Monopoly is Anti-Landlord Propaganda
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- Опубліковано 10 чер 2024
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A video about Monopoly, landlords, propaganda and one of the most devious acts of intellectual property fraud of all time.
Written, presented and directed by Tom Nicholas.
Edited by Georgia Burrows.
Chapters
00:00 Monopoly: A Story of Board Game Propaganda
05:17 Part One: Lizzie vs. the Landlords
06:33 Part One (a): The Slightly Weird Economics of Henry George
14:44 Part One (Redux): Lizzie vs. the Landlords
18:39 Part Two: Open-Sourcing Monopoly
24:06 Part Three: The Man Who Stole Monopoly
29:50 Part Four: The Monopoly Monopoly
37:44 Part Five: Lizzie's Legacy
Bibliography
You can find an annotated bibliography for this video on my Patreon, here: / video-how-stole-76009569
Some Copy About this Video for the UA-cam Algorithm
Monopoly is very likely the most popular commercial board game of all time, having sold more than 275 million copies since it was first retreated in 1935. Come the holidays, families and friendship groups worldwide will around their dining room tables and do their best to bankrupt one another. Until, that is, someone inevitably snaps and flips the board.
Monopoly and its associated iconography including “Mr. Monopoly” (or Rich Uncle Pennybags as he was once officially called), the “Go” corner, “Go to Jail” and “Boardwalk” (or “Mayfair” in the UK edition) is iconic. And, those icons are often presented as a celebration of contemporary capitalism; such as when they’re used in the regular McDonalds Monopoly partnership.
But, what if I was to tell you that what we today know as Monopoly was actually created as a critique of capitalism rather than as a celebration of it? That Monopoly was in fact designed as an ingenious piece of anti-landlord propaganda?
In this video, we’re going to explore how an activist from Oregon called Lizzie Magie was inspired by the economic and political theories of Henry George to create The Landlord’s Game. And how a salesman called Charles Darrow got rich by stealing her invention.
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Select footage courtesy of Getty
Board Images courtesy Thomas Forsyth: landlordsgame.info
#Monopoly #BoardGames #Propaganda
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Commercial before the Video even begins \ :
Great video - I've always felt exasperated while playing this game.
Small culture correction - the Hanukkah Menura holds 9 candles.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah_menorah
25:15 meow
Something you missed is that Lizzie actually created 2 sets of rules - the one Monopoly copied that shows how bad our current economic system is - and a second ruleset that was meant to be played afterwards and show why Georgian economics was better. (Also, Lizzie was a hugely influential feminist and a strong abolitionist like her father.)
As a female Game Designer (and Game Professor) who also makes indie games on Progressive issues, I often joke to my students that if reincarnation exists, I was probably Lizzie in a previous life. 😅
15:02
This reminds me of a mail advertisement I once recieved for The Economist around Christmas one year
"For those that recognize the inherent value of coal in one's stocking"
Hate it when capitalism subsumes it's own criticisms into itself
We are the Borg; resistance is futile.
@@CR-og5ho Not everyone is looking for subtext in everything.
@@CR-og5ho Not really, I think most people I've played Monopoly with (in it's current form) have done so completely uncritically
@@CR-og5ho No, no more than you are assuming everyone else *isn't* like that. I think it would be incorrect to say that monopoly has not been commodified into capitalism. As a result of this, much of the critique within it has been lost as a result. I also think, unfortunately, the average Monopoly player doesn't really think much of it at all.
Don't let yourself give into hate. Hate leads to the dark side.
I like to make Monopoly the least enjoyable possible; buy every plot I land on, go to jail, start building houses. Because the experience of Monopoly should be watching one asshole, sitting in jail, collecting all your money, and loosing none of theirs.
Yes, the trick is to stay out of jail as much as possible towards the beginning to grab as much land as possible and then stay in jail towards the end so you don’t have to pay rent!
You can't collect rent when you are in jail, according to the original rules.
@@ivandafoe5451 You actually can. But you can't stay in jail without bailing out for over three turns.
Yeah, I don’t know whether the rules have changed at some point since 1936 (I don’t think they have). But, under the current official rules, you can collect rent and negotiate with other players to buy/sell properties whilst in jail.
Tom Nicholas indeed has an inner Nicholas Cage.
My partner used to collect Monopoly editions before we got married. We have 17 versions of the game. I bought him a vintage edition from 1942. There was a metal shortage because of WWII and has wooden pieces instead of the usual metal figures.
I also have a bizarre love of the game because when I played it with my family as a kid all of us cheated in different ways. I was good at dropping dice, my brother palmed bills to take extra cash or pay less, my dad hid and slid around property cards, and my mom was so good at just straight up lying about everything that was happening that she could manipulate us into doing what she wanted. My parents introduced the game thusly, "Okay, boys. This is a game about the evils of unchecked capitalism and we're all competing to be the ultimate supervillain. The number one rule is no matter what, everyone loses."
most heartwarming monopoly story I've ever heard.
Did no one else make teams to take down the weakest link, trade for properties with each other to get all the needed colors, then have a final showdown once only two were left standing?
@@wintergray1221 Monopoly was left set up on a card table for days as my brother and I battled, bled eachother dry, then landed on free parking to start it all again.
This is honestly kind of an amazing way to play monopoly lol
Unchecked is a pointless filler word, you're not going to just keep a little cancer as a treat, not even in the skin on your foot or anything, no capitalism must be fully destroyed.
_Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would *critique capital end up *reinforcing it instead._
- Joyce Messier, Disco Elysium.
@@aaaa-tu8gq
It is an insane experience. I cannot recommend it more to other people.
@@garr_inc Is it playable on lower-end PC's (well, at least lower end in that it doesn't have a dedicated gpu)? The art style looks amazing and the story-world intruiging
@@KarlSnarks I do believe it should be able to run the game according to the minimum specs. If it doesn't you could always refund it if you haven't played for 2 hours.
