Trading Game MIRRORS Real Life?

We could tell from the beginning that we were an LEDC – we only had paper. However, we had a lot of it, and what we didn’t realize at the start was that we also had a graphed sheet, which we found out made anything cut out of it two times as valuable. Unfortunately, we did not use the graphing paper because we didn’t hear the information given about how much it was worth, and only became curious after a few people rushed up to our table and began to offer around four blank papers for this one graphed piece. In the beginning, we used our vast amount of paper to trade for tools such as pencils, rulers, and scissors. We began to run into problems when the groups with scissors did not want to give their scissors up. They had already traded the less valuable tools for more paper and now had everything they needed to mass produce shapes. We could tell that the MEDC’s were the groups with developed technology in the form of tools and less raw resources. Even when these groups began to run out of paper, they wouldn’t give up their scissors. Then, I came up with the idea to rent them for a certain amount of time. We came to an agreement with the group next to us that we would give them two and a half sheets of paper for three minutes with the scissors. In the meantime, while we didn’t have the scissors, we were folding the pieces of paper and making the shapes so that the cutting process would be as efficient as possible.

This game is a very close representation of how trade works in the global market – except for the fact that money is traded for tools and resources, instead of tools for resources and visa-versa. The resources we were given at the beginning of the game determined if we were an LEDC or MEDC, similar to correlations between development and amount of raw resources within nations in the real world. Often times if a country has a large number of natural resources it will lean on them to produce income, as a result, the GDP will stay low because resources are not worth a lot when they are abundant. When the GDP is low, the government does not earn much from taxes and cannot fund health care, education, and the development of technology for extraction of the natural resources. The country would have to rely on external corporations to export the resources, which creates problems if there are violent internal conflicts that the companies would not want to get close to. Many countries in Africa struggle because of this, even if there is a large number of valuable resources held in the land. Also, people will not feel the need to get an education because they will always feel like they have the option of getting a job doing manual labour. Therefore, very few will get a good enough education to get jobs that pay well and the GDP will stay low. Unless the MEDC’s educate the LEDC’s on how to use their resources with the necessary tools, the social and economic statuses within the nations, specifically the LEC’s, will not change.

When thinking about sustainable development we have to look at what is fundamentally required in order for a country to improve their economic and social situation. Nations need money, and they earn it by trading skills and resources. Without money, they wouldn’t be able to improve their health care systems, access to water, food, or the latest technology. They also wouldn’t be able to improve the quality of education, meaning the population would be stuck with poor education and an underqualification for high paying jobs. Without high paying jobs, the GDP is low and the government doesn’t earn enough from taxes. To stop this cycle and to jumpstart sustainable development, countries need to sell the goods and services that are abundant to them. Every country has something that another wants, whether it is technology, natural resources, or skills and services, they just need to find those connections and make trades that are beneficial to all of them.