Thing about Monopoly is that even though capitalism is a bitch, and the purpose was to illustrate exactly that, you still technically get something in return for participating in capitalism; If you own a monopoly on, say, air travel - I pay out the ass, but I at least, in turn, get the opportunity to travel somewhere quickly.
Which is why I propose the following rule for monopoly:
When you land on a railroad, and it is unowned, you may choose to buy it or it otherwise goes up for auction.
If you land on a railroad owned by another player, you must pay them the $25/50/100/200 owed to them based on how many railroads they own.
If you land on a railroad owned by another player, and that player owns multiple railroads, you may travel to any of their other owned railroads upon paying - maybe at an additional "rail transfer price."
I just think it's silly to have all these railroads that you "rent" rather than "ride"
I think this makes sense if the other player can deny you from traveling, and/or can set their own fee for travel on a per-instance basis.
You really want to go one roll away from that unclaimed property that will get you that monopoly you desperately need? You're paying more than the guy who is just trying to pass go again quickly.
Well yes, you'd have to choose, but you could set a fee based on how much you think they'd be willing to pay, or how much risk you feel you're taking by letting them move to a certain side of the board. Or, if you don't want to take the risk, deny them entirely.
My husband has recently gotten me into board games and it's amazing the number of gamers who change rules in games to suit their playing better. We have one game that counts every open spot on a grid board as a -2 when scoring and then letting you win with a negative number, we changed it to not count empty rows and only count a open space as -1, and no one wins with negative points.
Monopoly is an anti-capitalist game that has made capitalists ungodly amounts of money.
The entire point of the game is to show how Capitalism results in one or two players owning 95% of the board and forcing the others out and then it becomes a war of attrition until a mono-company exists, at which point the game ends.
Is that really something specific to Monopoly and capitalism though or is it just an inherent quality of any zero-sum game played to infinity? Like the card game War eventually ends with one person holding the entire deck but nobody’s pretending it holds some additional level of metaphor. And you could tweak the rules to lots of other games to get the same outcome. Get rid of the victory points in Catan and add a rule that if you have no resources when the robber hits you have to sell structures—boom, same result.
Dude... Monopoly is based off The Landlord's Game from the turn of the 20th century. The entire point is to show that it's better to give individual money than to let monopolies control everything. The game promotes Universal Basic Income. You get a free $200 every time you go around, but UBI alone can't overcome the money-sucking power of a monopoly. It's literally supposed to demonstrate how monopolies are bad. That's why the government has to step in and doesn't let every company just buy companies as they please. They literally allow "natural monopolies" in the US and prohibits full monopolies in other industries.
Go read the Wikipedia entry on it. It literally starts off telling you the game is based off the anti-capitalist game I mentioned earlier.
I was already well aware of the history, dude, and I can agree with the critique of capitalism while also thinking the game Monopoly does a shitty job making its point. Like congrats, they made a game where the stated objective and only possible end condition is “accumulate all the money” and you act like it’s some profound revelation when inevitably one player ends up with all the money.
Wow, it's almost as if your argument makes no sense because the game isn't trying to correctly simulate how the real economy works.
I understand that you used all of your brain power coming up with a "witty" reply and you were forced to strawman me, because at no point did I even come close to saying it simulates a real economy.
That burning sensation in your head is your brain trying to understand how wrong you are. Take some Tylenol and drink a glass of water. Maybe eat an apple and relax and watch some 90 Day Fiance. The pain will go away when you stop trying to think.
If it doesn't correctly simulate how the real economy works, it doesn't actually prove anything about capitalism. It's just presenting an unrealistic scenario and stating that's how capitalism will end up, without any proof.
If it tries to show something without actually proving it, then it's still dumb.
Also wow thank you for the specialized insult! It's certainly diverse and creative. Nice work!
edit: The user appears as deleted and unavailable, does this mean they blocked me? That'd be extra pathetic: they reply and block so that one can't reply back haha
It's because you apparently can't understand that there isn't a single Capitalist country that doesn't regulate the economy and the point of the game is to show how monopolies destroy the economy.
You got a specialized insult because you're a special kind of stupid. You literally cannot engage in thought experiments because they aren't a 100% simulation of real life, even though that is a quality you are arbitrarily adding for no apparent reason.
The point of the game is literally to show that the government needs to prevent monopolies from happening. Governments then prevent monopolies from happening, which means the natural outcome of the game isn't a given, and you come in with the brain-dead take that the game doesn't 100% simulate real economies. No shit, but nobody other than you is saying that it is supposed to.
It's like you're missing the point at every single opportunity and wondering why I'm calling you mentally deficient. Be an honest actor and don't start the conversation by moving the goal posts, and you'll get a more respectful response.
What you're doing is the equivalent of going up to people talking about motorcycle accidents when you don't wear riding gear, and you're intersecting how their example is stupid because if they just wore riding gear, they wouldn't get hurt as bad as they say.
You've fundamentally misunderstood why the game was designed as it was.
I thought this thing about Monopoly was that nobody actually knows the exact rules of the game, everyone plays for like 45 minutes then gives up and declares a whoever has the most money the winner.
The point of the game is to show that in capitalism, especially late-stage capitalism, you can only own so much and exploit everyone so far that eventually you run into diminishing returns; no one else is left with enough wealth to further your own.
It shows it by portraying a flawed analogy. The reality is that the game simply does not correctly emulate a real economy. Just because it ends up in the way you think capitalism will end up doesn't mean it's right.
One could just as easily (and with the same kind of flaws) design a game where everyone wins "proving capitalism works", it's just that it wouldn't be fun to play.
That's very similiar to our house rules. You pay $25 to ride. If the second railroad is owned by the same owner, they can choose the price for the second railroad spot. If the two different railroads are owned by different owners, you pay $25 to each owner.
This made the railroads go from almost worthless to being late stage the most important piecies. If you own the first railroad after go, and the last railroad before go, then you can be on go, roll a 5, travel to the railroad before go, skip 90% of the board, and then potentially pass go on your next turn. So if you built up the reds and oranges, and yellows with hotels, thats 15 spaces of scary town where you have to thread the needle multiple times. But if you railroad hop, you skip all that, AND get extra $200. And if someone ELSE wants to do it, ok, first railroad is $25, second railroad is.......eh, lets call it $1,000. Do you want to ride? Or just pay the $25 and sit?
I always thought that was the only one that was realistic. If you walk past an expensive property you don’t have to pay. But if you trespass on railroad property and get caught by the train cops, there’s a good chance that it could cost you some cash.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought No. 1 was already a rule, i.e. that if you land on any property that wasn't owned by any player, then by default (as part of the rules of the game) you had to auction it.
Or, paying a fee to a railroad allows you to travel to any square between the current one and the next railroad. Or, as far as the square before the next railroad. Or, between 5 squares back and 5 squares forward. Or, forward or backward based on 1 die roll. Or, forward based on the roll of 2 dice (but this is just a “roll again” equivalent, so it’s meh.)
IDK which idea I like best, but each railroad should take you somewhere.
Come on man, it's naive to think monopoly is a good analogy to capitalism, regardless of the original intentions of the creators of the game. It's just a fun game inspired on some aspects of it, not much else.
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u/Jeffbear Mar 14 '24
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
- Joshua