@@KarlSnarks
Well, I can say this. My laptop, while quite good, is not amazing. Its dedicated graphics card is simple and old (I bought it around 2014), and it has but 6 GB of RAM. But it still was able to handle Disco Elysium without too much of a slowdown. It was not exactly 60 FPS, I think, but it worked well.
There is actually a reason for this... Capitalists have managed to convince others to use Capitalism as the measuring stick.
When you are the measuring stick for Critiques on Economical systems, it gives you the edge being described here.
It's honestly kind of thematically appropriate the McDonalds monopoly cross-promotion turned out to be a huge scam
It was a scam within a scam: the third party company that was contracted to print all of the stickers for North America deliberately made it so that nobody in Canada could actually win, then the head of security at the factory independently smuggled tickets to friends, family and the mafia by getting them to buy IDs in states outside of the area they resided in and eventually started muling them across the Canadian border, taking a cut from every win.
Apparently literally everyone who won in Canada before he was caught could only have done so by way of purchasing winning stickers that were stolen by that one security guard and it went on for ages.
Only in the us and because of one man who was conveniently the one in charge of the winning tickets
@@ohmygodsteve5224 it was a scam for all the Canadians that thought they were playing for a chance to win the large prizes when none of those tickets were sent to a Canadian McDonald's for decades intentionally, at least before the FBI got involved with the case of that guy who was selling the winning tickets
Not to mention, the McDonald's empire _itself_ infamously highlights an additional synecdoche, stolen from its originators the McDonald brothers by Ray Croc, through what else but our fav "investment" vehicle of landlord/franchise bs.
Actually, if anyone hasn't seen it, highly recommend the movie The Founder which portrays this slow corruption (aka "efficiency" ie capital accumulation in neoclassical econ euphemistic jargon), where you basically have the "good" capitalist McDonald's brothers who have genuinely held standards and are driven by values that transcend profit, and the "bad" capitalist in Ray Croc who is willing to sacrifice all other values towards that narrow zero-sum self-serving ends, capitalism inherently of course pulling up the latter like a magnet to the commanding heights of society, allowing Croc to be able to (in reality as well of course) quite literally steal the McDonalds property in all regards (land, IP, everything) from under the McDonald's brothers feet.
Inevitably of course without any pushback or regulation (god forbid...revolution?) on such "corruption" (again though, "corruption" _for whom_ ? cui bono?) it necessarily spreads like a virus, reifying itself as a "normal" part of reality and over time ossifying into "natural", cultivating an individuated 'business ontology' that conceives its brazen strip-mining of all social meaning/trust (not to mention the uh...planet we're consciously destroying...) as "good, actually". The FIRE sector in its entirety (finance, insurance, real estate) being either natural monopolies or social goods is inherently impossible to align with a profit motive toward any public benefit.
Finance capital in particular, or as Marx more accurately termed it 'fictitious capital', in being the purest form of rent extraction (and thus the most profitable, see: M-C-M circuit) has ensured history flatters their divine right, and thus we arrive at the contemporary moment, receiving a palimpsest mythology of history to discretely justify a continuity of class rule with cultural distortion of terms like "free market", the original notion of which in classical economics with folks like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and indeed Henry George, et al. (culminating with Marx who merely takes all these concepts to their logical conclusions from a structural macro perspective) was specifically a market free of *_rent_* , by definition value extracted _without_ value produced and a clear contradiction to the justifying logic of "the market", correctly recognized as a vestige of feudal social relations (hence the term 'landlord') - over time instead turned on their head, now used to justify essentially the exact opposite, a market free *_for_* rent extraction/usury. Not a coincidence you get a play about that absolute scumbag Hamilton for instance.
Ok, clearly I digress sorry lol, which is all to say,
*_Socialism or_* [continued] *_barbarism._*
_“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.”_ - some guy (Marx, to not be pointlessly facetious)
_"Kelp was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it."_
- Adam "father of capitalism" Smith, ch.11 Wealth of Nations, who _also_ prescribed a land value tax
_"Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title."_
- John Stuart "blockhead" Mill, Principles of Political Economy
@@ohmygodsteve5224 I think it was a scam for Canada too since they would never get chosen as winners.
Junior board game club member: "What if someone wants to play Monopoly?"
Senior board game club member: "We ask them politely, yet firmly, to leave."
I played many board & card games before I tried Monopoly for the first time. It was dreadful. Not (just) because I lost, but because my loss was obvious after about 15 minutes in & took more than 2 hours until it was finally over. I tried it again a few years later for the second & so far last time. It's the worst game I have ever encountered.
@@Egooist. Yes, well... falling behind in the early game with no catchup mechanic isn't exclusive to Monopoly. Lots of strategy games are like that (chess, twilight imperium, terra mystica, etc.). These games however, at least, have a lot of room to improve one's skills. As for Monopoly... well... you can only get so good at rolling dices. 😅
Hahaha I used to play in a boardgame club and we only ever played Pokémon monopoly for a joke because it had the most ridiculous rules ever. Like special stuff happened when both dice had the same number. I've forgotten what specifically but I think there was one where everyone had to pass all their cards and property to the player on their left which was extremely funny tbh
@@sorel7342 I guess any change to the original _Monopoly_ game is an improvement ;-)
lol
I once played a game of monopoly where one guy kept bragging about how much better at the game he was than everyone else, so we pooled our resources and wiped him off the board.
Donald Trump?
That's cheating
@@tomr6955 Lockheed or Google could not give less of a fuck tbh
@@tomr6955It’s really not. You’re essentially using politics to remove the largest threat.
Sounds like he won. Got to stir the pot then not have to play.
I was just playing Vincent Van Gogh Monopoly in Dutch with my family. It's funny that instead of Community Chest, they had the Artists' Union, and a lot of the cards were like, "You finally sell a painting!" and "Your parents gave you money" and stuff, like you were a starving artist, that also owned property, which were actually paintings.
That's awesome I'd love to play it
As the owner of a tabletop game store who has a bachelors degree in Political Science this video couldn’t possibly be more in my wheelhouse. Absolutely fantastic. More people should watch this as far far too many people completely misunderstand the whole point of the game.
