I could only get a cached text version of the link to load, but I'm surprised to see not a single mention of The Landlord's Game. It was the precursor to Monopoly developed by Elizabeth Magie, and intentionally designed to be an unfair and unbalanced game in order to demonstrate certain economic principals.
The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as The
Landlord's Game, was designed by an American, Elizabeth
Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as early
as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally
intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic
consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the
Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value
taxation.
The game was created to be a "practical demonstration
of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual
outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the
economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry
George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich
property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some
people could find it hard to understand why this happened and
what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist
ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might
be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played
by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of
unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into
adulthood.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game
> The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as The
Landlord's Game, was designed by an American, Elizabeth
Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as early
as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally
intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic
consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the
Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value
taxation.
> The game was created to be a "practical demonstration
of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual
outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the
economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry
George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich
property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some
people could find it hard to understand why this happened and
what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist
ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might
be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played
by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of
unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into
adulthood.
The problem is, very few actually play the game by the correct rules. That's what the imgur link in a different part of this discussion is trying to teach. The 'proper rules' that make Monopoly the unfair game it is intended to be.
I'm trying to dig up Magie's alternative rules, which were modeled after preferred Georgist policies. I never tried them myself, but I hear they made for a very long, overly balanced game with highly equitable outcomes. Too boring for a game, but much nicer for real life ;)
I have a link to them somewhere. I'll post it if I can find it.
So Magie's game came with two sets of rules ---one monopolistic, which I believe became modern Monopoly, and the other antimonopolistic. Has anyone played the last ruleset? Really interested to know what it's like...
