2016/02/19 – Podcasts, Entitlement

Do you listen to podcasts? I’ve gotten into the habit of listening to podcasts during my bike rides. They make the time fly! My favorites are: Hardcore History, TED Radio Hour, WTF with Mark Maron, Stuff you should know, Real Time with Bill Maher, Fresh Air, NPR Politics, & Always Listening.

Please email me, and tell me your favorites.

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I was listening to one this morning about entitlement. Psychologists performed an experiment using the game Monopoly. Before starting the game each player rolled the dice and the player with the highest roll, became the entitled player. He or she would get $400 instead of $200 when they passed GO, and they also got to roll twice in a row, enabling them to move around the board faster.

The entitled player always won, usually very quickly.

After the games, they interviewed the entitled players and asked them “How was the game”. All of them credited their success to their game play, strategies, and good luck in dice rolls. Not a single one said they won because they had a clear advantage, or had special privilege.

This reminds me so much of Donald Trump. He holds himself to such a high standard of achievement and success, when in fact he inherited $200,000,000 from his father, and experts say that if he just left that money in the bank, he would be worth much more than he is today. So has he really been a good businessman?

But it also reminds me of myself. I pride myself with being a self-made man, growing up in a poor family and starting out my career in a mailroom. I pat myself on the back thinking “I’ve done pretty well for myself”, when in fact I had such an incredible advantage growing up a white male in the 1950's in the United States.  

Later,
Steve