Yay! I love it when a video lines up with someone’s interests perfectly! Consider this my holiday gift to you!
@@Tom_Nicholas It's always funny to imagine the exact precise people finding an extremely specific video that's completely catered to them.
If, while playing, nobody gets angry and flips the board they aren't playing Monopoly right.
haha yeahhhhhh
@@thebreadbringer9522 that's what youtube is good for.
but one thing that's hard to find is better designed languages with systematic standards for what constitutes "better".
there are a lot of random constructed languages, but most are just trying to showcase their artwork, so to speak, not actually really think about what makes X feature better than Y feature and why.
Funny to think that when you find yourself hating monopoly it means you're playing right.
No it means you are playing wrong!....Monopoly needs at least 4 players or it'll be over too fast as the first player to get an early monopoly pretty much wins the game....But if nobody gets a monopoly, then a tycoon level players can broker a final high risk monopoly deal, where you trade a monopoly for another monopoly (of your rival) along with cash, and the agreed deal has to be just rightly balanced that both sides have a near equal chance to win via the roll of the dice...This is difficult to pull off with a tycoon level computer player as it'll always seek an advantageous position and keep shooting down your offers..
@@ameyas7726 Nah fam, they're talking about class warfare
@@ameyas7726 thank you for proving the OP's point.
So how I've always read georgism, and heard it talked about is that the Land Value Tax isn't based on just the value of the empty plot of land.
Say you have an empty plot of land in the middle of London (unlikely but bear with me) everyone would want to develop properties on that land, either for say shops or people to live etc. so the value of the land is very high, especially compared to another hypothetical piece of land you own in the rural Scottish Highlands.
But now suddenly a metropolis forms in the Highlands, right around your plot of land, and now the land is worth just as much as your plot in London is. The land value has changed, and therefore so has the Land Value Tax.
This means that you can no longer buy up land outside of growing cities and without lifting a finger see your investment grow and grow to then sell it for huge profit, instead the land being developed around it means you have to pay more and more taxes, so to make profit of the land you need to have it developed. This makes a Land Value Tax very useful in cities where land speculation is getting in the way of building more housing for people who want to live there, because nowadays it is normal to mostly pay taxes on the properties on the land (at least where I live) so speculating with empty land or just having it sit there and become more valuable is essentially free. This increases the prices for either the council to build council housing, or private developers who will then want to ask higher rents as the land they bought was more expensive.
Essentially a LVT encourages the efficient use of land, and isn’t static. Or to use your example: instead of paying the $20 tax for an empty plot of Illinois Avenue, you would pay a lot more based on how developed the surrounding areas are (so potentially how many houses are built on the yellow and orange neighbourhoods). So if you don’t have a complete set and you can’t build there, because you only bought it so that your friend couldn’t complete the set and build houses, it might become a thorn in your side, where you actually have to pay more in LVT than you get in rent. This is encouraging you to sell it off to that friend so that it is no longer costing you money, meaning they can now build houses there.
What makes a LVT great because of this is that not only does it give the community the tax to use as it sees fit and reinvest in itself, but it also means that land has to be adequately used, and landlords can’t make money just by sitting around. They have to build or maintain houses, or find people who want to open shops there and therefore actively contribute to the development of the community. (which is nice when you have an ongoing housing crisis)
Now maybe that isn’t the way Henry George did his LVT, but this is the way I know LVT and how my city is looking to use it in the coming years (I’m an assistant to one of the parties in the city council here). Personally I still think it is a bandaid on the larger issue of capitalism, but probably nonetheless an improvement over what we do currently, which is mostly a property tax.
That's the same as the Georgist tax.
And, re-reading your comment, I'm a little confused, because you say it isn't just the value of the land empty, but then in the rest of your comment you outline a tax that is based on exactly that? What's the disconnect between the beginning of your comment (where you say what it isn't) and the rest of your comment (where you describe how it works)? Maybe I am missing something
my mom worked as a scale operator at a rock quarry for decades and the company commissioned their own licensed monopoly version for an anniversary ages ago. i think the company had maybe 50 employees at its height? the most niche monopoly collab i could imagine.
I heard about this story a little bit ago and it suddenly made sense why monopoly was so awfully designed. It was specifically designed that way to be a critique of capitalism.
If you watched the video, you'd know it was a direct critique of landlordism.
@@Yarsig Fair point. It can be argued that landlords are a result of our current capitalist system but regardless the more correct comment is it’s awfully designed to be a critique of landlords. I mostly just wanted to make a quick funny comment and so didn’t think about my word choice enough.
Yeah, the only way to make the game fun to play was to give universal basic income every round
It's important to note that Henry George wasn't anti capitalist, as he thought it should be possible to own means of production and profit from it. But it is a criticism of a large part of what makes the current capitalistic economy so unjust.
Henry George was advocating for a very free market, with minimal government interference and no borders. I wouldn't say he's a critique of capitalism at large, but its major flaws
@@Yarsig "landlordism" is a feature of capitalism. Monopoly criticizes all features of capitalism.
I was watching The Christmas Carol today and it was quite jarring in relation to the current strikes and m usk making the few workers left at twitter work 80 hour weeks. As Scrooge is seen as horrible for overworking and paying Bob Cracket poorly, it is seen as obviously wrong. Yet today the newspapers and right wingers shout how lazy nurses are, after clapping them a year ago, how not being able to work more hours is a sign of freeloading weakness. Dickens would be the pope of Wokeness if he wrote Christmas Carol today.
this
ladys, gentleman and anything else
is what i call bullshit
@@Abekiel elaborate?
Maybe we need a new version of Christmas Carol, but one in which the ghosts show a protagonist Bob Cracket how greedy, lazy and ungrateful man he is for demanding the old mister Scrooge a higher pay. Then Bob instead of submitting to Scrooge's abuses goes freaking mad at the ghosts and starts a communist revolution.
@@raulvidal2343 ariiiise ye workers from your sluumbeers!
