Ironically, that was the point of the game when it was created
Ps, with regards to the rules, the two main things are that:
Money does not go to whomever lands on Free Parking. The dynamics should be that players lose money round after round until only one survives (often taking over a lot of the others’ properties and amassing great wealth). Redistributing money that was removed from the game defeats this purpose.
When a player lands on a property but refuses to purchase it, it’s auctioned to the highest bidder. This speeds up the game drastically.
The last time I played it that way it still took 3 hours. The auctioning off properties thing almost never comes up because everyone usually buys every property they land on anyway.
I've played by every rule in the book and without adding any others and at one point none of us had the whole country so we were getting more money every round from going through the start than we were losing on payments
Why weren’t you building houses? You should be trading to complete a set and build.
Even without this, though, are you guys never landing on the penalty locations? I still think that you must’ve confused a rule or two, most likely the starting cash. You shouldn’t have so much money that you can buy everything up, and Go doesn’t give you enough money to survive landing on even houseless properties too many times
Same thing happened last time I played, totally by the book. After a few trips around the board we decided it wasn't going anywhere and gave the player with the most properties the win. They probably would have won eventually but it would have taken hours.
There's just not that many penalty locations and, unless you get lucky where you and someone else have the exact properties the other needs, no one is willing to trade when they know it benefits you more than them.
You keep posting that but people can't force the other players to trade if they aren't willing there is no rule that states trading is a must and as everyone you replied to saying this has stated your not going to empower another player just for a weaker deal I'm not gonna give them Mayfair just because they have the Euston Road I need and even if they start adding cash into the deal people are still likely to refuse because they know even if the chances of hitting those last properties are lower than hitting yours they will make their money back alot quicker
Ironically this is the point of the game. It's supposed to highlight how a business becomes a monopoly by offering short term cash to gain long term benefits. Thus it illustrates how monopolies screw everyone over.
Personally I would say the real game is seeing how long you can keep it up in light of this. You create a circular economy where small businesses (the players) just keeping paying each other as long as possible until they go under.
You say you get it then stop telling people they are playing the game wrong cause they aren't trading as if they haven't tried trading with other players. No one you replied to said they never attempted a trade I have had games where I have offered thrice what the property is worth and been denied because they didn't want me to get a monopoly even on basic properties, to me trading is such a minor part of monopoly despite it being labelled as a 'fast dealing property trading game' unless your unlucky and no one gets a monopoly at which point it becomes an extortion simulator which turns friends and loved ones into crime bosses who may end up turning to real world deals to get that last railway no joke got out is washing Christmas Dishes for Marlybone GG
We were literally following every rule. From starting money to not getting extra money on parking. Of course sometimes we would land on penalty location, but it doesn't occur often enough to really penalise us. Plus no one was wiling to trade cause it would only strengthen their opponents. So it was a stale mate pretty much
If nobody gives "good" trades, nobody is going to accept. The rules don't even really mention trading, so again, playing by the rules doesn't ever end the game.
And yes, I have recently read the rules, front to back, so I'm sure about that.
That's not really how game rules work. The rules don't specify that I can't steal money from other players when their backs are turned. It doesn't forbid the use of loaded dice or sleight of hand to land where you want. Nothing about taking a sharp knife and cutting out the Income Tax square to avoid landing on it.
All of those things clearly aren't legal game actions, despite the lack of explicit rules saying so. Game rules lay out the actions you can take, and everything else is forbidden by default.
Yes, but any system that needs the consent of someone else to make you win, when they often know it will accelerate how quickly they lose will naturally go on until someone is bored enough to trade just so,it’s over. However at that point everyone is already bored and it’s been two hours with another hour left.
That’s why when you trade you actually make it worthwhile for both parties involved. I’ve had a lot of monopoly games where people want an expensive property and the only thing they’re willing to trade is like the water company or a railroad. That’s not how trading works, and I wouldn’t go for such a shit deal so I don’t blame others for not doing it either.
Did you add in extra money? The rules state that once the bank is out, the bank is out. No more collecting when you land on "GO". How did the bank not run dry before 8 hours?
