Monopoly has a long, complex, and generally unknown history. Perhaps the most surprising historical curiosity about this classic game about being a real estate tycoon is that it was originally created with an entirely different set of values in mind.
In 1903, thirty years before the initial release of Monopoly as we know it, Elizabeth Magie Phillips designed The Landlordâ??s Game, a board game that aimed to teach and promote Georgism, an economic philosophy that claims land cannot be owned, but belongs to everyone equally. Henry George, after whom the philosophy is named, was a 19th century political economist who argued that industrial and real estate monopolists profit unjustly from both land appreciation and rising rents. To remedy this problem, he proposed a â??single taxâ? on landowners.
The Landlordâ??s Game was intended to demonstrate how easy it is for property owners to inflict financial ruin on tenants. As a learning game and a game with a message, the title begins to look a lot like a serious game. Even if Monopoly was created to celebrate rather than lament land monopolies, the game does demonstrate the landlordâ??s power, for better or worse.
But recently this famous game has associated itself with another side of industrial capitalism: advertising.