The Landlord's Game

mmlkrx | 214 points

Monopoly was popular with kids on my block back in Palo Alto in the 60's. At least, it was omnipresent in collections, and we'd attempt to play it every so often...

I can't remember one game that didn't feature (a) disputes about rules and the administration of the bank; (b) animosity and dissatisfaction upon exit; and (c) hollow emptiness for the (newly friendless)"winner".

wombatmobile | 3 years ago

Fascintating piece of history. The inspiration behind the game Monopoly was an attempt to educate people on the immoral nature of the current landownership paradigm. But interestingly, it is based on the same original classical liberal arguments that spawned free market philosophy.

nwah1 | 3 years ago

I can strongly recommend following the first Wikipedia external link to a true labour of love, http://landlordsgame.info/

A tremendous amount of background on the Landlord's Game and Lizzie Maggie.

dredmorbius | 3 years ago

For those in the SF Bay Area, you can play this game:

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/bay-area-regional-plann...

kqr2 | 3 years ago

Anyone in Australia interested in Georgism should check out http://www.prosper.org.au ... I first learned about the landlords game and the origins of monopoly chatting with them :)

dools | 3 years ago

Every time this comes up I wonder whether the Landlord's Game can be played with a regular Monopoly set. Is it just the rules that have changed, or did the original game also contain different pieces/cards?

dasKrokodil | 3 years ago

Quite a coincidence: Just a week or two ago I saw a History Detectives episode on this.

https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/earl...

BeetleB | 3 years ago

> With Magie's first patent having expired, in 1923, Magie decided to attempt to regain control by applying for another patent.

That's... unfortunate.

jackcosgrove | 3 years ago

It’s curious that Lizzie Magie chose a price-to-rent ratio of 10 [1] for the first version of The Landlord’s Game, wonder if that would have been typical for US real estate in 1904. The same ratio today would be unusually landlord-friendly. [2]

[1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BoardGamePatentMagie...

[2]: https://smartasset.com/mortgage/price-to-rent-ratio-50-large...

divbzero | 3 years ago

For anyone curious about the philosophy behind this game, known variously as Georgism or Geoism, a decent review of the principle text, Progress & Poverty, was just posted on Astral Codex Ten:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...

(A bit long, but pretty comprehensive and hey, it's shorter than the actual book).

larsiusprime | 3 years ago
[deleted]
| 3 years ago

> Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent... Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair and equitable.

Take out "natural" and it seems like any non-inflationary cryptocurrency would be a target for a Georgist tax.

the_local_host | 3 years ago

I posted this a few years ago, about Micropoly (Microsoft Monopoly), Ralf Anspach's Anti-Monopoly, and Monopoly’s Anti-Capitalist Origins:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261425

A while ago (1999) I made a "Micropoly" board game about the Microsoft Monopoly, with cards for various dot-com companies (Copyleft (L) 1999 Free Monopoly Foundation), using an xml file to define the cards and board and an ugly Perl script to render them with PostScript!

http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/

>Update: I've written an ugly "openopoly.pl" Perl script, and a "micropoly.xml" data file, that describes the specifics of the game. The Perl script reads in and parses the XML database, and writes out PostScript and HTML to render the graphics and web pages. It embeds EPS files with images and cartoons in the PostScript file, and then runs it all through GhostScript, to render out PDF and JPG files with the printable images of the board. It currently writes out one HTML file with links to the small and large pictures of all the property cards, and soon it will write out a web page for each property, and link them all together, as well as an image map for the entire board. Most of the logos, cartoons, and other graphics haven't been put in yet, but the basic functionality for producing the game is there. This is work in progress, but here's a preview of the automatically generated web page index of properties, the full sized board micropoly-board-whole.pdf [1,672k], the paginated board micropoly-board-split.pdf [10,028k, sorry but I'll optimize the PostScript not to draw clipped images and it will reduce in size], and the printable cards micropoly-cards.pdf [5087k], as well as the micropoly.xml file from which it was all generated.

http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly.xml

http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-board-whole.p...

http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/micropoly-cards.pdf

The idea (which I never finished but encourage anyone else to pick up and run with) was to develop a fully skinnable parametrizable Monopoly compatible game template (or variants like Anti-Monopoly), that you could print out and glue onto cardboard, or even play online!

http://donhopkins.com/home/Micropoly/notes.html

Monopoly is essentially the original "Open Source Game" designed by Elizabeth Magie and shared among Atlantic City Quakers. Then it was illegitimately taken over and patented by a giant corporation. Parker Brothers' story about Charles Darrow was marketing bullshit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie

There's also an interesting story about Ralph Anspach's decade-long "Anti-Monopoly" lawsuit:

http://www.antimonopoly.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Anspach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly

https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/ar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Mono...

>Also in the 1970s, Professor Ralph Anspach, who had himself published a board game intended to illustrate the principles of both monopolies and trust busting, fought Parker Brothers and its then parent company, General Mills, over the copyright and trademarks of the Monopoly board game. Through the research of Anspach and others, much of the early history of the game was "rediscovered" and entered into official United States court records. Because of the lengthy court process, including appeals, the legal status of Parker Brothers' copyright and trademarks on the game was not settled until 1985. The game's name remains a registered trademark of Parker Brothers, as do its specific design elements; other elements of the game are still protected under copyright law. At the conclusion of the court case, the game's logo and graphic design elements became part of a larger Monopoly brand, licensed by Parker Brothers' parent companies onto a variety of items through the present day. Despite the "rediscovery" of the board game's early history in the 1970s and 1980s, and several books and journal articles on the subject, Hasbro (Parker Brothers' current parent company) did not acknowledge any of the game's history before Charles Darrow on its official Monopoly website as recently as June 2012. Nor did Hasbro acknowledge anyone other than Darrow in materials published or sponsored by them, at least as recently as 2009.

DonHopkins | 3 years ago