Trading is the problem when I play. It's very, very obvious who gets an edge in a trade. When I play with my friends, who generally love board games, basically no one is willing to trade, and give the edge to the other player. Eventually, someone get frustrated, makes a bad trade, and throws the game just to end it.
You need to overpay (from your frame of reference) or give them an equal trade (eg where you both get a complete set of properties). It’s the only way.
Right, but it is super obvious what set of properties is better, so whoever has the worst set shouldn't agree. That's the lock we get in and usually can't get out of.
If the properties are close in value, the player with the worse set can take extra cash to get a edge on the house race, then pray the player with the better set gets unlucky and lands on the houses to prevent them catching up--and ultimately wining. But, we always end up trapped with no trades. Or it starts going of the rails with, I get 2 free stays, and half of your pass go money for the next 4 passes, and you the better property set.
We got into a long argument, read multiple drafts of the rules, read multiple arguments on the internet, and decided the included pieces weren't a legitimate limit to total houses built, just an artificial placeholder.
I'm confident we could adapt our strategies if you are playing with house limits. And, ultimately that would make us even more trapped in no trades, it's even more straight forward what properties you need, and how many you need to lock up the game.
You can add money to make it an even trade for whomever has worse properties... and i don’t even know what you’re trying to say in your second paragraph, that’s the whole point of the game... try to get the better end of a trade and hope the others are unlucky.
So, I don't play Monopoly often. But, the few times I did. Everyone ranked the properties the same, so there wasn't a strategic or luck element to getting a better trade. We all knew the values of the properties. The ranking of the properties has been known for decades and it never changes. And, the cash on hand was low, from everyone buying properties to block sets. And, random properties outside of sets were basically valueless. This made it hard to trade. One time the workaround was to offer "free stays" and "future pass go income." Some players felt this was bending the rules. Regardless, it's awkward for a game to need such a dramatic workaround. I've never, in Catan, had to promises my next 4 Stone draws to work out a trade. In Monopoly, I find trading future income (a legal grey area) to be almost a requirement.
Normally, when we play Monopoly there is a trade freeze as people try to get the optimum set, and as we all value the properties the same, getting a better trade is just a player purposefully entering a sub-optimal trade to move the game on.
It's an old game, so I understand it's limits. Modern trade games I play usually don't have a static board, so the optimal trade isn't set and obvious before the game even starts. Or, they have multiple paths to win which allow some strategic flexibility. In Monopoly the strategy is always go for the Orange properties to capture the extra jail passes. If you can't get Orange, go for Light Blue for extra community chess passes, AND stop anyone from getting Orange. This just repeats all they way down the property sets. So, baseline, you don't trade, unless you end with the most valuable set. If everyone ranks the sets the same, baseline, all trading stops.
I dunno, it seems that when I play we tend to roll a minimum of 6 almost every time. So get doubles every so often and you only land on like 3-5 spaces when going around and hitting Go. If I land on my own properties every single time, I just keep getting more money every time around. That's how games tend to go when I've played. We almost always run out of hundreds and 500's from people landing on the same damn spaces every time and never paying out money. It's so boring!
The combination of consistently high dice rolls for everyone and landing on your own properties is a huge anomaly.
Let’s do a thought experiment. If you‘re playing with 3 players and you each own a 4th of the board (and penalties/other locations are the remainder, and these are evenly distributed, the odds of landing on your own location is 25%. The odds of landing on your own property twice in a row is .25*.25 = 6.25%. 3 times = 1.56%. 4 times = 0.39%.
This isn’t even taking into account the high dice roll, which I guess you can just multiply each instance by .5 (ie .5 chance to roll higher than 7, roughly, let’s keep it simple). 1= 12.5%. 2= 1.5%. 3=0.19%. 4=0.02%.
In short, this is a huge anomaly, even just landing on your own property with a high roll 4 times in a row is already at almost 0% probably. Which leads me to think that there has to be something else here. Anomalies happen, but this is nearly impossible to be that consistent.
I guess the dice could be loaded, or how we throw them. I'm not saying my anecdata are real data, just that it's the way it tends to work when I play. We go through, buy our properties, then keep landing on our own properties, or chance and community chest, making more and more money each time through.
