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[–] 141 points 1 year ago (16 children)

That is exactly what Lizzy Magie, the inventor of Monopoly, wanted to achieve. However, she had assumed that people would realize how utterly wrong the rules of the game were once they had finished playing.

Unfortunately, this has never been the case, as evidenced by the fact that instead of Magie, an unscrupulous scumbag named Charles Darrow became the first multimillionaire in the board game industry because he bought the game idea from her for a ridiculously low amount and without any royalty rights, and then sold the publishing rights to the Parker brothers, who made even more money with it.

This explains why Monopoly, instead of being a game critical of capitalism as originally intended, became a propaganda tool for capitalism.

It couldn't be more absurd, but that's how our world is.

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  • [+] 50 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [+] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)
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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    There's a great line in Disco Elysium that describes this phenomenon. I'm paraphrasing here, but the gist of it is something like this:

    The great and terrible genius of capitalism is its ability to commodify evening, including criticism of itself.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The great and terrible genius of capitalism is its ability to commodify evening, including criticism of itself.

    Sounds like Squid Game. I love the show, but selling merchandise, and going on to have more seasons and spin off defeats the point of the first season.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They had a cliffhanger and an unresolved plot line. There was always going to be a season 2. The surprise split into 2 small seasons was weird, but after the third the story is pretty much wrapped up.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    They had a cliffhanger

    I will have to respectfully disagree. Many people say the ending is a cliff hanger but I feel that it is open-ended. But i guess its phenomenal success was too good to pass up and decided to go for more seasons.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    While I appreciate calling out predatory and unethical business practices, can someone explain why "Darrow bought the idea for a low price and no royalty rights" is different than "Magie sold for a low price and no royalty rights"?

    By all means, if there's a story about unethical coercion or misleading (that's the foundation of capitalism after all), I'd like to hear more about it. But if Magie didn't care enough about the idea and sold it for a quick buck to a capitalist to do with it what they would, I gotta say, I can't really blame Darrow for buying something they thought had value that Magie didn't think had value.

    Reading Magie's wikipedia page suggests Darrow ripped it off, despite several patents, and her game, The Landlords Game, being published by another game company, and he sold it to Parker Brothers (who had already published her games before).

    Sounds more like Darrow stole the idea and Parker Brothers negligently (or willfully) disregarded patents because they were big enough to get away with it.

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