"Trickle-down" was a rebranding campaign.

It used to be called Horse and Sparrow Economics, with the idea being the Horses eat the grain, and Sparrows peck their meals from the horseshit.

The wealth layer has been playing this game against the poors for a long time.

I've had similar thoughts about the auction house in World of Warcraft. Since the game caps the amount of gold you can have at a small fraction of the overall economy, no one person can buy everything and then jack up the prices.

Funny, because it taught me that that task in reality is impossible, given real nations can't load an old save file to fix their fuck ups in a simulation far, far simpler than reality.

Of course you could certainly argue that one person wouldn't be in charge of doing literally everything.

I mean, the moral is that free markets are a fiction when primary accumulation is illegal.

I can't simply claim a vacant property at the clearance rate. I need to bargain with a landlord at a cartel price. And thanks to public-private collusion, we routinely tax, trade, and subsidize properties at three entirely different figures.

Every economy is a command economy. The question you have to ask is who is in control.

Along those same lines, they didn't put parking lots in Sim City. They tried, but it completely fucked everything.

weird take. video games have to have a command economy because they are designed to be played. a free market city builder would just be a screensaver.