It's really not that odd (other than he's clearly not going around the board in 3 rolls). The board has 40 spaces, average dice roll is 7, so you hit roughly 6 spaces. 12/40 are non-properties. On average, you'd hit 1.8 non-properties, 4.2 properties (1.05 you'd own). If you really want to win, you'd never make a trade that gives someone a monopoly without you getting one that's comparable. If nobody gets a monopoly, the average rent is something like low 20s. Pay 60, get 200.
Whenever I've played, people get into a warlike mood, where they'll be anti-cooperative to the point that it's not even in their favor.
"Alright, how about this- I'll give you three railroads and both the electric company and water company, and another two hundred bucks for Atlantic Ave."
"No."
"Three hundred?"
"I'll never trade with you, because you'll have a full set."
And I’d agree that all of that for a complete set is not an even trade. You have to either benefit from someone about to go broke, or overpay. You’ll get the money back when people start landing on your houses. This is even better if you’re the only one building houses. This is an interesting example of the endowment effect where people overvalue things they already own (and vise-versa).
In the end, you’re the one that wants a complete set.
I dunno, I feel like that mindset is what makes games stagnate forever. Even if you're offering to fill their Yellows for them to fill your Purples, people stay put and it's just garbage. No counter-offer, nothin'. Just a flat 'no'. It basically leaves the game up to dice rolls and the occasional choice of buying and mortgaging.
Plus, the Yellows kinda suck, position/cost/payoff wise.
Get creative... offer that player X free landings on those properties too? And tbf, those are shit properties offered in your example. Most if the power of rail roads is before monopolies form.
You shouldn’t have so much money that you can buy everything up, and Go doesn’t give you enough money to survive landing on even houseless properties too many times
Well, my father played a lot of monopoly, so obviously I inherited all his monopoly money. Do you expect me to not use his legacy to my advantage?
This is usually a sign that you’re playing with too many people; the sweet spot I’ve found is 4; less than that and you can end up with kingmaker scenarios and more than that and you run into this exactly.
Generally those type of games go until someone finally manages to wing some weird 7-way trade where everyone gets what they want, then (presuming it didn’t take two hours to finally pull that off) the game ends in about 15 minutes as suddenly everyone has hotels everywhere.
Haha, I love it when you have that one guy that will never trade anything, ever. Then they set the tone and everyone is afraid to trade anything, even if it's ridiculously in their favor. Then it's either a stalemate or my girlfriend gets pissed at me because I gave one of our friends good property for peanuts to keep the game moving.
Once we ran out of monopoly money. This game really sucks at making the points it was supposed to make. We were all loving getting rich off 2 losers' backs
Depends on rolls and how many people you're playing with. All the properties on the board cost 5,290, which is easily affordable by 5 or 6 players. Plus auctions can make some properties much cheaper.
Never had that issue. Followed every rule start with what it says and still it usually is everyone buys every place possible for the first couple rounds.
Rules state that you can take out a loan on property. You get half the amount but wont get any money from the property until you've paid back the loan.
Usually by 40 minutes in me or someone else has managed to.manufacture a housing shortage and are in the process of choking out the rest of the players funds
The ultimate start almost nobody thinks of. You build four houses on every property you can, but never upgrade to hotels. You HAVE to have four houses to buy a hotel, so once you’ve bought up all the houses., nobody else can build anything significant and you inevitability win
Or with my group of friends, no one is willing to trade. It's really hard to made an even trade, as it's super obvious what properties are better. We just get more and more board until someone makes a bad trade just to move it along. People then yell at them for throwing the game. Then the remaining players negotiate if they should craft their own bad trade to king-make someone else. Winning seems mostly the ability to withstand boredom, unless there is an unsophisticated player to take advantage of.
of. You build four houses on every property you can, but never upgrade to hotels. You HAVE to have four houses to buy a hotel, so once you’ve bought up all the houses., nobody else can build anything significant and you inevitability win
your friends would be easy to beat. i always give someone the "obviously best properties" then clean house
We got into a long argument, read multiple drafts of the rules, read multiple arguments on the internet, and decided the included pieces weren't a legitimate limit to total houses built, just an artificial placeholder.
I'm confident we could adapt our strategies if you are playing with house limits. And, ultimately that would make us even more trapped in no trades, it's even more straight forward what properties you need, and how many you need to lock up the game.
