Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170728-monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism

by kawera • 9 years ago

67 45 9 years ago

bbc.com

mattbgates• 9 years ago

"You don't win... you just do a little better each time." - Cleveland, Family Guy ( https://youtu.be/liRioOpF5sw )

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

This is a duplicate of a previous, very, very lengthy discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14819622

bmiranda• 9 years ago

I think this article misses the point of Georgism: that the land tax replaces all other taxes.

In other words, while land belongs to the government (people), individuals are entitled to the entire product of their labor (as well as returns on capital). Georgism is simultaneously extremely Communistic and Capitalistic.

WalterBright6• 9 years ago

Monopoly is set up as a zero-sum game, hence it is not representative of capitalism at all. Free markets are not zero sum.

That's easily shown. Give me $20 of art materials, and I will turn out something I have to pay someone to haul away. Give it to Picasso, and he'll turn it into a million dollar creation.

In fact, the entire software industry is based on creating value out of nothing.

manicdee• 9 years ago

Monopoly is set up as a zero sum game, exactly like actual capitalism is.

If we give you $20 if art materials, we can't give Picasso those materials because you already have them.

The world is finite. Resources are finite, and infinite expansion is impossible.

colbyh• 9 years ago

you are twisting his words. there are sound arguments against capitalism and wealth creation but "resources are spent when you do things with them" isn't on the list.

adventured• 9 years ago

The world is finite. Resources are finite, and infinite expansion is impossible.

If you were right, the $10 trillion China added to its economy annually (you know, just ~$64 trillion of new GDP that didn't exist before, over the next five years) - in just the span of ~16 years, would have had to come out of someone else's pocket, which would have caused extreme collapse in numerous other major economies to make room for it. That of course didn't happen at all, the rest of the globe's GDP expanded along with China in real terms.

For all realistic practical purposes - since we're nowhere near maximum resource utilization - that has yet to be an actual problem and we're up to 7.x billion people now. Every serious problem to that expansion, we've managed to solve, enabling continued expansion (see: we were all supposed to starve to death decades ago).

Back in reality - and out of the realm of theory that only exists in a strict vacuum - Capitalism is the exact opposite of a zero sum game. That has been proven by the radical improvement in living standards at the median for all the developed nations, all of which heavily utilize the free market economic system (including all of the Scandinavian nations, none of which are actually Socialist at all).

If Capitalism were a zero sum game, China would not have just enjoyed the greatest, fastest mass standard of living improvement in world history thanks to its modest adoption of the free market, and its blatant shift away from Statism.

The free market largely won globally, and thanks to that, the world has less poverty, war, violence and starvation than at any other time in history.

polishTar2• 9 years ago

Energy might be conserved, but wealth is not. Life is not a zero sum game.

Society is vastly more wealthy than we've ever been before. Access to education, medicine, information, transportation, entertainment are at all time highs. Life expectancies continue to rise and gdp adjusted by purchasing power on a per capita basis is up over 40% in the last 3 decades.

WalterBright6• 9 years ago

infinite expansion is impossible.

Software is a fine counterexample. It's made of bits, which cost nothing to create, and the value is in the order of the bits, not the bits themselves.

bpodgursky• 9 years ago

Your point is totally correct, but just to be pedantic, it's fixed-sum not zero-sum, since the monopoly economy get injected N*$200 for passing Go every few turns.

mcappleton• 9 years ago

To be pedantic: minus taxes

LanceH• 9 years ago

You'd generally consider the bank to be a player in the game theory sense, making it zero sum.

WalterBright6• 9 years ago

It injected money into the game, but not value. No new properties were created, for example.

johnchristopher• 9 years ago

What if only outliers or lucky ones are creative enough to generate value and the vast majority is obliged -because of internals or externals reasons- to play the zero sum game part ?

redial2• 9 years ago

The value generated flows back into the economy as whomever generated it can't spend it anywhere else. No one plays the zero-sum game.

grey-area2• 9 years ago

Capitalism is complex, that's one side of it - that value can be created. Another side is that those with capital (whether inherited or earned) have a significant leverage over those who don't. This is what monopoly was designed to illustrate.

This tends to lead to concentration of capital over time, and greater and greater inequality. In the end, it leads to impregnable monopolies if unchecked. Picasso was an interesting example to choose - he's a rare example of an artist who did well from their work, most die poor and their work is then sold for millions after their death, precisely because being able to create value does not mean you will necessarily be rewarded for that value, often the inverse - often others with capital are the ones who benefit from creation, not those who create. You can see this in art, games, engineering and in startups, almost any domain you care to think of - those who do the work are not necessarily or even usually those who benefit, those who control capital are the ones who benefit most, because it is not very hard to grow capital once you have it. So the trick is to have capital and control others who labour, not to work hard.

Regulated capitalism is an answer to this fundamental imbalance. Progressive taxes, bans on monopolies, inheritance tax are all there to even the playing field a little, but it is still vastly skewed to those with capital rather than those who live off labour.

roenxi• 9 years ago

Capitalism is indeed complex, and something I think gets missed in the popular perception is that capitalism depends completely on things like property rights and contract law. Basically, regulation and government is strictly required and the details of that regulation are always up for debate.