I'm not saying it's my favorite, but I retain a fondness for the 1979 version: An American Christmas Carol with Henry Winkler. Can't remember the last time I watched it so the details are sketchy, but I doubt it would be made today unless by the end Winkler had turned into The Fonz and was super cool!
Was not expecting a connection to Georgism. Neat!
Edit: Unpaused the video and the next line was about how the 5% of us who do know of Henry George are obsessed and I have never felt so called out in my life. Lmao.
I don’t think you’re the first to have done this!
Tbf, it's not like the Georgists reply bros are wrong... ;)
I may be a joyless communist here, and I've only just read a bit about Georgism after having read this comment so I'm not making a strong assertion here or anything, but off-top, doesn't LVT seem a bit like a roundabout way to kinda-sorta make up for the inadequacies in controlling the inequality and hoarding inherent to markets and result in unintended consequences you have to do analyses to prevent that take you part of the way toward a planned economy already? Why not just socialism instead?
(I'm not even necessarily criticizing, I literally am not familiar enough with the theory, and figure people who are might have concise info that can help me understand its merits.)
@@LifeInJambles anarchist here, top down planning has a lot of failure modes. Markets tend to be more robust because pricing mechanisms will adjust to new conditions and reserve supply for those with greater demand. Land Value Tax giving some of the benefits of communism without being communism is a good thing imo
@@TheDesttinghim fair stance. Thanks for the response.
Couldn't the conclusion be: the main difference between monopoly and real live is the ability to choose to play the game or not. And we should maybe channel that anger into forcing changes, that gives us that choice in real live too.
Also, in Monopoly everyone's start is roughly equal. The only difference is the order players start. But in real life, some people just have a better home environment and education than others, and they may have a skillset that better fits the economy they're in better than someone else.
Except if you choose not to play Monopoly it means those who do have less competition.
For example, lets say you don't want to support 20$ Macrotransactions (MTX) in games for what are 2$ skins.
You must not touch those games, that seems simple.
So lets pretend 90% of the community does what you do.
The remaining 10% of the community only needs to pay 600$ of MTX. Given Battlepasses often cost around 100$ to instantly complete with other side MTX that 600$ is easily earned and the 90% leaving did nothing. The same profit was made as if the 90% had never left.
Since most, but not all, people stuck in the MTX loop don't care as much for game quality and more about the new shiny game quality/production costs will slowly drop meaning more money earned per money spent. You'd need everyone to universally leave. No one must play Monopoly or it begins to effect everyone.
Of course this means the next game comes out without MTX.
People buy it... and 6 months later they add MTX.
Now even when you're refusing to play Monopoly you're now playing it and need to pray they won't add it ever. Games becoming more of a service are to deny you the option to wait and force you into the next MTX game if you enjoy the gameplay of this game.
There becomes very little ways to force change since by trying to force it you end up telling people who like the battlepass charging them for what is normally free/cheaper content that the battlepass is here and they should come here. Like telling a gambling addict the casino is here.
You end up trapped in helping, helping, helping. Even peaceful protests likely won't work. You'd likely have to take apart companies and hurt those responsible for MTX. Unless you start a mass movement to dismantle this you'll just be jailed and nothing changes.
You end up attracting people who want to kill for the sake of killing which then reflects onto the movement and in turn leads to laws being passed which restrict civilians and protect those who play Monopoly.
No matter how you play... you're playing.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 .... but still, more and more people are hearing about MTX and talking about its injustices. Small victories begin accumulating here and there as people realize that they spend the money, and these shitty game companies have nothing without them. Sure, one or two loquacious gamers may be silenced, but the undercurrent lives on, as long as we remember the power we all have together.
Peaceful protest, by the way, has been largely misrepresented to mean asking politely, which very obviously won't work. I'm not saying peaceful protest is the only answer, but if it costs them money, eventually, they have to either listen to demands or force the issue. At that point, well... we've all got smartphones these days, and the internet is hard to silence. Basically, you're right about a mass movement being the only option. A lot of what we're taught about history revolves around lone heroes, but the things that really change the gaming industry are mass movements, who those "lone heroes" merely represent.
We can make a new kind of game together. It'll take a lot of work, and it might hurt, but the history of this industry is a history of paradigm shifts and mass movements. King's Quest once reigned supreme, but that's a distant memory, and MTX can be a memory too.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 Take care, Conrad. We in this together.
If you refuse to play in real live, police will show up, rape your wife and kids, torture you in a max security prison until you die because you questioned capitalism
My favorite game of Monopoly I’ve ever played was with a group of friends, one of us was on her way to winning the game, so me, my best friend, and the sisters of the winning player all decided to work together to put her out of business, and we ended the game peacefully coexisting lmao.
Cool, how did you all work together though?
@@andreaslind6338 they rolled the dice right.
It's so nice to read this because the only game of monopoly that I ever enjoyed, was also one where the loosing players decided to work together as well. 😌
Aka a proletariat uprising against the bourgeoisie
@@jankoodziej877 *slow clap*
It's sad when people are so desperate they have to turn everything into a joke...I was asking a serious question though.
Imagine how much harder it would be for Amazon to avoid paying tax in the UK if there was land value tax. Warehouses are difficult to hide.
Yup LVT is the preferred tax most right-wing capitalists are actually into, that is the non-homeowning youth, as my self. It’s Classical economics too, very good.
Friendship with corporate tax over. Now land value tax is my best friend.
Amazon should be expropriated and destroyed
Land value of warehouses is ridiculously low compared to Amazon profits. It's not a solution.
Might as well add a per capita tax too.
Lizzie Maggie might be happy to know that variations of Monopoly are being used in sociology classes to teach about inequalities. There's a version to teach about economic inequality, a version to teach gender inequality, and many others. They use the standard game that you can buy in the store, but have rule changes. For some of them, the teacher has to make up a few special cards. So, Mrs. Maggie's work is still being used for something good. BTW, the most unusual Monopoly game I own is Pythonopoly, a Monty Python version.
All a bunch of nonsense.
Not sure if I should admit this, but I work as a designer with the company who makes pretty much all the weird iterations of Monopoly (outside of the USA). I think the weirdest version I've worked on is for a engine parts manufacturing company... So the board spaces were all bits of machinery.
