Ben Dottinger, November 22

Our group (Group One) achieved success in today’s activity, where we formed groups and used our given, or inherited, resources to create a set of items to fit a criteria. This is apparent because we had finished first and earned bagels for tomorrow, the established reward. 

There were two main things that allowed our group to succeed. First off, we were fortunate enough (thanks to Elias) to select the slip of paper for group one, which started us out with more important resources, such as a pen, scissors, a glue stick, and a ruler, as well as a commodity resource, that being “wood” paper. In addition to our group having more or better inherent fortune or resources, we were able to communicate well, which allowed for us to trade efficiently and quickly for the two missing resources that we required, to delegate well and make our items quickly, and to establish a unified embargo to remain competitive with other groups. 

The only main thing that could've held the group back was our messed up measurements the first time ‘round on two of the items to be made. Luckily. Thanks to our good communication and our good resources, we were able to successfully circumnavigate our shortcomings and still emerge victorious. 

Our experiment reveals that there is only so much you can do to be wildly successful in Capitalism. What really matters is what you inherit and what privileges or opportunities you have from birth as well as your negotiating skills. Luckily for our group, we made a fair and early negotiation with a group to get all the resources we required, and then we put our heads down and worked hard until completion. From this activity today, we learned that, in reality, the American Dream, that one may be able to accumulate unfathomable fortune, is often an unrealistic expectation, due to the fact that a large influence in success is what you begin with, and what you do with what you have. Vince Lombardi, an old famous NFL coach (and a relative of mine!) once said “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” This is true, not only in his case, where he took the Green Bay Packers, a losing team at the time, and led them to victory, but also in American economy, where no matter what we have, we may be able to accumulate wealth, but as Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book Outliers, your legacy has much to do with your success as well.