Emma Evans: What's funny and fucked is IIRC the creator of the game, who I believe was a woman, created the game as ANTI CAPITALISM. It's designed to show the progression and evils of capitalism in a winner take all system. The number of family fights over Monopoly is legion.

And the primary reason for that is because the money you get when you go past GO each time, does not increase. But rents do.

Remember: Monopoly has a Basic Income and everyone still ends up bankrupt and homeless.

Whoah I did not make that connection before.

What's funny and fucked is IIRC the creator of the game, who I believe was a woman, created the game as ANTI CAPITALISM. It's designed to show the progression and evils of capitalism in a winner take all system. The number of family fights over Monopoly is legion.

I literally just told @foobly.bsky.social "it was created as a critique about capitalism but I guess they forgot to change *that* part of the game!"

I mean it's right there in the title of the game too and yet most of us, esp as kids, missed it

I think the issue that kept most of us from grasping this is that the common house rules everyone made to be “kinder” just extended the relentless grind of doom. And almost nobody followed some of the rules at all. Little neurodivergent fairness-obsessed me got soundly mocked for reading the rules

Thinking back this is one of those “why on Earth did they not have me tested?” flags

Nah, it's just changing winning from "when one person had all the money everyone else loses" to the "someday I'll own this boot" meme

Lizzie J Magie, and it was originally called "The Landlord Game." landlordsgame.info/rules/lg-190...

The Landlord's Game 1904 Patent - Ruleslandlordsgame.info

The men who bought it for the mass market made it worse and less fun, too.

Yup, Elizabeth Magie in the early 1900s. She called it "The Landlord's Game".

The game it's based on, The Landlord's Game, had a separate set of rules to make play more fun and equitable, but those didn't make it into Parker Brother's version. I think Hasbro has embraced some of the house rules, but if you play according to the rules as written, it's faster and less painful.

For example, getting money when you land on Free Parking is a notorious house rule that ends up extending the game and making it unfun.

Our change was to disallow any purchases on your first trip around the board, *and* to not require a purchase to be made. The first one resulted in a more randomized distribution of players when purchasing began.

Yep, she really got screwed over, first by the game company who stole the idea and inverted it (can't currently remember which one), and then by history. She was a Georgist socialist. (Georgeist?) They still exist in a small way.

I was trying to find the Youtube link for the Dollop episode about her but it's not there yet in English. El Dollop in Mexico did one in Spanish too. Anyway if you want to find it you can I'm sure LOL

Going even further the purpose of Monopoly, is to see that one person gets all the wealth. And then the game ends and the money is worthless, until you restart the next game and redistribute the wealth.

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