Monopoly is an example of the success of marketing a product directly into the cultural cortex: most people don't really know the rules, or particularly enjoy playing it... But it's known just well enough that - if you're a business and considering making a board game bespoke to you - Monopoly is the first choice.
I wonder what it was like to develop all these meme versions of Monopoly, like Longest Game Ever or For Sore Losers.
So, about the Quaker Oats thing. That's another story on it's own. There is actually no connection to the religion other than the name. The founder had read that Quakers were once known as honest business owners, and therefore used the name because of that. There was even a group of Quakers that tried to sue over the name and ended up losing.
c a p i t a l i s m
Don't forget when oats were falling out of favour in the 60s for wheat cereals they purposefully tested uranium laced oats on orphen children rounded up into a shity boarding school.
Oh and it was funded by the us gov.
as a Quaker, I will say that I do like oatmeal
@@waytoobiased
Im ashamed to admit that i immediately thought "Woah this youtuber caught a shiny jesus" because there are less than 200k quakers around the world today
Lizzie also invented another set of rules in addition to the Landlord rules. The other set of rules were called the Prosperity rules, and, IIRC, the game ends when the poorest player doubles their wealth, and then everyone wins! :)
You were supposed to play them sequentially, the shit version first then the prosperity rules
Wholesome.
The money generated from rent was distributed amongst the player's too, I think
2 x 0 = 0 though.
@@geraintthomas4343 when everyone wins, switch to the shitty rules and do it all again! It's now the game that never ends. I'd call it Life, but that's already been copyrighted
You should have said, "If you find yourself losing, console yourself with the fact that you're still losing in life as well, that is if you're not a landlord." Great video as always Tom!!
I remember years ago seeing on a friend's shelf the Monopoly, Duopoly and Anti-monopoly games piled up. I'd say that Lizzie's legacy is not yet entirely lost.
But yeah, I'm good with playing cooperative games, you can put that Monopoly box back in the wardrobe where we forget it the rest of the year, thank you.
"This would only result in the owner of Ian Wright having to hand you $20" is not a sentence I expected to hear today.
It sounds like, in your earlier predictions for the day, you were Ian Wrong?
@@Tom_Nicholas*Ian Wwrong
@@winnersduplicate554bore
I wish teachers made history as engaging as this.
Ah, I’m glad you thought it was engaging!
Isn't History engaging by itself?!
🙂
Although i can understand how a teacher can help make or break any subject.
@@sparkofcuriousity history is fascinating. Teaching history is basically storytelling. And we all know how boring soe storytelling can be and yet storytelling can also be engaging and is probably the oldest way we humans entertained ourselves.
They'd have to be able and willing to break from the standard capitalist mythology.
They’d probably get fired too. Can’t upset the program and curricula
Land tax: "I can fix her"
I actually convinced my partner and my friend to play the original version with me. It was pretty fun. We started with the landlord set of rules and changed to single tax after someone (me, lol) went broke. I think the most heartwarming part of the game was when the land spaces owned by old money (and the ones where you go to jail, if you trespass) get turned into free colleges.
As someone who owns a (still sealed) copy of the Warhammer 40,000 version, I find the last part of the blurb on the back of the box, "to become the most powerful warrior in this dystopian nightmare", marvelously apt. "Dystopian nightmare" indeed, in practically any PB-produced version.
In the grim darkness of the actual present, there is only - DEBT!
Warhammer 40k Monopoly? What a concept
Imean, its fitting, i guess. Both being pretty satiric.
I... I genuinely thought "Monopoly Warhammer 40,000 edition" was entirely a joke made by the video's author to drive in how ridiculous the crossovers are. I didn't think it was real. o.o
I was wondering would you be so kind as to talk about how the housing crisis is disproportionately affecting disabled people and how disabled people are having to crawl around homes which are not accessible to them risking fainting and hitting their heads because it's decided it's not value for money to allow them dignity and safety in their daily lives?
That'd make a good video topic
Years ago I helped a work colleague whose area pertained to disability access create a presentation on what she/her department did. I wound up researching and putting together a section on housing issues for her. The part that really struck me and stuck with me, was the idea that if houses were made more accessible and usable for people with disabilities, we would also be preparing houses for when people age and allow them to remain in their homes longer and safer in the latter years of life. As this wasn't my original work I don't really remember a lot of details but they made a strong case that it not only would improve quality of life for people in the present and the future but also save municipalities money in the long run (an unfortunate appeal to money but I'm in America and money is America's god and municipal spending is the devil). Another thing that really struck me is the idea that every person, if they live long enough, will be faced with "disability" in some form or another and will need to rely on assistance from others - not to mention compassion.
Another related topic is accessibility in transport design (eg Not Just Bikes channel, though he is yet to make a big video specific about it yet)
@@betula2137 I wish urbanism channels would have a better accessibility focus in general
Ugh I know! I and every disabled person I know spend months or years searching for a suitable place (or putting up with inaccessible places), where abled people take only a couple weeks.
urban planning student here, i’ve come to the conclusion that the Land Value Tax would do wonders for communities. it would cut down on land speculation, meaning less empty lots or abandoned buildings and more community wealth. it could cut not just rents but also owning costs for new homeowners. it would also encourage people taking care of their property due to this affordability.
B-but think of the poor landlords! They would have to provide something of value to society, how would they survive!?
@@Helperbot-2000you know most landlords have a mortgage etc. If you want to blame someone for your financial situation, blame the banks and government
@@tomr6955 and? Theyre not personally using the property, the person renting it is, so they are the ones to pay for that mortgage, and it pays more than that mortgage costs, otherwise the landlord wouldnt rent it out. so the landlord does fuck all while getting money. A willingly leech on society
i like the implication that if i support you on patreon youre just going to buy more monopoly games
As a board game fanatic, I love to tell a less fleshed-out version of this story during discussions with people unfamiliar with more modern games. Thank you for making a video I can share with those who are more interested.
