invest in two different pools and the tax that was taken from the minority would be split evenly between the majority. I thought this was fine, as long as I would make money. As we started to invest in pools, our group of six: Hannah, Alex, Gloria, David, Chi Chi, and I started to double and triple our investments while Jenna's group lost some of their investments early on. In order to prevent any animosity between the two groups, we decided to distribute the tax money after the second round (I'm 100% sure about this), especially since Jenna and Hillary were getting a little anxious since we were making money and they weren't.

A couple of rounds into the game, Basil started to get frustrated since he wasn't making that much money. The minority was also frustrated since their tax was so high, and so they tried to form a majority by bringing in Basil and Alec into their group. I threatened Basil several times with warnings and consequences that he would face if he ended up switching over. He ultimately did and we played one round without investing anything. During this round, I asked Dr. Bray if David and I could walk over to Jenna's side and discuss plans with them. It was during this time, that I bribed one of the minority players on that side to vote with us to elect a new president. I eventually got his vote by getting Gloria to pay him 100 chips. We then elected Tony as our new president, and made the original traitors get taxed at 100%. Now, Jenna and the people on her side were wanting to pool as a group of 12 since they weren't very lucky during the first few rounds, and so we agreed. The problem was that with so many people investing in one turn, there were bound to be some mistakes in the distribution process. This is when I felt that sticking to two groups of six or even three groups of four would definitely be more efficient. As we made more and more money, the amount that we invested grew, until we started investing up to 360 chips on one person's turn. Towards the final round, we were investing 700 chips at a time and actually doubled and then tripled. Tony was the president at this time and what I didn't know was that he had formed an earlier alliance with Hannah, so when the final round came to an end, instead of evenly distributing the money, he split all the profits between him, Hannah, and David. In the end, I ended up staying where I was at the end of day one (4th richest). If we play next time, I will not play fairly, seeing that David ended up being the richest since he kept some of the tax profits to himself throughout the game.

BasilToday’s game was filled with different tactics and strategies, some of which were

successful and others which weren’t. The ones that were not seemed too be either too complex, or were hindered by communication limitations, strong alliances, and many other reasons. For

example, today I came in with a box of Oreos thinking I was going to use them to entice my way up to presidency, then tell everyone if they invest more than half their chips on a single turn, I would give them a cookie regardless of whether they won or lost that investment. This plan was logically feasible in that having people invest more than half of their chips will statistically make them lose more than they gain and allow me a higher rank (based on the 40% magic number of investment). However, as soon as I entered the room I realized it was destined for failure for the following reasons: I overestimated the incentivizing power of the Oreo, it was too complicated to enforce, and it was not easy to overcome the alliance power I had formed upon entering the class (therefore not letting me become president).

Even though this plan failed, I had many more up my sleeve. First and foremost, I knew based on previous game experience that having an alliance with a group of people to pool money with on each individual turn will increase the amount of money I receive from investments.  This strategy worked out excellent in that the party I was pooling money with (allowing me to invest multiple times per round) was the party that was in power. We got zero taxes and all of us were happy because we were both in power and had no worries of being overcome by the other losing party, since we were obviously making way more money than them (we had no taxes and had more people to pool money with per turn). All was fine and great until I realized that I actually did not have as much money as everyone else in my party did. I then began hearing people calling me in to form a coalition with them to override the currently winning party. They needed two more people, so I quickly used this opportunity as a chance to become president.

The plan was to betray the people in my alliance and become the president of the losing party.  But first, to gain the other swing vote, I gave a student three Oreos and surprisingly was able to get him to join. I also had to guarantee myself presidency by making sure that the condition of betraying the winning party was succession to power. The reason why I wanted the presidency was because I saw that time was running out, and I wanted to make money fast by having power over the “treasury.”  My plan was to use my presidential power to accumulate money in the treasury and then steal it at the end of the game, hence winning the game as well. Even before my betrayal, I was in fact planning to wait for my turn and to have everyone pool their money on me but never give it back to them as well. However, this did not work accordingly because the call for betrayal was before my turn came.  Besides that, even though the presidency seemed to be a huge success, I was again cut short by a swing vote somehow happening to allow David to quickly snatch up power and totally exile me from the game with a 100% tax rate. Thankfully I was able to make 130 chips (and 20 earlier in the game) on the last turn by selling my Oreos to Chi-Chi, hence saving me from rank 13 and placing me at rank 11 despite the massive double-cross of Hannah and two others that happened at the end as well.