That said, people who talk about 'evening the playing field' scare me. For starters, armchair analysts underestimate the amount of good done by greedy people in a well created market economy. For seconds, fairness is very expensive. And for thirds, people don't understand what the regulation of the current systems does. There is no need to pronounce capitalism doomed when it has such a track record of success.

sifar• 9 years ago

> Regulated capitalism is an answer to this fundamental imbalance.

This assumes that governments are incorruptible. Monopolies don't exist without government collusion. In the game of Monopoly, that part is played by the roll of the dice - which favors certain players.

So ironically, more regulation would potentially lead to creation of bigger monopolies as it gives the capitalist's more incentive to influence the regulations and create monopolies for themselves. That is what we see happening in the real world.

WalterBright6• 9 years ago

In the end, it leads to impregnable monopolies if unchecked.

That's the conventional wisdom, but there are no examples of it happening, and examples of the reverse. Rockefeller's market share diminished throughout the years of SO's anti-trust trial.

See "Titan" by Chernow.

rtpg3• 9 years ago

This is not the greatest example. Picasso just made $999k, but it came from somebody else. There was no value creation there as a whole. In Monopoly I can sell a thing for more than I bought it too!

Perhaps a better example is that a farm increases in value as the techniques and technology for growing increases. Ultimately the extra value comes from somewhere, everything else is just redistribution.

WalterBright6• 9 years ago

It is a good example. The creation of value, such as a painting, increases the total value of goods and services in the economy. It most certainly is creation.

vixen99• 9 years ago

Of course a painting can be value creation. Aesthetic value is as real as food value or any other desirable in the eyes of ourselves or others. Ultimately, value comes from our local star which blasts us with a massive amount of energy every day. The rest is redistribution if you like. In other words it provides the conditions whereby we get up in the morning and expend energy doing something someone finds of value. Along the chain, someone worked harder and innovatively such that someone else could satisfy the desire to own that painting whether for the value they themselves could see in it or for the value others will see in it in the future (investment).

coliveira2• 9 years ago

There is no such thing as a free market. The markets have all been setup by laws and regulations. In the lack of such regulations there would be no Wall Street and not even mom-and-pop businesses would be able to survive. The tech industry exists only because governments used public money to research and develop the technologies that nowadays we call Internet. It doesn't seem to me that Google or Facebook did any of this from nothing.

WalterBright6• 9 years ago

Free markets rely on a system of laws and regulation that prevent the use of force or fraud, and provide enforcement of contracts. That function is provided by government.

The notion that the internet required government technologies and so otherwise there would be no internet is not correct. Google FidoNet, for just one example (there are others).

adrianratnapala• 9 years ago

Whatever the alleged reason, Monopoly looks to me like it was invented as a fun game rather than a allegory for anything at all. It does seem to be trying to resemble actual economic activity at all.

For example the Banker is not only a kind of public service, but is performing a service only vaguely related to what banks do. And in what world do you need to own a whole neighbourhood before you can put a hotel anywhere?

Now Bohnanza (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohnanza) has some resemblance to real capitalism, but is also too much fun to a lesson in anything.

robobro• 9 years ago

It explains in part why it was initially successful.

Snakes and Ladders was made in India to teach people about determinism, for instance.

https://medium.com/re-form/the-timelessness-of-snakes-and-la...

wsc981• 9 years ago

    Whatever the alleged reason, Monopoly looks 
    to me like it was invented as a fun game ...

I'd call Monopoly a lot, but a "fun game" it is not. It's a hugely frustrating game and I'd be happy to never play it again for the rest of my life.

macleod2486• 9 years ago

What she didn't realize what she ended up demonstrating was the reality of pareto distributions.

Dr. Jordan Peterson does a good detailing of this phenomenon.

https://youtu.be/TcEWRykSgwE

joshuahhh• 9 years ago

I am delighted to have the chance to learn what the Hacker News community thinks about capitalism.

grecy• 9 years ago

Has anyone here actually played Monopoly as an adult?

My memories from childhood are of it being quite fun, and slow.

While managing a hostel a few years ago I played hundreds of games with hundreds of adults - with adults it's extremely cut-throat and downright nasty. I estimate 75% of games ended with people yelling and screaming, after less than 4 times around the board.

It's amazing to watch how nasty it gets, and how everyone takes it so personally.

rtpg3• 9 years ago

I've had similar experiences with a lot of games to be honest. Things like poker or catan (or tarot cards in France).

There's definitely a set of the population that has no chill.

flomo• 9 years ago

My memories of playing it as a child is kids crying and whining. I think this game is designed so nobody really wins, they just slowly bleed the losers until they have a breakdown and quit.

Playing it as an adult, it was mostly an excuse to drink, and people had the sense to quit before the breakdown part.

illuminati1911• 9 years ago

If she wanted to demonstrate "the evils of capitalism" it's pretty ironic that she decided to name the game with problem that can only exist in non-capitalist systems and is the flagship product of communism/socialism.

andrewstuart• 9 years ago

I would have paid more attention to Monopoly if I had known life would actually play out in precisely the same way.

Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism

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