The best summary of Trump's trade "philosophy" comes from Trashfuture's November Kelly, who said that Trump is flipping over the table in a poker game that's rigged in his favor because he resents having to pretend to play the game at all.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/26/i-dont-want/#your-greenback-dollar

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In the real life version of Elizabeth Magie's Landlords Game, monopolists really hate when people play prosperity, or even know that those rules exist.

Perhaps, when index fund investors begin to profit from the proceeds of monopoly and can no longer be swindled, the game turns into a kind of prosperity, and it is the winners, the monopolists, who will flip the board to start a new game of monopoly.

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-landlords-game/

The Landlord's Game: Lizzie Magie and Monopoly's Anti-Capitalist Origins (1903)

The story of how a homemade, anti-capitalist game created by a woman becomes a mass-produced uber-capitalist game that profited a man.

The Public Domain Review