I do enjoy that the original UK version was produced by a company from Leeds, who were completely unfamiliar with London. They even included the Angel, Islington because iirc they stayed in or frequented a pub there. And apparently they got lazier, which is why most of the locations aren't far from each other and some don't really make sense. Also all four of the stations on the board were LNER termini at the time, which was the service that went to Leeds - Fenchurch street being the most egregious
I hadn’t come across this in my research-thank you for adding this extra insight! #justiceforpaddingtonstation
I love how you point out these ´down and out’ bussinessmen have enough money to start a bussiness. 😂😂😂 I always feel like this is glossed over in these stories.
This coming out just as Hasbro is botching D&D with licence issues is just cherry on top
How I’ve played monopoly with family has usually involved landing on “free parking” meaning that you get 500 from a pot in the center, adding a land value tax to plots seems like an interesting way to modify this 👀
So, I would recommend not adding the Free Parking rule. It tends not to change the balance of play a huge amount while extending the game quite a lot. So the same player wins, it just takes a lot longer as the pot can serve to save the players would otherwise have gone bankrupt earlier.
I would put the land value tax in a pot, and everytime someone passes go, they get whatever is in the pot divided by the number of players. So for example if there are 4 players, passing go means you get 1/4 of the pot.
I would suggest a Bolshevik Revolution mechanism. After every fifth circuit, the winning player's money and property are seized and distributed amongst the other players. I'm not sure whether the overthrown player should be executed, exiled, or given a pauper's stipend so they can continue making circuits of the board and perhaps survive long enough to benefit from the next revolution...
The tax would need to increase, as the normal rents increase right? I thought the idea of the land value tax, was that land gains value by nearby businesses, housing and other peoples' activities, and so that's what you need to tax. But the explanation in the video is that it's always a flat rate.
@@AileTheAlien If for example, we as tax payers, pay for a new railway line; that increases the value of properties near the stations. Landlords increase the rent to reflect that increased value, so they are the ones who benefit.
This blend of theory and cultural history is pretty poetic and fun to watch, you found a really unique style :3
Thank you! I’m glad you thought so!
I wrote an essay in 8th grade arguing for games being an art while citing Monopoly. This video brings me back.
I did a fun thing once when losing at monopoly which was unionize with other players that were also losing
Funny, I did the same thing a few days ago.
It was impressively useless and the union got crushed.
@@paulustrucenus Thats when you pull out the guillotine! Excution is very effective
That's more or less the dominant strategy for losing players.
Why didn't you mention the second ruleset? The original Landlord's Game had two rulesets, the second one was meant to demonstrate the value of the single tax.
Sounds like Tom needs to make a quick addendum video to address this oversight.
I think he did mention it, but I don't know the timestamp
Eh, I just want another Tom vid =D
I literally had this exact video idea I was going to make after talking about how 'the price is right' uses toxic game design. I'm glad this video is out though, it does it so much better than I could have done.
make it anyway!
im sure you would have created an awesome video!
you should go for it!
do it! i love that tv show
This is one of the best videos on this topic I’ve seen. A lot of them just act as if the game was (as you said) a folk game that just so happened to be started by Elizabeth Magie. A lot of them assume Charles Darrow had the original idea of selling it. However, even if Darrow bought the game rights from Magie, it had been moved into the collective sphere. Darrow committed a form of intelectual enclosure similar to the land grabs of the aristocracy in the eighteenth century. It shows you how we value ownership of a thing over all who actually use and invent it.
As someone who has looked up the rules strategies and other things of that nature, the catch-up mechanic of free parking prolongs the game and without it you can keep it far more short which is what this game needs.
In the end we must understand that there's no such thing as an unmediated learning experience. Just playing the game won't make you learn to hate capitalism, or even think that this economic system can be abolished. It's similar to the discussion over what watching violent films or playing violent video games will do to your mind. There's no single unequivocal effect; it all depends not only on the receiving person but the reflections they have of the experience - which are made much more potent if they are collective.
So Monopoly may have been rebranded into a pro-capitalist game but it can always be reinterpreted - just as the potential for it to be mistook for an aspirational story was always there, even as players clearly saw it as a critique. After all, you hate it when you lose, but everyone knows how deeply enthralling it is when you're _crushing_ everyone else.
I firmly disagree.
Every time I play monopoly, I hate capitalism slightly more.
But then again, playing monopoly makes me hate everything.
But on serious note, game still does what it was meant to be: very easily shows how irrational certain trappings of capitalism are. Unfortunately whole thing has been redone to sound like it's a good thing, but it still shows that something is broken
@@nihili4196 haha, my older brother played a lot all throughout his adolescence. Grew up to be an unashamed capitalist pig.
@@nihili4196 I played monopoly once with my family. We were on holiday and staying at a guest house.
I got up before the mid of the game and said: I hate this. Its stupid
Then I went to read a book because I hated the game
Anyways Im now a socialist
As celebrations of capitalism go I don't think you can go past the 'Empire' version of Monopoly where the object of the game is to "own the world's top brands" and the various street names have been replaced with Beats by Dr. Dre; Carnival; Chevrolet; Coca-Cola; Ducati; eBay; Electronic Arts; Fender; Hasbro; Intel; JetBlue; McDonald's; Nerf; Nestlé; Paramount Pictures; Samsung; Spotify; Transformers; Under Armour; Xbox; X Games; and Yahoo!. Brand recognition for ages 8+!
I am a conservative that is trying to not fall down the rabbit hole of the alt right and your channel is really helping me with seeing both sides. Thanks for your videos and keep it up
@tinysnorlax that's actually a very interesting position thank you for sharing
We need more pure capitalism and less government.
@@tomr6955how is more pure capitalism the solution you got from this
@@tomr6955the government is the only thing keeping capitalism afloat
As someone with an extensive collection of Boardgames - the fact that Monopoly is so ubiquitous is painful.
I tell people "I'm really into Boardgames!" and they'll say "What?! Like Monopoly?!" and I say "No - absolutely nothing like Monopoly".
