Theory on the Purpose of Monopoly

[The Amazing Avian]

So I played this game with some friends and literally stomped due in part to playing like a 1930s Robber Baron. The idea was to get a property in every color then trade for losses (with one trade including an irl burger because owner wanted food and was broke) to get a full set of orange properties in a way where I was the only one with a full color group and they were pulling like $20 in rent from me. Starting at this point I bled everyone dry within like 30 minutes.

 

It got me thinking about the point of this game. Is the idea really to tear families apart and ruin friendships? I have another theory. What if the purpose of the game is instead to illustrate how unfair a monopoly is? I monopolized the orange properties and improved them pretty quickly with no risk because no one else had a monopoly and as soon as someone landed on them I'd only get more money out of it. Because of what I did here, no one was willing to trade to anyone who would have a full color group because then there would be someone else trying to bleed them out and they could barely afford me doing it.

 

Monopolies are so ridiculously unfair in this game, imagine outside of it. This is why competition in the market is good. It prevents monopolies from happening. If one were to happen however, gg wp git gud bro that'll be $5k a piece for your medicine sir.

 

TL;DR: funk this game for turning me into Martin Shkrelli.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

So I played this game with some friends and literally stomped due in part to playing like a 1930s Robber Baron. The idea was to get a property in every color then trade for losses (with one trade including an irl burger because owner wanted food and was broke) to get a full set of orange properties in a way where I was the only one with a full color group and they were pulling like $20 in rent from me. Starting at this point I bled everyone dry within like 30 minutes.

 

It got me thinking about the point of this game. Is the idea really to tear families apart and ruin friendships? I have another theory. What if the purpose of the game is instead to illustrate how unfair a monopoly is? I monopolized the orange properties and improved them pretty quickly with no risk because no one else had a monopoly and as soon as someone landed on them I'd only get more money out of it. Because of what I did here, no one was willing to trade to anyone who would have a full color group because then there would be someone else trying to bleed them out and they could barely afford me doing it.

 

Monopolies are so ridiculously unfair in this game, imagine outside of it. This is why competition in the market is good. It prevents monopolies from happening. If one were to happen however, gg wp git gud bro that'll be $5k a piece for your medicine sir.

 

TL;DR: funk this game for turning me into Martin Shkrelli.

Your theory is absolutely correct. The game was originally designed as a demonstration of how horrific a homogenized market is, but Parker Brothers was like "sheet this is actually pretty fun, let's ironically use our monopoly on the board game market to put this new game funking everywhere"