Ultimately though, I think Monopoly is a poorly designed game and don't really care.
I guess all four of my friends, though their own intuition, math ability, and and google fu, know what property sets are better. There isn't much in the game that will change what sets are better, slight uptick in value to the cheaper properties when you're low on cash. But, which sets are the most likely to lead to a win is basically static, obvious, and everyone has the same plan. Strategically, there aren't alternate paths to win.
So, we are all in the same situation every game. We will happily trade in situations where we get the better set. We won't trade in situations where we get the worst set. As we all agree on what's the best property sets, we don't make meaningful trades. And, it's really hard to grease the wheels for an even trade, as side properties outside of sets are basically useless. The only side property that is valuable is a railroad. And, in any rational play, you buy everything to prevent other players from getting sets, so it's rare to have enough cash to balance out a trade.
So, we just get stuck every time. Unless two players are both going for near equal value properties, and the worse off player is willing to take a railroad to make the deal. But then, it just feels like luck, not that anyone was a great trader or had a great strategy.
i typed out a long response on how to play, and why certain properties are better given different situations and who owns what, but you're a lost cause. There is no reason for you to be stuck. you're stuck because everyone in your group is equally dumb.
No, I wouldn't allow that. My whole tactic is to buy every house and keep a hold of everyone of them. Once I've got them all I'll buy a hotel and then buy all 4 houses back to put elsewhere, I'll never upgrade if I can't afford to buy the hotel and all 4 houses. People usually give up when you play like this and most of them hate you for it.
Let's just pretend that the social policies today are largely a failure and that the only form of socialism we have points of reference are fascist regimes and oligarchies masquerading as socialism. Sure. I'm not a communist but the principles of early the 20th century Western socialist movement still ring true today and led to improvements in how many developed countries take care of their citizens.
Yeah, lol, all the people saying “I can’t stand monopoly” unironically are missing the point entirely of the game. To be completely honest, I didn’t know about the origins of the game at all. When I found out who made it, and why, and what it became, and why, everything made sense.
The game is designed to be random, unfair, and infuriating, short of actually randomly distributing different amounts of starting wealth to each of the players (which ended up being an interesting experiment I heard about in “The Other Side of Wall Street”)
Personally, I don’t like games like this as stuff I play on my own, but I do love the experience of it with friends, which is where I think the game backfires.
It’s like playing Trouble. Almost exactly the same principles - a random roll controls your fate - except you do get a tiny bit more strategy and decision making when it comes to specifically which piece you decide to move.
And people love random party games. You get to do something fun with people without investing too much time into thinking, something you have to do day in and day out during your job, when running errands, meeting deadlines, completing responsibilities, etc.
But, where trouble was likely designed on the assumption of making a fun party game, Monopoly was designed to be frustrating and unfun to play by someone who hated capitalism and what it led to in the markets.
If people want to know what happens with completely free market capitalism, all thy need to do is play monopoly, by the book, with 2 extra rules:
1) at the beginning of the game, every player is awarded a totally random amount of money.
2) you win, or lose, however much money you make in the game. Start with $500 and end with $1000, you’re know $500 richer. Start with $750 and end with $0? You just lost $750.
Boom, you have a great case study for how almost completely free market capitalism works, and you get a mini psychological study into how humans behave in the same environment.
Spoiler Alert
In the documentary I mentioned above, The Other Side of Wall Street, they essentially did my version of monopoly without rule 2. During each run of the game, the players that started with more were usually more aggressive and mean to the other players, even though they started the game with more money by random chance. They also played the game more aggressively and ruthlessly.
Obviously, it was still just a game, so nobody won or lost any actual money, but it was interesting to see how even the appearance of fake power changes the players’ personalities.
Yup, I totally forgot this too! Awesome to see someone else who saw the documentary.
It was really interesting to hear the story of the children who interacted with the Butler, and how they treated him like everybody else until they “grew up” in their preteens.
It really is fucked up how we can go from these little emotional love monkeys, to big judgmental pricks after being exposed to society for a relatively small amount of time.
wow so my dad really was playing by the rules and spirit of the game when he managed to pit my siblings, cousins, and I all against each other... I haven’t played in 16 years because of the acrimony that game caused...