KushalThe game was extremely frustrating this time around. Now that the ranking system was

implemented, it became clear that humans are not always altruistic. The idea of maintaining a utopian society fell apart almost immediately. Nick tried to propose the idea of a higher tax on the wealthier members of the group. I was in complete support of this idea - after all, the only way the rest of us had a chance was to bring the top 6 down.

However, it was almost immediately clear that an email had been going around to only certain members. They formed a coalition (unfortunately, one that I was excluded from) and taxed the rest of us at 50% while maintaining no taxes on themselves. This would have been a sound strategy except for one thing - the rich would keep getting richer while the middle/poor would stay there. In this version of the game, it doesn't matter how many coins you have; it matters how many coins you have relative to the rest of the class.

Thus, it didn't really make sense why the poor were allied with the rich. Didn't they see that, yes while they may move up to 10th place, that still wasn't good enough. The only possible solution would be for everyone besides the top 6 form a coalition and tax the rich at 100%. This would provide enough of a buffer to prevent the party from losing power while also allowing the rest of us a chance to reduce the income disparity. This was the biggest campaigning point we had and we advocated it strongly.

We eventually got 2-3 people to switch over to our side. It was harder than anticipated because the party had split up the non-party members at opposite sides of the table. Basil was the last vote needed and he was eventually convinced to switch. However, it made absolutely no difference because someone switched over again (I also have no idea what happened towards the end). The whole experience was somewhat frustrating because it seemed obvious that the poor shouldn't have been allied with the rich. The rich needed to be taxed heavily to bring them down. I would like to hear what the party was thinking and how the rich convinced the poor to join them.

Alec Kunzweiler I started day 2 in 7th position with 150 chips. I immediately became part of the majority

and elected David the president. I formed a group with 5 other students to pool our chips and bet together to split profits. Unfortunately, Our group of students did not make profit as quickly as the other group in the majority. Also, I did not like working with Cameron and Hannah as I felt they would betray me in the end. So the logical option would be to launch a preemptive move and switch alliances to form the new majority. When the new majority overthrew David and established Basil as president I was in a good position as the chip leader in the new party which would mean that I had the greatest chance of advancing to the number one spot as long as I remained in that majority. As it turned out my new majority was much weaker than the previous and as the power switched again I was punished for my treachery. I spent the rest of the game taxed at 100 percent.

IsaacBefore day two, I sent an email to the twelve members with the lowest chip totals. I

hoped to form a majority party that could overthrow Nick and, if all went well, flip the scoreboard on its head. Unfortunately, Nick was immediately overthrown by a different majority party of which I was not a member. So began my mad scramble to overthrow David and form a new party. Because the majority party was composed of the richest citizens, I argued that whoever flipped sides would have a very good shot at winning the game (they would continue to profit at a high rate while other wealthy players gained some or none at all). Unfortunately, the majority players I spoke to seemed content with their positions in the party.

Eventually, two majority members were convinced to flip. Before the vote, I thought I had secured enough votes to gain the presidency. Unfortunately, it seemed Basil had been promised the presidency as a condition of flipping. Before the influence of the new party was felt, wealthier class members attempted to bribe members of the ruling party to switch sides. I actually accepted a bribe offer of 150 chips, but was not secretive enough in closing the deal. A neighboring member quickly said he'd switch sides for 100 chips, and just like that, I was out of luck.

By the end of class, I found myself in the undesirable position of being out of favor with both parties. Out of sheer desperation, I placed an overly aggressive bet and lost it all. I proceeded to raise my hand for the remainder of the class period, knowing that I was unlikely to

effect the game, but feeling it was all I could do. A last minute scheme for me to take and keep a neighbor's chips while purporting to bet them and return profits was ended by an unlucky roll. I finished the day with only 10 chips, 60 fewer than I started the day with.

