Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

Recently, while surfing the net for blog ideas, I came across something of a cool thing on CNN.com. Apparently the maverick webmasters at at CNN have come up with a new concept for a stock trading game called Political Market in which commodities and companies are replaced by political opinions.

Very simply, players are given 5000 imaginary dollars to buy and sell stocks and then asked a multiple choice question such as, “Who do you think has the best chance of getting Iran to comply with international weapons sanctions?” The various choices are names shown as multiple choice answers with their dollar amounts determined by the percentage of people in the game who gave that answer i.e. 25%= $25.00. However, if the actual value of an item is being debated, let’s say a barrel of oil is $90.00. Then the price is not a percentage of people in favor, but a literal value. But in each case, the player must buy or sell according to what he or she foresees as the most likely outcome.

Simple, right? Well, yes. This game of buying and selling works much the same way as a real stock trade. But this type of trading is much more volatile as it is not determined by just the sales success and profit of an item or business, but more so on public opinion which of course, can be as fickle as a toddler in the vegetable isle in Wally’s Grocery Shack in Beeswax, Ohio. Think of your high school rumor mill. Now think of that same chaotic deluge except now with Barack, Hil-Rod and Kim Jong-il thrown into the hat! Throw in the fact that the initial public offering is determined by silly gossip among the people and you’ve got fuuuun crap!

To make a profit all you do is subtract your price from $100.00. The difference is your profit. It’s that simple! The profit is obviously greater if your choice was in the minority and lower if in the majority. So, there isn’t a whole lot of leeway there… but who really cares? it’s fake money!

Anyway, in this blogger’s view, it’s the perfect way to waste time while actually getting to see to how the socio-political circus operates without having to run a campaign, balance the budget, or dodge your reverend! Amen!

Until we meet again, Friends…. I hope that this new game keeps your minds waxing poetically!

To play Political Market go to http://politicalmarket.cnn.com/

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