To Monoplise or not to Monopolise

The early twentieth century was the golden age of the big trust and monopolies. Most of these had been broken up by the 1930s but people still wanted to own monopolies. In that same decade the Parker Brothers wanted to show the world it was not just big businesses that wanted to get monopolies. He believed that anyone who had the opportunity, would want to have a monopoly. He decided the best way to show this was with a game, which uses real space, in which the aim of the game was to get as many monopolies as you could. In theory, people would play willingly until they realized in horror what the game was really about (it was even called Monopoly for goodness sake) and in horror, stop playing, only that never happened. Actually I realized that and haven't played it since.

It didn't go back to this satirical aim until a father in the 1970s got upset that his son always beat him at Monopoly. He realized what the game was really about and sent a game that changed the rules of the game to not making monopolies. He called it Anti Monopoly. It was good in theory but people quickly got bored with a game that you play to lose. They have actually reissued the Anti Monopoly game now with the slogan the dark secrets of the Monopoly game revealed. I don't think this will sell as much as they hoped. It is a good message but a very lousy game. Who plays to lose?

This does show that we have a certain inclination to serve ourselves before others. I think that I might have a game of Monopoly where you play as a member of the Dark Side from Star Wars, but I don't think people would get the point even then.