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Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

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Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#91

Post by dragontamer »

karatestomp wrote: post #50
larrik wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any boardgame that involves eliminating players from it is a non-starter for me.

They're fine if they're short. I'd prefer elimination to longer games where a couple clear leaders after lucky first couple rounds are the only ones who can plausibly win, which I've also seen in a few enlightened modern games. Best case for those games is you spend the remaining 80-90% of the game playing spoiler or kingmaker, which is kinda shitty, or in the worst case the game's designed such that you can't do muc…

"Dead man walking" is one of the worst feelings ever.

Settlers of Catan has a few "dead man walking" situations, but they're somewhat rare.... Especially because the optimal strategy in Catan is to trade with players weaker than you. So all "dead men walking" get boosted by the stronger players. The 1st place player never wants to trade with the 2nd place player, or vice versa.

"Ticket to Ride" has more dead-man walking situations, where you know you've messed up but nothing can be done until the game is over. And because the game is elimination free, you feel like a jerk to leave before the game is over.

---------------

The goal is to find a game that strikes the balance. Keep everyone playing, but make everyone feel like their contributions (even if they're behind) are noteworthy.

Carcassonne is probably the best.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#92

Post by dr_dshiv »

Here is the crux of the article, beginning with the father of the inventor, Elizabeth Magie:

"Travelling around America in the 1870s, George had witnessed persistent destitution amid growing wealth, and he believed it was largely the inequity of land ownership that bound these two forces – poverty and progress – together. So instead of following Twain by encouraging his fellow citizens to buy land, he called on the state to tax it. On what grounds? Because much of land’s value comes not from what is built on the plot but from nature’s gift of water or minerals that might lie beneath its surface, or from the communally created value of its surroundings: nearby roads and railways; a thriving economy, a safe neighbourhood; good local schools and hospitals. And he argued that the tax receipts should be invested on behalf of all.

Determined to prove the merit of George’s proposal, Magie invented and in 1904 patented what she called the Landlord’s Game. Laid out on the board as a circuit (which was a novelty at the time), it was populated with streets and landmarks for sale. The key innovation of her game, however, lay in the two sets of rules that she wrote for playing it.

Under the ‘Prosperity’ set of rules, every player gained each time someone acquired a new property (designed to reflect George’s policy of taxing the value of land), and the game was won (by all!) when the player who had started out with the least money had doubled it. Under the ‘Monopolist’ set of rules, in contrast, players got ahead by acquiring properties and collecting rent from all those who were unfortunate enough to land there – and whoever managed to bankrupt the rest emerged as the sole winner (sound a little familiar?)"

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#93

Post by hirundo »

Barrin92 wrote: post #18
chungy wrote: post #10

Monopoly teaches people a view of economics being a zero-sum game and too many people learn the wrong lessons from it. Real life isn't a zero-sum game.

as the article points out the game was in particular desgigned to show the economic effects of private land rent, hence the original title 'the landlord's game', and that is in fact a zero sum game as they aren't making any more of it. And in particular on tech websites like these people vastly overstate how non 'zero-sum' economic activity actually is mostly because tech has been in a bubble of highly anomalous grow…

I just drove from Seattle to Albuquerque, through vast tracts of empty land. Land is politically, not physically scarce. That's even true right around major metropoli, let alone the hinterlands. And even that doesn't count unused potential square footage along the vertical axis. The truly constraining axis isn't x, y or z, but NIMBY.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#94

Post by jandrese »

vsareto wrote: post #72
mikestew wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the title implies, the game was designed to be a lot like real life, and it sounds like that from your POV it has succeeded.

Give everyone 10x the bank's cash as inheritance and you'll also learn a lot of real life lessons from it.

A more realistic solution would be to have one player start with half of the bank and already owning most of the properties. Two other players start with the regular starting cash. Everybody else starts with nothing. Then they must praise the first player for being such a stunning businessman if he wins.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#95

Post by vzidex »

robomartin wrote: post #46

[flagged]

> I love people who call capitalism evil while doing so on computers and phones that exist because of it, while surrounded by products, from their clothes to their desk, furniture, construction materials, cars and more that are the product of the system.

