
Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism - jonbaer
https://aeon.co/ideas/monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism
======
js8
Reminds me of Czech game "Soudruhu, nezlob se!" (literally "Don't get angry,
comrade", see [http://www.deskove-hry.eu/soudruhu-nezlob-
se](http://www.deskove-hry.eu/soudruhu-nezlob-se)), which is a version of more
popular children game
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch_%C3%A4rgere_dich_nicht](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch_%C3%A4rgere_dich_nicht)

It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of
communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the
communist party and emigrate abroad.

~~~
tray5
>It was designed partly as a joke, but partly to demonstrate ridiculousness of
communism. The goal of the game was to become a secretary general of the
communist party and emigrate abroad.

I can't read the Czech link (do you know if there's a translated link or
something in English?) but that seems more like from your one sentence
description (and my reading of the wikipedia link) a game satirizing the
ridiculousness of playing politics rather than communism?

~~~
SyneRyder
Try this link:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deskove-
hry.eu%2Fsoudruhu-nezlob-se)

If you go to Google Translate, type in a URL and click translate, you can
translate any webpage. (Chrome has the feature built-in.)

------
throw2016
Capitalism benefits a few at the cost of many and it's designed too. Can any
supporter articulate a scenario where capitalism enables prosperity for the
majority without immediately resorting to bottom barrel comparisons to
feudalism? The reality is we need to imagine a more evolved society without
pandering to the greed and self interest of a few. This of course appears to
be our eternal struggle.

The bigger problem with capitalism is it is designed to perpetuate entrenched
interests and status quo. It origins from a time when few had capital or
property, only the nobility did, convenient, and was obviously designed to
perpetuate feudalism by proxy as they could direct economies and systems with
their resources, and continue to.

A few examples of those who sacrifice their entire life to gain more capital
offers eternal hope to the masses to hop on to the gravy train some already
are on by birth, and those who sacrifice their life to accomplish this are
obviously going to be overzealous supporters of 'the system', their entire
identity and self worth riding on this achievement.

We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism. Human progress
cannot depend on greed which is basically what capitalism boils down to,
rewarding and perpetuating the base traits of humanity and leaving a soulless
society unable to rise above basic greed in its wake.

~~~
brightsize
> We need to find a way to detach progress from capitalism

What, you mean this[0] isn't progress? /s

 _The surge in irregular jobs doesn’t just create problems for the people
working those jobs. It’s also led companies to feel that they can treat their
regular workers poorly, because those workers feel so lucky to have a job,
Konno told me. Knowing that people in their 20s and 30s are desperate to get
regular jobs, companies hire lots of young people and force them to work long
hours for little to no overtime pay, assuming that most won’t be able to
survive the harsh conditions, Konno said. Japan has long had a culture of
overwork—there’s even a Japanese word, karoshi, for death by overwork—but
Konno says that it has worsened since the Great Recession, as companies have
realized that good jobs are hard to find in Japan, and so push their employees
harder.

...

Though company employees left work at 7 p.m. on paper, Matsubara said he was
required to work until late at night almost every day. Employees were required
to sign off at 7 p.m., even if they were still working, and were given iPads
so that they could do so even if they were out of the office at meetings. If
they didn’t sign off, they’d get a call on their cellphones brusquely asking
them to sign off immediately but keep working, he said. “The amount of time
you're actually working and the amount of time that is recorded you're working
have absolutely no relation to each other,”_

[0] _The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies_
[https://goo.gl/zoHH6L](https://goo.gl/zoHH6L) (theatlantic.com)

------
geekamongus
Played this game a couple of weeks ago with my family (my wife, an 11 year-
old, and a 14 year-old.)

We quickly remembered why we hadn't played it in a year: you must be greedy to
win, hopes & dreams get dashed, and someone always ends up angry and/or in
tears.

~~~
meri_dian
If a simple board game played with family leaves someone angry or in tears
then that's a problem. Games like monopoly are actually great opportunities
for children to learn self control and perspective.

~~~
Pigo
I guess scrabble is a bad idea because it causes fights when someone doesn't
understand the concept of proper nouns? Oh my gosh, conflict, let's just throw
the game away to spare everyone's feelings.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
If you get angry rather than use it as a chance to learn, sure. I'd avoid
playing scrabble with that adult, among other games if this spread there too.
Children get stopped for the day due to the outburst, but generally get more
chances since they are learning.

------
tray5
Last time I played Monopoly it ended up two people who were too big to fail
constantly running around the board passing money back and forth. A subtle jab
by the universe at two party politics within capitalist societies?

------
fiatjaf
There was a thread about boardgames here on HN two days ago and someone
commented that Monopoly wasn't just a bad game, but a game created with that
purpose (so that being "bad" was an intended feature).

The comment sparked a lot of discussion and most people didn't know about that
original goal of Monopoly.

Now this article appear on a major magazine. It's very suspicious. Unless this
is a huge coincidence, these writers must think again about their intellectual
honesty.

------
mrleiter
From just reading the headline, one could assume this is bogus.

For anyone wondering: they are talking about the game 'Monopoly'.