Rule number one of economics: resources are limited, wants are unlimited.
And when you have an economic system whose main premise is exactly to make the most money possible off of selling limited resources to a society of unlimited desires, the best way to do that is to make everybody insecure in themselves, judged by others, and willing to do whatever it takes to take their small piece of a very limited pie.
I’m sorry your dad took things too far, and I hope the only thing you guys lost was just the enjoyment of a board game instead of the enjoyment of each other’s company.
Lol that’s exactly what he did 😂 we are still friends, luckily, bonded by our mutual dislike of monopoly and general distrust of my father whenever we play other games now
I forgot the youtube channel but one of those channels that does challenges with their staff to win real money did a monopoly game with the standard rule set and same amount of money but with real money where the winner won however much money they had at the end.
Rule 3. At the start of the game, the player who won the previous game received one quarter of the wealth they amassed during that game, to start this game with.
They are missing the point, of why the game exists in the first place.
Monopoly, broadly, is a family game where luck plays a major part in the game play, and player decision making only has a tangential role in the game play. A person who dislikes monopoly probably doesn’t like it because they dislike that type of game in general.
Disliking a game because it was designed to be disliked is different than disliking a game because you probably don’t like that type of board game in general.
I, personally, don’t like games like monopoly at all. I’d never play monopoly on my own. I generally don’t like games in general where randomness plays a larger part than my own ability to make decisions.
But, I love monopoly as a party game. I don’t mind randomness as an element in a fun night out with friends or family. When I was younger, Monopoly was one of the games my family, including myself, loved to play.
Another person might be exactly the same as me, except that they don’t like largely random games at all, even in party situations, and they just don’t play them at all.
Yet, knowing the purpose of the game, I still enjoy it.
There’s people who dislike monopoly who like the literal game of life made by the same company (iirc). There’s people who dislike monopoly who enjoy other games meant to mimic other aspects of life just as realistically.
While the original game was designed to suck, by highlighting the weaknesses of capitalism, the influence of the Parker brothers on the final version of the game, it’s marketing, and it’s final reception can’t be understated.
Moreover, the ability for people to enjoy even a game designed to suck because it mimics life was, I think, severely underestimated by the original creator of the game. People are capable of enjoying all sorts of things that mimic life if they call it a game.
That said, I’m sure there are plenty of people who dislike monopoly because it feels to much like real life, in which case, those are the people I would say “duh” to.
But if you don’t like monopoly because it’s not your type of game, that’s fine.
This is an incredibly interesting comment and adds so much more than the oft repeated platitudes of 'monopoly is not meant to be fun by design its a critique of capitalism" so thank you.
Awesome, I’m glad you liked the comment. To me, this is one of the more fun little gaming details I know of. Monopoly is more than just “not fun by design to critique capitalism”. In fact, the actual story about how it became a fun family game as a result of capitalism is actually fairly interesting itself, but I don’t think most people know that because they only heard they “monopoly isn’t fun by design” from someone who heard it from someone else.
Monopoly is a game that is frustrating because it is capitalism distilled. You can do well if you play well, but it’s designed with a lot of random elements because that’s how life is. Random birth, random status, random intelligence, random wealth. The game runs away quickly to whoever gets an early foothold, mimicking the real world and how people who come from wealthy families tend to do better than even hard working people who come from a lower station in life.
Yet, the game itself only became a household staple because capitalism worked its magic. I believe Parker (if I remember the brothers’ names correctly) stole the idea for this game from the original lady who made it (whose name I, u fortunately, can’t recall), and made some changes to it to make it appear more fun.
Combine the shiny packaging with how people love random party games and goofy fun (monopoly provides a safe party environment to be a dick, within bounds, to your friends/family) and Monopoly is possibly one of the greatest commentaries on how free market capitalism actually works, and most people don’t know it.
The original maker of this game hoped that people would play this game and be disgusted by it, and subsequently realize just how poor and unfair an economic system free market capitalism is.
The entirety of the history of the game, from its original inception, to its adoption as a family gaming staple among US families, is possibly an even greater commentary on free market capitalism and extreme consumerism than the original author of the game could have ever intended.
