According to various internet aggregators of official and unofficial holidays, November 19th is National Play Monopoly Day. Will you break out the board game and give it a go? Do you play a digital version? Or will you choose to go to jail, do not pass Go, and do not collect $200 as you skip it?
Image by mpmd2009 from Pixabay
The history of the game in a nutshell is an attempt to demonstrate Georgist economic ideas about the necessity of equality and land rent as a remedy for the zero-sum game of cutthroat capitalism turned into a mass-market commodity by a megacorporation. Weird, right? If something about the game feels a bit off, it might not just be because it's a very old game. It's literally designed to turn the cooperative market process of exchange for mutual benefit into cutthroat competition to bleed opponents dry.
Of course, there are a lot of different official versions of the game, and now that the rules are public domain, many more companies have made imitations. Ironically, Hasbro no longer has a monopoly on Monopoly.
Here's an idea: make your own Monopoly! You can find play money fairly cheap online or at local stores. Design a board with your town's streets and iconic locations, for example. The board has square spaces at each corner: Go, Jail (and "just visiting"), Free Parking, and "Go to Jail." In between, there are nine rectangular spaces on each side with a railroad in the center, properties, utilities, penalties and chance/community chest spaces. Play with the pattern and make it different, or copy everything on the layout exactly. Change prices to fit whatever play money you have available.
What do you think of the game conceptually? Is it a nostalgic family game, or a hated waste of time? Have you explored the ideas which inspired it?