~~~
owebmaster
You avoided a lot of comments replying only to the title. Thanks, I guess.

------
matthewmarkus
Monopoly is a board game in which you shuffle around finite resources.

Capitalism is the reason why there isn't a single copy of the board game
Monopoly.

------
amelius
> So next time someone invites you to join a game of Monopoly, here’s a
> thought. As you set out piles for the Chance and Community Chest cards,
> establish a third pile for Land-Value Tax, to which every property owner
> must contribute each time they charge rent to a fellow player. How high
> should that land tax be? And how should the resulting tax receipts be
> distributed? Such questions will no doubt lead to fiery debate around the
> Monopoly board – but then that is exactly what Magie had always hoped for.

Could a computer program (e.g. genetic programming) come up with a fair set of
rules?

~~~
empath75
The free parking rule that some people use and makes the game last for hours
and hours is basically inflationary monetary policy by the central bank.

~~~
amelius
But does this rule make the game fair?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I'm not sure if it makes it fairer, but it makes the game different.

Theoretically, the game starts as fair. All start with the same money, on the
same place on the board. But since you move by rolling dice, some folks get
luckier than others, with more chances to buy things or gain income.... or
simply avoiding landing on a built up property. The free parking money
basically puts lottery money into action. Sometimes, free parking is funded by
fees (jail fees, cards, etc) and some folks just take moeny from the bank and
put it in the middle.

At times, it means the rich get richer. Sometimes, the poor pull themselves
up. Many times, it just makes everyone richer at different times and it takes
a lot longer to make folks go bankrupt. It does give a little chance of
winning something with each go around the board, and I think this is why the
rule is popular.

------
Nursie
Well it certainly is evil, taking several hours, provoking family arguments,
the slow grinding down of anyone that didn't get ahead quickly at the start.

There are reasons I don't play it very often!

~~~
nandemo
That's too kind an assessment. Monopoly sucks. It sucks as an educational tool
and it sucks as a board game.

First, if it was meant to teach the evils of capitalism it has failed in many
levels, as the article illustrates. Even if you were to play with the amended
rules, it'd be moot; nobody cares about Georgist socialism anymore.

As a board game: there are literally _hundreds_ of games better than Monopoly.
Even we restrict ourselves to so-called "family" games. If there's something
you like about Monopoly, I can assure you can find a better game that has that
something but it's better designed:

[https://boardgamegeek.com/familygames/browse/boardgame?sort=...](https://boardgamegeek.com/familygames/browse/boardgame?sort=rank&sortdir=asc)

Many will be simpler and shorter too. Of course, you might like or dislike a
particular game in that set, but consider that Monopoly is ranked at 1583 in
the family category. There's no excuse to play Monopoly unless one somehow has
managed to stay unaware of the existence of all these other games.

------
brudgers
Monopoly as the basis for how Louis CK tells a joke,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufdvYrTeTuU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufdvYrTeTuU)

------
dmichulke
The problem with monopoly is that it's zero-sum.

Capitalism is not zero-sum.

------
Overtonwindow
Capitalism is the most productive system that humanity has produced because it
leads to individual entrepreneurship. Exhibit one: Grumpy Cat is a
millionaire.

------
yosito
Are the original "prosperity rules" published anywhere? How much modification
of a modern Monopoly board would it take to play?

------
DanCarvajal
This is why my kids will only have PowerGrid, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers.

------
justaman
I don't understand why everyone hates capitalism now. Its like "what the cool
kids do".

You know whats really cool? Inventing stuff. Using the power of your mind to
form matter into a new thing that the universe has never seen before. Whats
really cool is starting a business that adds enough value to the world to hire
people. Feeding them with the power of your mind and a little bit of shared
elbow grease.

The "cool kids" seem to be bashing capitalism today. Thats not cool.

~~~
rayiner
What's really cool is the majority of people having a pleasant and comfortable
life and a bright future for their kids. Maximizing the prosperity of the
majority is the purpose of a democratic society.

