His game reminds me of an old joke. A peasant finds a magic lamp and a genie appears. He offers him one wish. The peasant says, “My neighbor has a goat, and every day he has fresh butter and cheese. My goat died last winter, and now if I want butter and cheese I have to buy it from him. It isn’t fair.”
“So what is your wish?”
“I want you to kill his goat.”
Good one.
I wonder where Reich got the “imaginary” $1K that he “gave” to each of the two groups?
Free money?
btw - I guess investment, overhead, taxes, etc doesn’t enter into his “simple game.”
Here's another version of that joke, this one from Russia, I think repeated in a Chekov story:
The genie says to the peasant, you have one wish, you can have anything you want, but keep in mind that whatever I give you, I give your neighbor (who the peasant hates bitterly) double.
If I give you a new house, your neighbor gets two new houses. If I give you a new herd of animals, your neighbor gets 2 herds. If I give you a pile a gold, your neighbor gets 2 piles of gold.
The peasant thinks and thinks and finally makes his wish:
Pluck out one of my eyes!