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The game is about massive investors buying control of governments. "Free market" - which means, an idealized market determined by laws of supply and demand, with a high level of competition and without government intervention - isn't the term for that.

The conditions for a truly free market are rarely met. It's a matter of degree; some markets are more free than others. When you're actually buying control of governments so you can use their military to steal resources from other countries, that's about as far from an ideal free market as it gets.

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"Capitalism" is the Marxist term. Critics making their own terminology often mix some sharps in with their definitions. It seems simpler to avoid the term - and instead talk about: "free markets".

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Ah, board games! Thinking like a greedy banker can help also on the computer; Victoria II is a simulation about making your country fit to win WWI. And just by being complex enough, the smartest players go neutral. Long glowing review by Dr. Devereaux https://acoup.blog/2021/08/... Scroll down to chapter: …Beneath the Crosses, Row on Row… As Azar Gat notes in War in Human Civilization (2006), for most of human history, war ‘paid,’ at least for the elites who made decisions. . In three centuries, the Romans probably increased the productive capacity of their empire by conquest 1200% . As Gat notes, the industrial revolution changed this, ...And I think it is the triumph of Vicky2‘s design that this very effect is produced not because the game makes a ‘war-is-bad’ sad-face at you - rather, the triumph here is that in producing a historical simulation which came close enough to simulating both the rising gains to capital and the rising destructiveness of war. ... It doesn’t take new, enlightened people to realize that war doesn’t pay in Vicky2 – it takes the experience of a war whose expense couldn’t ever possibly be justified by the return. Cynical human profit-maximizing does the rest." :D Interesting throughout.

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