People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to
countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather
than as moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly, those
countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation puts the
U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden and
Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the capitalist.

~~~
problems
> People are ragging on capitalism because they're looking over the pond to
> countries that see capitalism as a tool to serve democratic interests rather
> than a moral worldview, and they kind of like that idea. Interestingly,
> those countries aren't really less capitalistic (the Heritage Foundation
> puts the U.S. in the same bucket on their Economic Freedom index as Sweden
> and Germany), but their culture is less centered around glorifying the
> capitalist.

I think you've made a great point here - but I've seen people explicitly
saying they want communism. Look at how often /r/LateStageCapitalism, an
explicitly communist subreddit is on the frontpage of reddit.

If people were just pushing for a few more socialized services, I think
they've got a good argument to make there. There are good tweaks that can be
made. But if they're pushing for a complete change to the system I think
they're off their rockers.

~~~
pjc50
Quite a lot of those people are "into" actual communism out of a mixture of
ignorance and edginess. Revolutions sound great when you're naive. And it's
not actually a great number of people as a proportion of the electorate!

The key is what happens to suggestions for "good tweaks". Do they get
considered reasonably and implemented fairly? Or are people denounced for even
seeking tweaks?

Flexible mixed-economy capitalism seems to be pretty stable. Capitalism that's
blind to inequality produces an increasing long tail of disaffected victims
with nothing to lose. Hence the rise of kick-over-the-table politics,
epitomised by Trump.

------
Overtonwindow
"[T]he record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no
alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people
that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the
free-enterprise system."

-Milton Friedman

~~~
dragonwriter
A pretty quote, but—unless one defines “the free enterprise system” so that it
encompasses democratic socialism, social democracy, other versions of the
modern mixed economy rather than just classical capitalism as targeted by
Monopoly (which, unlike Friedman's statement, predates the widespread
emergence of the various forms of the modern mixed economy and the Communist-
originated-but-eagerly-adopted-in-the-West conflation of it with
“capitalism”), it is rather obviously false, and that was clear even at the
time he said it, since the whole reason various forms of the modern mixed
economy displaced classical capitalism _everywhere in the developed world_ is
that they are generally superior on the point in question.

------
ionised
People being better off now than earlier times in history is a straw man
argument. That would be true regardless of the system we were under.

That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being
passed down through generations.

So people now get to live a little longer, travel farther and faster, and
absorb more banal entertainment than ever before. Who gives a fuck? None of
that matters in this context.

The point you should focus on is _how much of a share in the overall wealth
and prosperity of their nation does a person have today?_ How much power and
personal freedom?

Is it growing or shrinking?

It's shrinking and has been for decades. It's the increasing consolidation of
wealth and the power and influence that naturally comes with that is why
people are raging against a system that they can see has become totally
unrestrained and rigged against them from birth.

GDP is held up as the gold standard metric of measuring how well a nation is
doing, but all it really tells you is how prosperous it ther 'country' is as
on the macro level.

It doesn't tell you that most of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of
fewer and fewer people that are becoming obscenely wealthy while the lowest
classes in society are becoming objectively poorer and less empowered to act.

You rephrase the argument and a working class stiff what he wants more, a
shinier, faster car and a higher-resolution TV , or a greater stake in the
economy and the resulting benefits that naturally occur as part of that and he
will tell you the latter every damn time.

The problem is thinking like yours, where the proles should be happy that they
get to be more consumerist and materialistic than ever before while the ones
filling the world with shit nobody needs steal away the actual benefits of our
system and entrench themselves for generations.

~~~
problems
> That's a natural result of human intellectual progress and knowledge being
> passed down through generations.

We have direct evidence that that is incorrect and any high school student
knows it. Many, many times have we failed to progress due to being in systems
that don't allow for it.

> Is it growing or shrinking?

Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth is
increasing, I don't care. I don't need to be making more than my neighbor to
be happy with my life. As long as I still get the goods, I'm quite happy with
this deal.

This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my
life.

~~~
ionised
> We have direct evidence that that is incorrect

Post it.

> Why would that matter to me as an individual? So long as my overall wealth
> is increasing

That's my point. It isn't, it just appears that way because you haven't looked
past the shin y surface.

> This is just plain wrong in terms of a way to think about the economy or my
> life.

Subjective.

There are a lot of ordinary people who would say your way of thinking is
wrong. Some actually want a stake in society, not an extra handful of rice per
generation while a few at the top get an extra plantation.

~~~
problems
Sure, look at the feudal system, look at most communism implementations, look
at China before their recent uptake of capitalist concepts.