I feel I worked hard at forming strategies, but none paid off. Bad luck played a roll (I lost my investment on my final five consecutive turns), but it was not the most influential factor. Day two showed me the truth of the statement "money is power." It would have been nearly impossible to solidify a party of the poor; someone was bound to flip for a bribe. Despite my ultimately poor showing, I feel I learned a lot, particularly regarding the enormous influence money is capable of exerting in politics.

Chi-ChiI pre-empted Tuesday's playing of the game by emailing the five in my company (Gloria,

Behement, Alex, and David) and encouraging them to look also into the political aspect of the game, not just the making money aspect. I received one response from Gloria that didn't lead to any plan. I entered class Tuesday wary as I was the richest person in class, therefore the biggest target. The other four in my company were already planning a merge with Hannah and her cohort when I arrived to class. Somehow we decided that David should be president. As soon as David was elected president Alex and I had a conversation to ourselves where we voiced our concern at David as president, but we decided to see how he did before trying to overthrow him/cause any tension within the company. The new coalition had 12 members so I began to pool my money on the turns of every person in the coalition. We realized that it was two complicated to invest on all 12 turns so we broke into groups of 6, divided by location, and invested with our 6, but we were still one party.

As the game went on and David's policies took effect I repeatedly encouraged him to lower everyone else's taxes to 20%, keep the coalition's taxes at 0%, and tax any rebels at 100% so people wouldn't be so unhappy and try to overthrow us. I grew increasingly nervous and unhappy at the chaos of trying to pool on 11 different turns. I also did not like not being able to see my money as it got to the further end of the table. I voiced my concerns to Gloria and Alex who had the same concerns. We could sense a change in power on its way, so we began to talk to Nick's group to see if we could join them. Nick refused, stating that we would turn on the group as the taxes he would need to impose on us to equalize the income of all players would make us so unhappy that we would betray the group. I got the sense that he also wanted to lead an uprising of the poorer players in the game and didn't want us "scheming rich people" on his team. The rest of his group was more than willing to let us in so we tried to bring them to our side and just leave Nick. We couldn't get our group together in time before the change in power.

While I was being taxed at 100% I did not invest. I told the coalition that we should just buy someone's vote so we could be back in power and we did relatively quickly. I ran for President, unsuccessfully, and Nick became president. The same tax policies were imposed except Basil and another player were taxed at 100%. Investing with the coalition was becoming more and more chaotic so I stopped investing on every turn.  Gloria and Alex were also unhappy with the way things were going so we would put a little into the group investment and save the big investments for investing on each other's turns. We were really dedicated to keeping the original 5/the company (me, Gloria, Alex, Behemet, and David) together, but decided to be the Core 3 just in case. During this part of the game we noticed that David was disproportionately rich so we made him distribute. I was convinced that he merely made a mistake returning investments because he re-distributed so willingly, but this was proven not to be true at the end of the game. As we got to the last few minutes of the game it became clear that David would be the wealthiest person in class and I the second wealthiest. As there was no way I was going to be

first, I decided to give Basil 120 points for his whole pack of Oreos and therefore came in 3rd. I thought this was a good decision because I could still have a relatively high rank and leave class with something tangible (I also really like Oreos, hadn't had breakfast, and had another class after GTD). At the end of the game, when it became clear that David had siphoned off our profits, Gloria, Alex, and I realized we were the only people left truly invested in the company and decided to have each other's backs should we play again.

Tony QiaoIt appears that the rich people had secretly sent out an email and thus planned an alliance,

quickly gaining the majority with 12 people and leaving the minority party trying to sway 2 people. I was part of the minority party that was taxed at 50%. Using the calculations shown in the previous class along with accounting for the new tax policy, the optimal betting percentage was roughly 20%. This would yield an expected return of approximately 2%. This led to our small group that was part of the minority to pass on betting since the expected return was low and every time we earned money, the majority would also earn some.

