Because Monopoly originally was two games. One that basically works like Monopoly, with the outcome described in the the post, and another one, the “anti-monopolist” version was based on the concept of just paying tax for the land you own, which makes it more expensive for one person to own a lot of the board. This version never ended.
Elisabeth Magie created the game (called “The Landlord’s Game”) with these two rule sets to teach people about Georgism, which is a system in which tax is only raised on the land you own. It should show people that a system leading to monopoles is bad, and Georgism is good.
Then the Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game from someone who didn’t own them, dropped the Georgism version and sold it with a rich, fat, old, white man on the covers who swims in money and is super happy, which kinda teaches exactly the opposite that Elisabeth Magie intended.
Then they used their position in the market to crowd out all the other versions of that game.
A truely American story, once the Parker Brothers entered the game -.-
A game developed to show the inevitable failure of late stage capitalism becomes highly successful and kills all other competitors. Fate is cruel and twisted.
basically just capitalist realism in action, all art critical of capitalism ends up being subsumed, made meaningless and even ends up contributing to capitalism
To be fair, in 1904 wasn’t exactly late stage capitalism yet, but it was failing maybe even more than now. Actually, there aren’t many stages of capitalism where it didn’t massively fail the poorer people.
Interesting! I never actually played it but I always thought the point was that it was shitty if you actually had to live that way, it’s called monopoly after all
I played it quite a few times as a kid (my family always wanted to play it for reasons that are beyond my understanding) and I always saw it as “You really want to become a millionaire, then you win, and screw the poor losers that didn’t make it”.
And do you also know why this is the case?
Because Monopoly originally was two games. One that basically works like Monopoly, with the outcome described in the the post, and another one, the “anti-monopolist” version was based on the concept of just paying tax for the land you own, which makes it more expensive for one person to own a lot of the board. This version never ended.
Elisabeth Magie created the game (called “The Landlord’s Game”) with these two rule sets to teach people about Georgism, which is a system in which tax is only raised on the land you own. It should show people that a system leading to monopoles is bad, and Georgism is good.
Then the Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game from someone who didn’t own them, dropped the Georgism version and sold it with a rich, fat, old, white man on the covers who swims in money and is super happy, which kinda teaches exactly the opposite that Elisabeth Magie intended.
Then they used their position in the market to crowd out all the other versions of that game.
A truely American story, once the Parker Brothers entered the game -.-
A game developed to show the inevitable failure of late stage capitalism becomes highly successful and kills all other competitors. Fate is cruel and twisted.
basically just capitalist realism in action, all art critical of capitalism ends up being subsumed, made meaningless and even ends up contributing to capitalism
To be fair, in 1904 wasn’t exactly late stage capitalism yet, but it was failing maybe even more than now. Actually, there aren’t many stages of capitalism where it didn’t massively fail the poorer people.
Interesting! I never actually played it but I always thought the point was that it was shitty if you actually had to live that way, it’s called monopoly after all
I played it quite a few times as a kid (my family always wanted to play it for reasons that are beyond my understanding) and I always saw it as “You really want to become a millionaire, then you win, and screw the poor losers that didn’t make it”.
Got any links for more information on this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord's_Game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Monopoly
Thanks, you where faster than me.
Thanks for this. I was going to post about this history, but you already had done it (and better than I would have). Much appreciated.
Great Scot! I never knew!