By Timothy D. Terrell
Ludwig von Mises Institue
March 2000


Statism has so permeated our culture that even the games we play
reflect the popular belief in omnipotent government. For example,
one of the most successful computer games of all time is the SimCity
series, which requires the player to plan a city in exhaustive
detail from uninhabited terrain. Over five million copies of the
game have been sold, and each version to date has reflected a
government-centered view of the world.

The latest version of the game, SimCity 3000, takes graphics to new
highs and municipal statism to new lows. As in previous versions,
the player dictator is required to use tax revenues or bonds to
build critical parts of a growing city. An astonishing array of
products and activities - roads, mass transit, electric utilities,
water systems, airports, seaports, fire protection, police,
hospitals, schools, colleges, museums, libraries, stadiums, parks,
and zoning - all fall within the purview of the "mayor." The latest
version adds solid waste disposal and pollution reduction to the
myriad obligations of municipal government. A malevolent player can
even bring down natural disasters on the hapless citizens, rounding
out the list of god-like authorities and powers.

Building infrastructure, zoning, and imposing various regulations
and social programs induces immigration and development in the zoned
acreage. The game' s simulator factors in population density,
commuting distance, crime, land value, water supplies, school
systems, pollution, and a host of other variables before generating
buildings for zoned sites. The government plans; the citizens dutifully react.

The equations for the simulator must have been devised by faithful
socialist planners. The fatal problems of interventionism and
socialist economic calculation are ignored. For example, city parks
enhance land value in surrounding areas instead of becoming centers
of crime and depravity as they do in the real world. Tax-funded
homeless shelters, public entertainment, and command-and-control
regulation tend to produce positive outcomes for cities. Private
schools, churches, and charities are completely out of the picture
as participants in the social order; everything important has civil
government as a reference point if not a funding source. In fact,
nothing happens in the game until the government spends money. In
keeping with the assumptions of socialist planners, the simulator
treats residents as though they are sheep, virtually incapable of
new ideas of their own and in desperate need of being shepherded and corralled.

It did not seem to occur to the game' s designers that the functions
they impute to municipal government can be handled by a free market
(and with much greater success). Turning over fire protection,
garbage disposal, education, medical care, or road management to
private providers is apparently beyond their imagination. Yet the
same company schizophrenically produced a similar game, SimTower,
which requires private capital owners to allocate vast quantities of
critical resources.

At least overtaxed, overregulated residents of SimCity can still
vote with their feet. A particularly tyrannical mayor will observe
citizens fleeing to neighboring towns while deserted buildings
appear on the screen. This is, in fact, one of the more realistic
aspects of SimCity. As long as it is easy for oppressed residents to
flee, they will do so. That is one reason so many statists dream of
federal taxes and regulation rather than the municipal or state
equivalent. Because it is much more difficult to emigrate from a
country than to leave a city or state, federal taxes and regulation
can be far more oppressive before causing an exodus. If regulation
to prevent urban sprawl produces refugees when enacted at the local
level, it will be attempted at the federal level. If local taxes
cause residents and businesses to leave for a neighboring town, then
local governments will let the federal government exact most tax
revenue and clamor for grants or transfers.

It would not be difficult to modify the game to substitute
entrepreneurial planning for government scheming. Of course, no
computer can ever come close to simulating the dynamic, complex
environment in which entrepreneurs operate. As Mises demonstrated,
humans do not act according to fixed equations, and computers cannot
simulate the role of ideas in an economy. Yet, even with these
limitations, such a game could be a useful educational tool
illustrating the difficulty and rewards of entrepreneurship. SimCity
3000' s designers recognize the educational potential of such games
the associated Internet site (www.simcity.com /3000) contains a
teacher' s guide for the instruction of aspiring statist planners in
middle schools and high schools.

We cannot lay all the blame for statist games at the feet of the
software designers, however. Most game buyers assume that
transportation, utilities, zoning, and city stadiums are the
responsibility of civil government. As game software is bought
primarily for entertainment, not education, we cannot expect
software firms to sacrifice profits by contradicting commonly held
ideas. Our games therefore reflect the increasing statism of our society.

This has not always been the case. The ever-popular Monopoly board
game includes virtually no government each player acts as a member
of the business community and not as an autocrat. Every aspect of
the 66-year-old game is dependent upon private contract,
entrepreneurial decisions, and the uncertainty of the roll of the
dice. Only the chance of being arbitrarily thrown in jail hints at
the presence of government. Water, electricity, and railroads are
all privately provided. The Monopoly game is economically
unsophisticated and imperfectly simulates the effects of its
namesake market structure the market is not a zero-sum game but it
at least reflects an entrepreneur-centered view of the world.

Until a freedom-minded software developer comes up with an
entertaining, entrepreneur-centered urban simulator, we must suffer
the insult to sound economics when playing SimCity. Perhaps such a
game could even help reverse the trend of municipal statism.

Timothy D. Terrell is assistant professor of economics at Liberty
University and an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute. Further
Readings: Walter Block, "Congestion and Road Pricing," Journal of
Libertarian Studies 4, no. 3 (1980): 299- 300; Ludwig von Mises,
Human Action, Scholar' s Edition (Auburn, Ala.:Ludwig von Mises
Institute, 1998), pp. 11-29, 691-93; Murray N. Rothbard, "The
Fallacy of the- Public Sector," in The Logic of Action Two
(Cheltenham, U.K.:Edward Elgar, 1997), pp. 171- 179.