However, on second look, it may have been more advantageous to bet the 20%. Most of the majority was much richer than the minority and the gap between the rich and poor was enlarging. Betting would still give a positive growth for the minority. In addition, by betting some, I could possibly advance my position among the other poor players. Since the gap was very large, it would be difficult to become one of the rich players so it would be strategic to try to improve my position among the poor players. I could also attempt to convince the other poor players to invest in me and then keep the earnings. This way I would greatly improve my ranking while the poor players would be helpless to stop me since they are still part of the minority party and I would simply not vote with the minority, making it more difficult for them to gain the majority. In addition, the gap between me and the poor players would be large enough that they would likely not catch up to my position. The risk in this would be that in case the poor players gained a majority, I would be the target of high taxation. Yet this is a small risk, given that the minority in the beginning was 9 players and given that I don't support the minority, the minority would need to sway 3 players from the majority.

Ideas we came up with to sway the majority was monetary gifts and persuasion about the strategic advantage for them.

So it was also more difficult to sway players from the majority to the minority given that the majority was the rich people as any bribery would be less than that of which the rich people could give. In our case, we were somehow able to sway 2 players, gaining a majority. However the rich quickly regained the majority by swaying another 2 players with monetary gifts. In my opinion, it would be more strategic for these 2 switchers to stick with the minority after receiving the money. If they stick with the majority, the majority will simply get richer along with them so it would be difficult for them to advance their ranking. On the other hand, switching would make them the rich ones in the majority party as the majority is now the original poor minority. They would also be able to prevent the rich people from getting more money. In that case, the rich party would have to convince on of the poorer players to switch such that the closest higher ranking players to that player would be on the opposite party.

GloriaAs I started the game today, I wasn't sure if our alliance of 5 (the five richest) was still in

effect--no one had emailed me back besides Chichi, and I was unsure if we still held strong, or if I had somehow been cut out from the group. When I got to class, however, our group of five

decided to stick together, and quickly joined with Hannah, Tony, and their group to form a majority, ousting the utopian Nick from presidency.

We decided to tax the others at fifty percent, something both Chichi and I disagreed with, because it fostered discontent in the minority group. But we were quickly outvoted, and the group decided not to tax itself. After this, we thought we would split into two 6-person groups, to make the investing efficient and more easily divisible than if we invested on all 12 members' turns. This soon backfired, however, as Jenna and some of the others farther down the table rolled unluckily, and wanted to bet as a group.

Things became chaotic after that, as we tried to all invest on all turns, and I think this chaos is what contributed to Basil defecting and joining Nick's group--no one knew if they were receiving the correct payoff, and this made people suspicious. After Basil defected, we paid off a member of the new majority to join us in forming a majority again, and it worked. At this point, there was a lot of tension and disagreement in the group because of how difficult, logistics-wise, investing on turns was. Honestly, after the first round of Tony's presidency, I had no idea what was happening, and ended the game two places below where I started.

Nick GeorgeI came into class knowing there was little to no chance of me remaining president was

very small.  I had initially ran on the promise of a utopian society - an idea that wouldn't hold any water with the new rules.  Even so, I figured that I would try to garner support from the less wealthy members of the class by way of a progressive tax.  I thought I had sent out an email with this idea, but I guess it didn't go out.  Either way, upon arriving to class I immediately saw that my suspicions were right as I was pushed out of the ruling party.

Being left out of the initial party left me in a very difficult position. Not only was I part of a small minority, I was also being taxed at 50%, making investment barely worth the risk.  At this point I knew that my only move would be to try and bring a couple members of the other party to my side.  I targeted the poorer members of the party using the logic that they would never be able to pass the richest members of the party given the current configuration.  After an extended negotiation I was finally able to sway Basil and one other party member (I can't remember who) to our new party.

The new party quickly voted Basil as president (as we had agreed earlier) and he placed a 100% tax on non-party members.  Sometime in that subsequent round, the richest members of the class were able to sway enough participants back to their side to topple our party and elect a new party.  When this happened, I knew that my chances for that class were essentially sunk.  I wouldn't be able to raise another coup after the miserable failure of the last.  The new president even made a point of penalizing the traitors and taxing them at 100%.  My tax remained at 50%. By this point there was very little time left in class, so I essentially sat back and let time run out.