This is a bad-faith argument - you're allowed to protest a system that you are forced to participate in. Our current system does not offer any clothes, furniture, homes (all necessities!) that were not produced by it

> We have friends from nearly every real Socialist nation in the world. They can’t believe people like Sanders and Warren are not being laughed out of politics in the US.

I'm guessing most of those people, like Bloomberg, oppose the leftist regimes because they have lost something to them - all the anti-leftist posts from Venezuela/China/Cuba/etc. that I've seen were from the 0.1% of their respective countries.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#96

Post by thaumasiotes »

skybrian wrote: post #63
pyrale wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The monopoly game is not zero-sum. Money increases when you pass start, and cards drawn are on average a source of money. In fact, the money owned by players inflates as the game goes on.

That's not real wealth though. The houses and hotels are the actual capital improvements. The thing is, supply and demand seem not to matter in the housing market. If you land on Park Place you can't shop around for alternatives. This might be retconned by saying that most housing is occupied and that's where you found a vacancy, but it's still pretty artificial. If the other houses are occupied then why isn't anyone…

> That's not real wealth though. The houses and hotels are the actual capital improvements.

That doesn't make Monopoly any more zero-sum. You're not generally limited by the supply of hotels. If I build a hotel where there were four houses before, the total capital stock has increased, not stayed constant.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#97

Post by pjc50 »

falcolas wrote: post #42
chungy wrote: post #10

Monopoly teaches people a view of economics being a zero-sum game and too many people learn the wrong lessons from it. Real life isn't a zero-sum game.

From a purely monetary point of view at a global level, transactions are indeed a positive sum. But the "positive" value of transactions, globally, is remarkably small - it's effectively inflation minus population growth (between 1 and 3% yearly). So, if your money is growing more than this 3%, someone else is losing money so you can make it. EDIT: I figured this would be unpopular - please feel free to correct me, t…

This is the whole Picketty et al "r > g" question, and I believe economists disagree on what the real numbers are.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#98

Post by captn3m0 »

larrik wrote: post #5
eitland wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boardgame can be great fun especially if people follow the rules.

Any boardgame that involves eliminating players from it is a non-starter for me.

+1. I once did a fun presentation on why Monopoly sucks. This was the top issue and the main reason why I don't play it anymore.

People play games to have fun. Eliminating them from a game is the worst thing you can do as a game designer, because its the only guaranteed way of them not having fun. This is the same issue that Mafia/Werewolf suffers from.

There's a nice blog post from the designer of Guillotine[1], where he mentions how one of the cards in the game (which stops players from playing any action cards) was "the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life".

Can't find the presentation anymore, but the other issues in Monopoly:

- Runaway leader (leading players get luckier)

- Starting few rolls can end up deciding too much of the game.

- Chances of landing in various properties is skewed enough to be a game-breaker (Primarily Transports and Orange) if not everyone is aware of it.

- Too much dependence on luck, overall.

[1]: https://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/one-thing-to-av...

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#99

Post by jandrese »

nck4222 wrote: post #83
lisper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but the rolls of the dice still have vastly more influence on the outcome than the very limited decisions that players can make. In order to decide whether or not to buy Park Place you have to land on it first. Not unlike real life.

>Park Place you have to land on it first. Not necessarily. The games rules include an auction that is frequently removed in house rules. What's supposed to happen is if the player who lands on the space (Player A) doesn't buy it from the bank, the property is auctioned to all players. Maybe no one owns Boardwalk yet, and Player A doesn't want to try and get the Park Place/Boardwalk monopoly. Or maybe Boardwalk is own…

Usually people don't pass up the chance to buy property though. It's not that there's a house rule against the auction, it just never comes up unless you have someone who is already losing badly that lands on a space that has somehow not already been snapped up.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#100

Post by travisoneill1 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #4

I love how everyone who wins at monopoly acts like a right arse to the other people and it turns out it was just rolls of the dice that decided if they won... I certainly always feel like I deserve to have won.

It's all about negotiating better property trades. The dice have little to do with it.
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