Monopoly was a fun game when I was a kid. A little infuriating sure, but family fun nonetheless. I’m going to go as far as to say that it was an educational game too. It taught me how to manage my money and how it was bad spend outside your limits; most importantly, it taught me not to trust my dad with property deed cards when I wasn’t looking. 

All in all though, Monopoly brought me happy childhood memories, and I don’t think I ever gleaned the board game’s true meaning until I was much older (which is that monopolies are bad by the way). And I think that to a lot of people today, “Monopoly” still means nothing more than a board game that now has way too many themed editions.

However, monopolies are a huge problem, probably even more so now than they were during early America. The resources and tools of the digital age have given large companies and corporations an endless supply of loopholes and shortcuts in order to hide their monopolistic desires. If the internet is the “Wild West”, then large companies are those pioneers obsessed with manifest destiny, ready to come and bring order to a “unorganized” media landscape. 

I bring up the topic of monopolies because of a recent case study I had to read for my Graduate School. In 2014, the Federal Communications Commission reported that ethnic/racial minorities owned just 3% of the 1386 full-power commercial broadcast T.V. stations in the United States.

THREE PERCENT?!

Now I want to cut off any social justice comments at the pass and say that there’s nothing wrong with being white and male (despite what a lot of the internet says).

However, I do think there’s a problem when the only voices out there making the decisions are white and male. 

Ignoring the international aspect of this issue and focusing solely on the intra-national, America is a melting pot, and America is great because of the wide variety of cultural influences that it’s citizens bring to the table.

Diversity is GOOD

It brings perspective, empathy, and drives people to compete, which in turn leads to innovation.

But there’s going to be a problem when most of the primary ways that Americans get their entertainment and information is directed and managed by a homogeneous population.

And now we’re living in a society where 6 major companies own almost every form of media out there in America:
(Source: https://www.webpagefx.com/data/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media/)

-National Amusements (MTV, BET, CBS, Metacritic, etc.)
-Disney 
-Time Warner
-Comcast
-News Corps (Fox)
-Sony

Out of all 6 of those companies, all 6 CEO/Owners are males, and only one them is Asian; the president of Sony, Kazuo Hirai. Even then, he owns the smallest share of the 6 companies ($34.1 billion compared to Comcast’s $148.2 billion). 

My point is this:
Diversity drives innovation and progress.

When diversity is introduced to any mixture, there are different, and sometimes conflicting, viewpoints. And when there are multiple parties and people competing for attention (or market-share), then people innovate and try to sell themselves to the public harder. And as a result of this, the consumer will benefit with a better overall end experience. 

According the case study I read, the FCC made some moves in 2014 to try and prevent broadcasting companies from controlling more assets, but it’s not enough. With the repeal of net neutrality and the death of a free internet on the horizon, we need to have more diversity in that corporate sphere.

When everybody is on the same page and has the same opinion; sure, it’s nice and stress-free. But you know what it also is? BORING.

And it just means that it’ll be that much harder for what minorities are left to get their word in edgewise. We need to stop thinking of “Monopoly” as a board game that ends friendships and start thinking of “Monopoly” as a real world issue that will end innovation. 

Unless you like watching a different iteration of the Brady Bunch until the end of time.