Ben ZhangMy plan was to finally try to pool my money together with other people. I refused to join

in the mega-alliance that formed early on, since I didn't trust any of the people (especially the Northern Virginians). This worked for a few rounds. I pooled money with 3 others: Alex, Brian, and Isaac. We made a modest profit. Meanwhile, I refused to give up my seat, since I was right in the middle of the mega-alliance. I figured that by splitting them in two, I might be able to to sway one or two side over to my side. There were 12 people in the alliance, and I was one of the 9

remaining ones. We therefore needed two people for a majority of 11. This seemed to be working at first, since the right-half of the mega-alliance started getting unlucky and losing money. However, before any of them could switch, the left half of the minority managed to convert some members of the mega-alliance.

When Basil and Alex switched sides, I was happy, since I thought that the new alliance of 11 would be able to last, and I would start making a much larger profit. However, Brian, Isaac, and some other members of the new alliance accepted bribes to join the mega-alliance, which was kind of disappointing. When the new alliance took over, they again instituted a 50% tax. At this point, Alex and I decided to stop investing, so I kept passing for the rest of the game, with the exception of an all-in bet that I took at the end because I didn't care anymore. Luckily, I managed to double my money on that bet. In the end, I only gained 10 chips. Brian and Isaac ended up with fewer chips, though, which made me happy. Also, a mini-faction in the mega-alliance stole the profits from the last round of betting and still didn't win. I took these events as an example of the triumph of morals and karma.

LaurenThough I am not necessarily proud of my integrity throughout the entirety of today's

game, I am proud of my end result. Now I make it sound as though I played with some sort of malicious will--but that was not the case. I simply found myself fed up with the lack of vertical prowess in my pile of chips and decided to make a change.

I started the day with 50 chips, ranked #20 in a class of 21. Because I was neither a member of the initial ruling party, nor was I seated near the ruling party, I found myself at the end of the table with little hope for upward growth in my pile. Though those sitting around me tried to form a plan to overthrow the party, I knew it would probably crumble, as the system used to create an opposition did not leave any valuable incentives for those who would cross over to our team. Thus, when Basil finally joined our team and the power shifted, I knew that it would be short-lived. At this point personally, I was tired of having the smallest pile at the table, and I knew a change had to be made if I wanted to end the day better than I began it.

After observing the actions of the initial party from afar--through eye contact and eavesdropping--I knew that they were already constructing a ploy to regain power mere seconds after they were overthrown. So when they got ready to raise their hands, I decided I might as well join them, hopefully giving myself the first chance for advancement in the game. (Until this point, my moves were heavily taxed, and my luck was low, so I went from 50 chips to 20 chips very quickly, before deciding to switch parties). So I raised my hand with the others about 10 minutes into the rule of my former party, and from then on my experience changed. I became their "utility vote"--the thirteenth member of the party who would keep them in power if someone (like Basil earlier in the day) defected. I also was allowed to pool money with them, including an investment of my only 20 chips, and was assured that even if I lost everything, I would be thoroughly compensated for "working with the party." I had nothing to lose, which was why it was easy to give my remaining chips to the pool. Quickly, my 20 became 120, and all of a sudden I had more than doubled my initial chip count. Though after this initial surge, my count fluctuated up and down around the 120 mark, I was ultimately compensated with 80 more chips when the pool was redistributed before the game's close. 

The cherry on top of my decision to jump ship came once the game had ended--when Hannah, one of the party's leaders, was giving away "free chips" to her allies. I looked at her with a forlorn face, saying that I still had only two hundred compared to her twelve hundred, and she

handed me a white chip (30 pts.) just because I "looked so sad." I'm not sure what this says about me or the party's leadership, but I'd say it worked out nicely for me.

So I went from 20th in the rankings to 12th, one of the biggest ranking leaps in the class. Though sure, I would've loved to have come out on top, or broken into the top half, I'd say I did pretty well considering I literally started from the bottom. Today's game started out very interesting to watch, as I saw dynamics shaping and alliances shifting, and was also interesting to play once I decided to really jump into the game. I think I played it pretty well, and my almost-quintupled chip count reassures my morally-questionable decision to leave my original team.