Like how when you ask someone to name a famous painting, there's a 99% chance they'll say "Mona Lisa"
Saw a video by Jason K Pargin where he tells the story of how the Mona Lisa is, relatively speaking, an *"unremarkable"* painting that ended up *world famous* because someone stole it from the Louvre in 1911 and it made international headlines.
When I played Monopoly with loans I ended up owing the bank 27x the value represented by the entire game, cash, properties, utilities , everything.
how tf ?
Isn’t that how the 2008 financial crisis happened 🤔
@@HistoritorJimaldus exactly, capitalism
@@jan-lukas that's not capitalism, that's just stupidity. Thankfully we're not all affected by it
Didn't you lose when you can't pay your debt?
I read (a few years ago) that Maggie included two sets of rules in the Landlords' Game - one set based on land tax that was redistributive in nature and, the other which was the monopolist rules, in order to teach players the difference between the contrasting economic models after experiencing both.
"enforced idleness"
That just became my most favorite expression.
It's like the movie Elite Squad, which was made as criticism on police brutality and corruption, but ended up being aspirational for those who want criminals to pay in blood.
Based?
Great work with the titles, you perfectly displayed the topic and trajectory of your video right away
Thank you!
Great video because yes, the board game Monopoly sucks ass and that should make Lizzie Maggie smile.
imagine making a for-profit industry on a basic human necessity
imagine making
Ever been to a supermarket? It seems to work pretty well.
Housing crisis is totally because people buy and sell houses guyzz and not because we haven't built houses due to stupid community laws and regulations. 🤓
@@IizKit why don't you go and live in those millions of abondoned unuseable houses in the middle of North Dakota or something? There aren't any abondoned houses in places where people want to live in.
How do you develop a house and price someone out? There is no grand conspiracy, it's just the simple fact that there aren't enough houses.
@@adwaitnaravane5285And why is there not enough ? To keep prices high. The state should have the exclusivity of building, developing and selling houses, private companies cannot be trusted with this, at least not in the current trend of « let’s all grow our companies bigger out of nowhere because apparently the common folk shall never run out of cash ! »
Monopoly ! The game to foreshadow your kids character & financial future. Will your child become a nice person who shares his money with his siblings, and never be rich . Or a ruthless company robot who will kick grqndma out of the family home and sell it for profit😅
I've played lots of competitive board games with a group of really good friends, including some fairly aggressive ones like Risk and Diplomacy. We always took a very lighthearted view to attacking each other and stabbing someone in the back. It was all just part of the fun of the game. Nothing compared to the viciousness of Monopoly though. We couldn't even finish the one and only game we played together due to the level of anger it created among us.
6:01 You won't believe what a grin I had on my face when Henry appeared.
I've seen a few different Monopoly videos, and this takes the cake. Nice job!
Thank you! I’m so glad you liked it!
I'd vaguely heard this story told in brief but this is extremely thorough and much appreciated!
Didn’t the majority of followers who participated in your title poll vote for the title that included “capitalism” or did the results change? Either way, I’m excited for the video!
It was "How Capitalism Stole Monopoly" at first but he changed it.
Unfortunately, with a bit of testing, this one was getting more juicy, juicy clicks. I really appreciate everyone’s feedback! Unfortunately, community polls are a bit unrepresentative as most people there will watch the video anyway. So, they might pick the coolest title but not necessarily the most clickable one. If that makes sense?
Only thing this video needed was a bit about the rules for the second phase of the prohibited game, the Prosperity rules.
Also on the concept towards the end that the rental value of the land is almost nothing compared to the houses is in Monopoly, one could consider the printed land rent as the value provided by nature, and add additional rent to that land based on the number of houses on nearby properties and utilities, approximating land rents created by the local community at large.
I loved the visuals in this video! Excellent video editing! I normally just listen to yt videos while I multitask but I liked watching this one
The problem with arsenal is they always try to walk it in
What was Wenger thinking sending Walcott on that early?
Loving the new production value! Amazing video as always Tom
I remember always crying and being made fun of for saying it was unfair. “Thats just how it is”. Bruh it feels like it went right over their head and as a little kid i intuitively understood the unfairness. Then that was indoctrinated out if me
I mean the other players also right. This is just how capitalism works. They just were winning so didnt see how that's unfair.
Great idea for a video topic! Awesome work as always
This video was worthy of my time. Thanks Tom, and Happy Holidays!
I’m so glad! Happy Holidays!
Didn't think I'd get a video that touched on Georgism!
Taxes back in Henry Georges time were different, which would explain how he thought it could replace all taxes. There wasn't an income tax or anything back then, mainly ones like excise taxes
A Single Tax was designed to make an income tax unnecessary. George firmly believed that taxes on labour discourages work, and seeing how income taxes are today, he's right.
Informative and entertaining as expected! You never stop doing what you do St. Nicholas.
The last time I played Monopoly was over 20 years ago. It ended with my friends almost breaking up over it. I decided it wasn't worth playing ever again. 😅
I hope they never play "diplomacy" ... LOL ... that game is literally about being the best liar and backstabbing the other players.
“If you’re watching this video chances are 95% of you don’t know who Henry George is”
Me: Oooh ooooh ooooh, you are sorely mistaken buster brown I am in fact not only very familiar with Henry George, I find him to be quite pivotal, as well as the last true classical economist and who had some pretty damn good ideas
“And if you’re in the 5%”
Oh okay nvm ur spot on.
“omg hes literally me”
Laughed so hard at the Not Just Bikes reference
One thing that you didn't mention about the game, that I'd argue is rather significant, is that there was also a version where you coukd decide partway through the game to switch to the "prosperity" ruleset which changed the rules to be in line with Georgist policies.
There the rent gained from the land went into a communal supply (and if you land on your own property, whilst you don't need to pay yourself for yhe improvements on it, you also pay the rent to the community), whilst other taxes were abolished.
The collected rent would first be used to purchase public utilities from current owners (at which point they charge less to players that land on them than when they are privately owned), and after that the collected rents become part of the general supply used to pay the wage for passing start.
