
Monopoly’s Inventor: The Progressive Who Didn’t Pass ‘Go’ - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/business/behind-monopoly-an-inventor-who-didnt-pass-go.html
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walterbell
_> "The seeds of the Monopoly game were planted when James Magie shared with
his daughter a copy of Henry George’s best-selling book, “Progress and
Poverty,” written in 1879. As an anti-monopolist, James Magie drew from the
theories of George, a charismatic politician and economist who believed that
individuals should own 100 percent of what they made or created, but that
everything found in nature, particularly land, should belong to everyone. _

A PDF of this book is available at
[http://progressandpoverty.org/](http://progressandpoverty.org/)

~~~
cbd1984
> but that everything found in nature, particularly land, should belong to
> everyone.

In effect, this means state ownership, which we've later learned to be very
dangerous when taken to that level.

Interesting little snippet:

> Although both advocated worker's rights, Henry George and Karl Marx were
> antagonists. Marx saw the Single Tax platform as a step backwards from the
> transition to communism.[52] On his part, Henry George predicted that if
> Marx's ideas were tried, the likely result would be a dictatorship.[53]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George)

~~~
tormeh
>In effect, this means state ownership, which we've later learned to be very
dangerous when taken to that level.

I dunno. Sounds like a good idea to me. The government owns all the land and
rents out 10 year leases to the highest bidder in the case of contention.
Currently all that rent-seeking money goes to private individuals who do
diddly-squat for the public good. Should society reward sitting on land
rights? No, society should award work.

~~~
michaelt

      The government owns all the land and rents out 10 year
      leases to the highest bidder in the case of contention.
    

So car company A leases some land for $x builds a factory at a cost of $5x.
Good news, jobs for the local economy and whatnot. The factory can't be moved,
and they want to operate it for 30 years.

After 10 years the lease comes up for renewal. Car company A wants to renew
the lease for another $x. But car company B wants to fuck with their
competitors, so they put in a bid for $3x. They know they won't win so they
won't have to pay (car company A don't want to lose their $5x factory so
they'll have to outbid) - they just want to raise their competitors' expenses.

That happens a few times and all of a sudden nobody wants to build factories
any more.

Then you realise the same thing applies to your asshole neighbour's house...

~~~
walterbell
How about a Dutch auction?

~~~
michaelt
It still doesn't solve the root problem that it's possible to increase land's
value and we want to encourage people to do it.

Land with a house on it is worth more than land without a house on it. Land
that's been cleaned up is worth more than land that was contaminated in the
past.

If, a few years after you increase the land's value, all that extra value goes
to the state, why should anyone increase land's value?

~~~
tormeh
How about the difference in rent from one term to the next is paid to the
previous tenant? The goal, after all, is not to funnel money to the
government, but to not award property rights squatting.

------
drawkbox
One sad thing throughout history is that creators, inventors and really anyone
not in the upperclass, got stepped on repeatedly for their creations and
robbed of their success and contribution. Many times the copycat is the one
that gets all the praise.

This bit was interesting:

 _She created two sets of rules for her game: 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 dualistic approach was
a teaching tool meant to demonstrate that the first set of rules was morally
superior.

And yet it was the monopolist version of the game that caught on_

Another general sad thing, sometimes the bad version you send to the
client/customer is the one they like, apparently also baked into history.

~~~
nickik
Apperently the anti-monopolist version was just not as much fun. This is a
board GAME not a morality teaching box, at least for most people who play it.

So I dont see how can compare it to products released to costumers.

I mean, how many games do you, or anybody play where everybody wins or loses
the same. I can't think of many video or boardgames where this is the premis.
So people just dont seam to care about it.

~~~
drabiega
Co-op modes are exceedingly common in multi-player video games?

Battlestar Galactica, Pandemic, and Shadows over Camelot are popular co-op
board games. Pandemic particularly has obtained a good amount of main stream
appeal.

------
Potando
A popular feeling is that inventors deserve most of the rewards from their
inventions. This is actually quite strange. Inventing is easy - you just find
an idea, sit down in your spare time and work out the details for fun, and
that's it. But to do business is different - you usually have to spend money
before getting any reward and might lose everything you spent. People don't
like that. It can also be boring, so they don't do it much. It makes more
sense for the lion's share to go to the person doing the work that most people
don't want to do. They're the scarce resource, not inventors.

I'm sure most people here have put a lot of work into designing/inventing
something or other, but wouldn't feel cheated if they found someone else had
seen their idea floating around the internet, rebuilt it independently to fit
a paying market, done the hard work marketing it, and finally made money off
it. Those are the hard bits!

~~~
ZenoArrow
An inventor might not get the lion's share of the profit made from their
invention, however they should at least receive recognition for their
contribution.

The linked article strongly implies Elizabeth Magie Philips invented the
source material for what later became Monopoly. That we've been playing a cut
down version of her game is hardly important, recognition is the least we can
offer inventors. It's clear that Parker Brothers did what they could to cut
her out of the history of the game, I hope that we don't condone that
behaviour.

I'm interested to try The Landlord's Game, I wonder what the situation with
the patents are now.

------
jacobwcarlson
If you found this article interesting check out the Born Yesterday episode [1]
about the history of Monopoly, it's far more interesting that it has rights to
be.

[1][http://bornyesterdaypodcast.com/#episode17](http://bornyesterdaypodcast.com/#episode17)

~~~
agumonkey
The part about George's book reminds me of Sim City too.

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swatow
In classical economics (which I believe in [0]), land is a commodity like any
other. There is literally no fundamental difference between land and anything
else. Georgists might say that there is no substitute for land, but that is
not an important issue unless one person has a monopoly on _all_ land, which
is not the case and never will be. So land tax is just a very strange kind of
wealth tax. The only effect of land tax would be that the price of properties
would go down to account for the future taxes paid on those properties. After
that, the taxes would be "priced in" and the tax wouldn't even operate as a
wealth tax.

I think land tax is only appealing to people who don't understand income tax
(and proper wealth taxes). They have been tricked (by obfuscation from both
the left and right) into believing that income and wealth taxes are unable to
achieve the goal of meaningful redistribution of wealth.

[0] Yes there are frictions, but not relevant to this discussion.

------
larsiusprime
For those interested in the modern-day inheritor to the Georgist/Distributist
movement Magie belonged to, there's no better introductory text than John
Medaille's "Towards A Truly Free Market":

[http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-
Distributist/...](http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-
Distributist/dp/161017027X)

There's a particularly salient chapter on Land.

(Medaille positions Distributism as orthogonal to both Capitalism and
Socialism.)

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fit2rule
I'd love to have a version of Magie's game .. anyone know where there are
better pictures of it that can be used to design one? I'm not sure where the
trademark/copyright lays these days, but if its in the public domain - why not
recreate the original as an app or something? Its very intriguing ..

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prawn
In the future, will the income received when passing Go be considered a
curious parallel with the Basic Income concept?

------
Someone
See also: [http://landlordsgame.info](http://landlordsgame.info)