Imagine: a game created to reveal the chaos, randomness, unfairness, and evil that free market capitalism leads to being adopted as a family game precisely because it allows us to be chaotic, random, unfair, and evil in a safe and controlled environment.
Except the difference between monopoly and other board games is that monopoly was literally designed to be unliked.
Yeah, it may be true that plenty of people don’t like monopoly because they don’t like that style of game, or board games in general, but the origins of monopoly and why it was even designed are definitely worth talking about.
Unlike a game like twister, where someone might just not like being that close to other people’s bodies, or trouble, where someone might not like it for its preponderance of randomness, Monopoly was actually designed to not be liked because it was a sucky game to play.
And it is because so many people actually like monopoly (I think it’s one of the most successful, family-oriented, board games of all time) that it is interesting to talk about why people do or don’t like it.
Stop being that guy at parties that everybody hates because you strangle conversations like you’re in bed with your ex wife.
Except, capitalism, unlike monopoly, isn't a zero sum game. New sources of wealth can be created. Nor is there any such thing as "completely free market capitalism" even within the definition of capitalism, because it implies someone has to enforce the rules, just like the game. If there isn't a government enforcing the rules, it isn't capitalism.
Except, capitalism, unlike monopoly, isn't a zero sum game.
Capitalism, as it exists in many western countries, but specifically the US, is most definitely played like a zero sum game. Every quarter, companies fight for more and more market share. Companies are consolidated, mergers reduce competition, competitors are blocked out by capital monetary or legislative barriers to entry.
Capitalism in the United States is most definitely played as a zero sum game where every company, at the very least, is competing with its last quarter self.
And when you have an economic culture where every single year, numbers must grow, the world that we live in that could be sustainable for centuries or millennia to come most definitely evolves into a vicious cycle where the other guy having something means I have less than I could, or even should, have.
Every year, the company must be a market leader in growth. Numbers must be bigger and better than last years. Projections must always be growing. Success is measured in the hundreds of billions, or (now that Apple recently broke the mark$ trillions of dollars)
Capitalism is a way to exploit the unlimited wants of human beings to make he most profits with the limited resources available on this planet, in a given industry, at any given time.
So, yes doesn’t necessarily have to be a zero sum game when done right.
But capitalism, at its core and essence, is why Comcast exists. It’s why the internet service provider industry consists of a few major players that hardly ever compete. It’s why the US has gone from having a healthy aviation industry with competition from multiple airlines to rapidly consolidating to just a handful of major airlines that control most of the industry. It’s why, suddenly, cable is jumping on streaming services, oversaturating the market, and fracturing what was conceived as a solution to the overbloated and overpriced cable tv package model of yesteryear. It’s why our energy industry is stuck burning liquified prehistoric plants and dinosaurs, instead of investing in newer, cleaner energy technologies that will also help save us from burning our planet away.
Capitalism may not necessarily be a zero sum game, but it is absolutely played like a zero sum game because all of those new technologies that could be created and invested in, those new revenue streams that could be discovered, are almost never as easy to invest in as whatever the status quo that people are used to now.
And that exact same mindset is an unfortunate, and prominent, fixture of American culture.
Why haven’t we moved away from coal when France has shown is that nuclear energy is, far and away, the safest and most renewable energy source we could invest in, generating around 70% of their power from nuclear energy (if I recall correctly)?
Because we were afraid of nuclear energy when we first started developing it. Because coal saw nuclear energy as a threat to current profits instead of an investment in the future. Because, as even current president questioned during our last campaign, what will happen to our coal workers? Well, we retrain them, obviously.
Why don’t we have a health care system that is available for everyone to be able to live a happy and healthy life in the United States, like basically every other modernized and developed country around the globe? Because a few people may have to pay more in taxes overall.
Money talks, and more money now is always better than maybe more money later, if we take the time to invest in new technologies, and if we decide to be good to our customers. Far to many people with their hand’s at the steering wheel of the US economic engine live their lives and die by this idea.
We are never going to see a solution to any of the world’s economic problems until we somehow figure out a way to remove that evil from the hearts of the people who get to make the decisions for the rest of us.
As long as maximizing quarterly profits, ensuring we extract every drop of revenue from the limited resources in a given industry, and exploring every lay drop of productivity that market demand can bear are the guiding principles of our world’s economic drivers, the little guy who cares about doing right is simple going to be priced out of existence every single time, and capitalism will always revert to a zero sum game.
