Quote Originally Posted by Ironside View Post
The American dream gives another perspective perhaps? The reason social democracy got the worker support is the realisation that the deck is stacked. The welfare neightbour is disliked, but he's worth it if he's the price of restacking the deck.

Personally I've found "the slave and the president" (or Daifugō since by some reason it never got an English name) to be an excellent illustration of the stacked deck in society. The distrinct rule is that the loser(s) (slave) of the last round gives their best card(s) to the winner(s) (president) while getting the worst in return. After that you play normally. So the odds of going from last place to the first in one round is possible, but in practice it's very hard to move more than 1-2 places in any direction. View one round as a generation and you'll see the establishment of an upper class (the winners) and a lover class (the losers) that's quite rigid.

So no matter how good player you are, that biased card trade will entrench you towards you current position.
There is an English, at least an Aussie name. Presidents and Arseholes.