Progress almost entirely stops in these places under these systems. Clearly,
at some level there is a system effect.

~~~
ionised
Firstly, I'm not a communist.

It's a beautiful idea that can never work in practice because it depends on
humans being a purely virtuous ideal of themselves, which they never will be.
You'll always end up with some arsehole at the top trying to create a dynasty
for himself.

Personally I'd prefer a more utopian vision of human society like the one in
Star Trek. No money, just personal, spritual and intellectual pursuit. It
won't happen though, people are too self-serving.

Anyway, progress did not grind to a halt under feudalism. There were lots of
inventions and discoveries being made during the middle ages, the rate was
just slower than today and while part of that was due to the inferior social
system with limited personal freedoms it was also due to the far smaller human
populations and resulting productive power, as well as the prevalence of
religion and it's aggressively anti-science stance (the dark ages were one
example of progress slowing down to nearly a halt).

I mean look,

[http://www.lordsandladies.org/inventions-in-the-middle-
ages....](http://www.lordsandladies.org/inventions-in-the-middle-ages.htm)

First result on Google. Arguable some of the most important inventions in
history, because they enabled all the discoveries that came after.

~~~
problems
You're right, I had incorrectly said halted earlier, but attempted to correct
for that, not quite enough perhaps. In terms of progress per-capita, how does
it really compare though? To my knowledge at least, it was still very low for
a long time. I could be wrong about that though.

I hear the "stand on the shoulders of giants" argument and everything though -
but I think there's definitely at least some effect from the system that
should be acknowledged.

~~~
ionised
> but I think there's definitely at least some effect from the system that
> should be acknowledged.

Oh I agree. I just don't think it is the sole reason for us being where we
are.

The thing with technological progress (and by extension economic progress) is
that it snowballs and grows exponentially.

If you took an early middle-age society and taught it the concepts of
capitalism and they managed a seismic shift in their society to accommodate
it, it would still take an incredibly long time for them to advance.

They might do it a bit quicker because people would be more free to spend and
invest in what they wanted, and money would flow more freely, but they would
still be limited by population and production power.

Population snowballs too, as does the sharing of knowledge that occurs
alongside it and has probably been the number one driver of human progress.

------
problems
Thank you, eugh, it's incredibly annoying, like people miss a hundred year
history lesson and want to repeat the mistakes of the past here.

Even the bottom 20% that everyone is so concerned about in the western world
are better off than any time in history - heck, I have no qualms saying I'd
rather be bottom 20% today than top 1% just 200 years ago. That is the level
of productivity we've had, and primarily thanks to our economic system.

Could it use some tweaks? Sure, if you want to advocate free healthcare or
college, go for it, but the main concepts are still quite good.

~~~
ivanbakel
Better is not necessarily good enough. Why would people not want a system
which furthers their quality of life even more? It's not at all convincing to
suggest that you shouldn't complain since things have improved _somewhat_
under capitalism.

~~~
problems
Things have improved _immensely_ , more than any other time in history under
capitalism. And we've watched other systems crash and burn. We don't need to
experience it for ourselves, thanks.

~~~
ivanbakel
We've also witnessed capitalist systems fail drastically, and other systems
succeed impressively.

There is little historical comparison for what you quote as capitalism's
success - nobody performed a double-blind trial to see if the industrial
revolution and colonialism improved quality of life in non-capitalist systems.

~~~
problems
> We've also witnessed capitalist systems fail drastically, and other systems
> succeed impressively.

Please, show me one country not rooted in capitalism which has "succeeded
impressively" in recent decades.

~~~
ivanbakel
Cuba. Despite a continuing embargo from one of the largest economies on the
planet, and the collapse of its greatest allies over two decades ago,
socialism in Cuba has eradicated homelessness and illiteracy, produced one of
the best internationally-recognised healthcare systems on the planet.

If we lift the restrictions of "a few decades", you'd find that the USSR
transformed a feudalist, barely-electrified nation into America's greatest
opponent on the world stage, with a stake in the space race, in less than half
a century.

~~~
problems
Cuba is comparatively an incredibly poor nation that has missed many
advancements of modern society in recent decades. Wages are dirt low, access
to the internet is low, and from what I gather, access to modern anything in
general is challenging. There are no great advancements coming out of Cuba. I
don't consider that a success, I consider that a failure. I don't want to stop
progressing or move backwards into a deep maintenance mode as Cuba has.

And that's just the economic side of things.

~~~
ivanbakel
Are great advancements the measurement of good? Is progress for the sake of
progress so great? To me, it's a question of the proverbial slaves building
the pyramids: it's easy to insist that society should work for the improvement
of technology if your quality of life is already secured by the people below
you on the ladder.

You may not want to stop progressing, but ask Americans without healthcare
coverage whether they would prefer government money going to research or to
providing for their needs, and many of them will disagree with you.