1) No, it's not zero sum. If it was, the market wouldn't have been rising at around 2-8%/yr for hundreds of years. Rising markets over time are not redistributed wealth. It's created wealth. Basic economics.
2) Monopolies can arise, but Comcast is a very bad choice. If infrastructure projects (like streets, sidewalks, telephone poles, etc) had easements multiple companies could use and exclusivity agreements were banned, Comcast would be one player among many.
3) Same with healthcare. The mere fact that you cannot know the price of something before you get it tells you everything you need to know about how market based the system is. At this point, almost zero.
I never said capitalism had to be a zero sum game. You brought that point up. I’m saying the way it’s played is. Markets get filled to saturation and, because of cultural inertia, the decisions made by the people at the tippy top are totally based on the mentality that I must have what the other possesses. Market share for someone else is market share I don’t have.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t be riding this endless cycle of ever higher bull markets followed by ever lower bear markets. Yes, we bounce back from these things, and yes, I don’t deny that the market grows as a result overall, but the guys who actually make the decisions are definitely playing the capitalism game like it’s a zero sum game even though, reasonably, it shouldn’t be anywhere near that state until the planet is either literally about to run out of resources, or about to be consumed by the sun, if we haven’t found a way to travel off this rock to other worlds.
And I’m not even claiming that capitalism is 100, inherently bad. Every system, when exploited, can be terrible. A tool doesn’t care if it is used for good or evil, and that’s all different economic systems are.
But monopoly is specifically designed as a distillation of capitalist principles, packaged to show people that capitalism isn’t necessarily a good thing. While the original author of the game definitely hated capitalism, I won’t go so far as to say that the concept itself is inherently evil. Capitalism is merely a tool in the box we can use to design tomorrow’s better and more fair economic system, but too many people view capitalism as the holy grail of their precious economics, and they try to spot that screwdriver wherever they possibly can, even though what they may actually need is a hammer or a chisel.
And they did arise. It would be nice to talk about what would happen “if” all day, my point is that capitalism doesn’t have to be a zero sum game, but the biggest players play it like it is. You know why there aren’t easements in infrastructure projects and infrastructure projects aren’t banned? Because the game has been played under the assumption that every piece of the pie someone else has is a piece of the pie I don’t have. We used to have stronger protections against monopolies and consolidated trusts, but those protections have been eroded away exactly by the kind of people I’m talking about. Good luck trying to convince Comcast that they could do better in the long run if they gave up their exclusivity agreements, allowed competition into the market, and began investing in new technologies. That’s going to make quarterly protists dip, which means they aren’t a market leader, which opens a space in the industry for change, which threatens their hold. That investment is an unnecessary risk to take.
Again, it’s been designed that way by the people at the top. It doesn’t matter if you or me can see the actual, original process of the products and services offered and covered by healthcare. The need to not die or suffer is kind of an inelastic demand. By obfuscating prices, companies can convince doctors and patients that the system most definitely needs to be so expensive, and it definitely can’t be made any cheaper by changing to a different system. You’re a fool if you think that healthcare prices aren’t driven by the market just because we the people can’t easily see the prices of the medications and services we need. It’s like entering a restaurant with a menu that lists no prices. If you have to ask “how expensive?” You’re not the customer the restaurant is looking for.
And specifically on healthcare, I personally don’t believe capitalism and free market is the tool for that job. I don’t believe that the free or capitalism market should decide the right balance between a person’s demand to live, and a pharmaceuticals supply of drugs and treatments.
But, hey, when some Martin Skerelli can hike up the price of a life saving drug by a few hundred percent over a few years, and another woman can hike up the price of epi-pens by another few hundred percent, all because it takes money to develop drugs, that they then charge the people who need the treatments, because our society doesn’t want to just bundle the basic right to a healthy life into a single payer system funded by our tax dollars, because that means that I now need to pay more taxes, and use more of my pie, to help someone else, that is exactly what I mean by “people play capitalism like it is a zero sum game”.
Why should some of my money go to someone else’s healthcare? Why should I give up some of my pie? If I give up a part of my pie, where is the part I get back?
