How to win at Monopoly
by Alex Evans | Aug 2, 2010
The perennially popular board game Monopoly is a reasonable simulacrum of capitalism. At the beginning of the game, players move around a commons and try to privatise as much as they can. The player who privatizes the most invariably wins.
But Monopoly has two features currently lacking in American capitalism: all players start with th same amount of capital, and all receive $200 each time they circle the board. Absent these features, the game would lack fairness and excitement, and few would choose to play it.
Peter Barnes in the superb Capitalism 3.0. Go buy.
-
Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017).
He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development.
Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.
View all posts
