
Secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins (2015) - nkurz
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-origins
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nkurz
There was discussion recently on HN about Henry George and his theories of a
"single land tax":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158398)

Apparently, the board game Monopoly had its origins as an illustration of
Georgism, and originally had two sets of rules:

    
    
      From its inception, the Landlord’s Game aimed to seize on  
      the natural human instinct to compete. And, somewhat 
      surprisingly, Lizzie created two sets of rules: an anti-
      monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was 
      created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to 
      create monopolies and crush opponents. Her vision was an 
      embrace of dualism and contained a contradiction within 
      itself, a tension trying to be resolved between opposing 
      philosophies. However, and of course unbeknownst to Lizzie 
      at the time, it was the monopolist rules that would later 
      capture the public’s imagination.
    

Many more details and links about the original game are here:
[http://landlordsgame.info/](http://landlordsgame.info/)

------
dalke
For a video presentation by the Pilon, who is the author and researcher of
this article, see
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CpE8K4ts6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CpE8K4ts6s)
.