There were also some other minor rule changes such as Lord Blueblood's estate becoming a public park and jail no longer being used, as it was used for trespassing offenses which no longer exist under the properity rules.
When the poorest player had $7000 (double the amount of money they started with), prosperity was acchieved and the players were considered to have collectively won the game (although they could continue playing if they pleased).
I don't think I ever finished a game of Monopoly, that's how boring it is. Nor did I ever fight over it, whereas I definitely got very angry during a Trivial Pursuit game, and even once threatened someone with a folding chair over a blind test. Monopoly blows. Buying land and building hotels blows. Points for trying though, Lizzie Magie, well done.
Monopoly is boring because of all the house rules to, in some sort of socialist ironically, help out the people struggling. Most "winners" don't really mind these rules because it just means that they are going to get even more money eventually. But it turns what should be a quick and dirty "Hooray for you, I'm broke" to letting them limp along, turning a game that is already over into a long drawn out slog.
If someone busts out the game come Christmas, insist on the rules as written, it will force the game to be over a LOT faster.
This includes,
No free parking money.
No "Lending" money from the bank or other players
When someone lands on a unowned space and can't afford it, it goes to auction - This creates monopolies faster and gets the game over faster.
No House substitutions. One strategy to end a game early is to always place 4 houses on a property and stop there, you will eventually remove all new houses being able to be built, and your competitors will slowly bleed their cash as they can't afford to buy any houses ever. Keep in mind you technically need 4 houses on a property to get a hotel, so you can't even just Buy a hotel out right.
Most games will last under 60 minutes using the rules as Written, However It will most likely cause anger and animosity faster as people will be forced out of the game rather than them giving up voluntarily through bankruptcy, which can be viewed as a good thing because next year they may not want to play at all!
@@Prownilo Congrats, you just managed to make it even more boring to me. I almost always, ALWAYS stopped playing before we were putting homes on the land, let alone hotels. I just tried to collect cards of the same color, and when all propreties were bought and I had a few complete series, I was satisfied and wanted to do something else. Getting rent on those properties was already something I wouldn't bother with.
Amazing video as always, Tom, but I regret to inform you that candelabra prop is not a Hanukkah menorah. The real thing has 9 candles. It's a common mistake, you can be assured.
Dammit. Sorry! I’m very much hoping this is a “wow, Tom is an idiot” thing rather than deeply offensive in some way?
Judaism has two menorahs. The one with 9 candles for hanukkah, and one with 7 candles for the rest of the year. You using this one for the video is wrong but not offensive.
@@Tom_Nicholas Definitely not offensive, just a bit amusing!
Original monopoly pieces were supposed to be some random item from your pockets.
Happy July!
On the topic of catch-up mechanics, there is one major catch-up mechanic in Monopoly - the dreaded, all-powerful, building repairs chance/community chest card. It's a gigantic warning sign for the leaders, and the losing players' last hope. While it is an incredibly powerful card, it often doesn't come into play too much. Though I can imagine it could change the tide in a close game, though.
I find her “game of life” comment in that letter interesting, had that already been invented and she was referencing it?
There was a game around called The Chequered Game of Life at the time (which is not the same as The Game of Life). I don’t know whether this was what she was referencing or not though.
I tried to watch "A Miracle on 34th Street" recently, only to realise how hamfisted it was as an advert for Macy's. What's more, during the trial, a Macy's representative was lobbying and harassing the judge, in order to swing the court in favour of Chris Kringle, because he was instrumental to the department store's revenue. Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like big business corrupting and rigging the justice system, like they do in our modern times, yet it makes wonder if this is how Macy's was in real life, real enough to make into a Christmas film.
I remember one day noticing that the story monopoly was telling was an unjust one, and people informing me that that was the point. It's actually really neat game design.
Awesome editing and transitions in this video, Tom!
Ahhh yes, some new Tom Nicholas content
Shock horror, the game where getting a lucky start = winning the match is an allegory for capitalism
Yeah, even Forbes, very pro-capitalism ofc, has an article where they said that luck makes all the difference between success and failure under capitalism.
I like how I was wished a happy July, regardless of the actual non-early-winter time of year I happen to be watching this
I think the most esoteric version was west Edmonton mall monopoly. Different stores, attractions(the submarines, the fantasyland themepark, the dolphins, 1:1 reproduction of Columbus' ship and the waterpark were included that I remember) and facilities with shopping themes. Very much the opposite of the landlord game's message.
"given that no-one had gotten around to inventing podcasts yet". i laughed so loud after that that i might have woken the neighbors
Not Just Bikes joke was just perfect!
Haha, glad you liked that!
35:58 i love how cthulu is a celebrity here
An interesting aside to this story is that there was also versions of the landlord’s game in other countries!
I grew up with DKT (Das kaufmännische Talent - roughly translates to 'The Business Talent') in Austria, which is a whole separate game from Monopoly with very similar rules. According to their own website released in the 30’s.
Awesome documentary, well researched and presented, you make me proud to call myself Tom...Tom.
It's a Monopoly Monopoly!
Oh no!
There's an important piece of George's proposal missing here -- the Citizens' Dividend. Land tax revenue would be distributed equally to the citizens akin to a UBI. So those on low value rural land would pay no tax, and renters in urban centers would always have the option of moving to that outlying land or simply living off their dividend, giving laborers equal bargaining power with capital.
Otherwise though, great video! So many people mistakenly tell the story of the Landlord's Game as "did you know Monopoly was invented by a socialist?" So to see someone with a platform, a socialist no less, tell the true version of events, is refreshing.
In fact, a socialist in a concentration camp
love the meowmere jumpscare at 25:15
this was a banger to watch, fantastic job!
Pretty genius move how monopoly wasn't actually designed to be fun, but rather deliberately and constructively enraging!! It's fascinating when games aim at reactions other than wish-fulfilment or enjoyment for their audience, really cool video you made there
I have been waiting for someone to put this story in a pleasant and digestible way for a while -- because I have a hard time doing it. :D Thanks for hearing the silent cry of my heart and producing this vid.
I rly liked the transitions in this video a lot