An entire party is based around the idea that if I give a piece of the pie to the government, that’s less pie I can use for myself.
More taxes for healthcare? Infrastructure? Space exploration? Renewable energy? Utilities?
They don’t see that a bigger piece of the pie returns to them overall, as healthy people spend more money on industries instead of treatments, on developing new ideas instead of fixing old ones, on investing in the technologies to solve cutting edge problems, on not having to worry about basic needs.
Your if is the exact conversation I would love people to actually have. I’m not going to turn around and say that socialism, communism, feudalism, mercantilism, etc, are the magical answers to these problems.
Yeah, if we had proper market protections, Comcast wouldn’t be the monopolistic giant it is in so many places.
If we had the right regulations, airlines wouldn’t have consolidated to just a few major players who are either looking to edge each other out or avoid competing in the same spaces.
But we won’t get there until we convince the guys who move the money that capitalism isn’t a zero sum game, and that it is just one tool in a toolbox that we can use to both generate profits and revenue, as well as ensure a better world for everybody.
That just because you’re giving up a piece of the pie now, doesn’t mean you won’t get a bigger piece of the pie later because you’re rewarded for being ethical and just.
Third rule that I refuse to play without is to limit the number of houses. Refusing to upgrade to a hotel to keep your opponents poor is a core strategy at this point
these get quoted quite often, but theres a caveat:
the official rules got changed quite a lot over the time, so all arguments are kind of true.
also, both the rules you stated were not in the original ruleset.
most importantly regarding your 2. rule, at one point the rule was without auctioning, but you couldn't start building houses unless every thingle property was sold, which made games exceptionally long.
I remember going around to a friend's house when I was a kid and they played that weird free parking rule where you get the money in the centre, for the first time in my life!
Everybody always mentions these rules but forgets the biggest game changer rule: houses can run out, at which point nobody can buy more houses. You also need to be able to buy 4 houses (there must be 4 available at the bank) before you buy a hotel, you can't just straight buy a hotel by cashing 4xhouse+1hotel cost.
Therefore the easiest way to win is just buy 4 houses on all your properties and never upgrade. Cut the supply of houses for everyone else while your properties have most of them = usually quick win.
The worst/best part of auctioning is that you can bid on your own auction, meaning you can buy properties much cheaper if no one has the money to outbid a bid cheaper than the original price.
That’s capitalism, baby! If there’s no demand, you can buy it on the cheap. This is exactly what happens in every recession. The wealth gap expands because people who’re well off use their money to buy properties/goods/stuff cheap and sell it after the recession is over.
The other important rule is that there are a limited number of houses.
The ideal strategy is to max out your houses but never upgrade to hotels. The rules specifically state that players can only buy houses as long as there are still some left in the box, whoever did the first person to buy houses can usually lock-up the game early.
There are a limited number of houses in the box. You can stack 4 houses on all your properties and exhaust the supply of houses, preventing your opponents from developing their property. You cannot go to hotels directly, you must have been able to place 4 houses first.
I know it's not the correct way to play, but every time I've played Monopoly, if we landed on an unoccupied space on the board, we either bought it or just passed the turn. No auctioning. This was only with 2 people playing though.
Free parking means you get everything in the middle, and if you don’t want to buy an empty property then you can
That’s one of the issues that I pointed out. The money from taxes, for example, does not go to the middle. Free parking is just a blank location where nothing happens. You don’t get any money from landing there.
I realize I have played monopoly for years and never read the rules once and have missed a load of stuff about free parking, auctioning properties etc.
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u/LaBandaRoja Sep 11 '19 edited Sep 12 '19
Ironically, that was the point of the game when it was created
Ps, with regards to the rules, the two main things are that:
Money does not go to whomever lands on Free Parking. The dynamics should be that players lose money round after round until only one survives (often taking over a lot of the others’ properties and amassing great wealth). Redistributing money that was removed from the game defeats this purpose.
When a player lands on a property but refuses to purchase it, it’s auctioned to the highest bidder. This speeds up the game drastically.
Edit: Pro-tip: don’t play monopoly in the first place. It’s a terrible game. Go to r/boardgames or Board Game Geek’s Top 100 for recommendations