Chutes, Ladders... and Blindfolds

 Anderson closes chapter 9 with an extended metaphor comparing neoliberalism to a game of chutes and ladders. In the original board game, good deeds carry you up and bad deeds send you down (terms purported by the conservative work ethic). Moves, however, are actually determined by chance. Anderson reimagines this game under neoliberalism, where those at the top get to “stretch the ladders higher, remove middle rings, add longer chutes, attach stumbling blocks on rungs beneath them, and disguise chuts as higher rungs.” (283). The top players claim that “everyone’s place is determined by what they deserve” and that any collective redesign would “interfere with the most natural or most efficient order of things. She then poses the question, : “should anyone believe the top players’ claims, once everyone sees how they have rigged the game?” (283). 

The implication is that they shouldn’t. However, I think that in practice many people do accept the framing, even when they are losing. The metaphor seems to suggest something further about why. 


Earlier, she observes that “the individualist dream of self-employment as a vindication of labor has captivated ordinary American workers to an extraordinary degree throughout US history” (258). Workers who hold this aspiration, she argues, “are liable to identify with business owners and to resist the collective institutions” that characterize the progressive work ethic tradition (258). This is important to her ladder metaphor , because chutes and ladders is a single-player game. Each person climbs alone. From that position, the architecture of the board is difficult to perceive. You experience your own slide as a personal failure, and someone else’s ascent as earned, because the game offers no vantage point from which to see the whole board. 


I think that this suggests that the durability of the conservative work ethic is not sustained merely by false claims that could be corrected once exposed. It’s also sustained by the individualist conditions that make those claims feel true. Anderson notes that those at the top “obfuscate the fact that, in excluding the other players from a hand in the designing game, they get to design its architecture and rule all by themselves” (283). But obfuscation succeeds in part because the game’s design ensures that collective awareness of the rigging is exactly what isolated players are least equipped to develop.

Anderson’s question seems to suggest that seeing the rigging is enough. However, I think that the metaphor she presents raises the possibility that it isn’t. Exposing the architecture of the game matters, but exposure alone cannot dismantle it, not when the conditions of play ensure that each player encounters the rigging individually. Seeing the board from above would require exactly the kind of institutions Anderson supports in the book like unions, and codetermination.


If the conservative work ethic is sustained by material conditions that produce isolation as a lived reality, can it be dismantled through exposure alone, or must the conditions of the game change first? 

Comments

  1. Michelle LeeMarch 26, 2026 at 1:07 AM

    You say, "Anderson’s question seems to suggest that seeing the rigging is enough. However, I think that the metaphor she presents raises the possibility that it isn’t." I understand your point to be that Anderson claims that once people see the game is rigged, they won’t believe the merit-based claims anymore. However, you suggest that her metaphor shows that simply “seeing the rigging” might not be enough.

    However, I believe that it may be possible that what Anderson means by "seeing the rigging" is actually very similar to the point you are making. I especially like your observation that the “single-player” nature of the game makes it hard to see the broader structure. The structure of the game itself prevents collective awareness from forming. I think Anderson would agree that this single-player aspect makes it difficult for individuals to "see the rigging". Similar to what you suggest, she may also believe that individuals can only truly "see the rigging" once the material conditions that produce isolation as a lived reality are changed.

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