Not really the best metaphor, as in Monopoly you actually start with money. A better analogy would probably be something like: Imagine you’re playing Monopoly, but you don’t have any starting money and all the properties are already bought up. Every time you pass go and collect $200, $180 of it immediately goes to the rich. That is how most people live their lives.
If anything it’s pretty telling that the game only works if you can play like a rich person: start off with a bunch of money you didn’t earn and the bank is always nice to you.
If the bank treats you like a poor person you just lose.
Except starting money it is quite good metaphor though.
Is it though? Maybe I’m misinterpreting it, but the way I’m reading it is “Most people don’t make money because they aren’t investing their money”. If you do a search for the group mention in this picture (David Henning Mindset), you get a page for a financial advisor. Both of these are leading me to think this post is referencing the “grind” mindset and how “you need to invest your money” to not be struggling.
Is this the idea that antiwork subscribes to?
Hmm, you’ve got a point. The lesson Monopoly is designed to teach isn’t “make sure to invest your money,” it’s “land-grabbing is evil and landlords are parasites.”
Characterizing this metaphor as “‘grind’ mindset” is maybe a stretch, though.
Whoever thought this metaphor works to explain the “grind mindset” is dumb and completely missed the point of monopoly.
They accidentally made the anti-work argument.
Nice work. Obviously the sentiment has been coopted by that group, but the metaphor when interpreted sanely holds.
Honestly, the real problem is that there’s anything you can buy for under $200. The starting money is based on however much generational wealth you have, with most starting with only $200. And if we look at the $200 as the amount you need to get by in a year (one trip around the board), you’d have to get exceptionally lucky to ever buy anything of substance, just like in real life.
That’s the point of monopoly, You start off with the same assets as everyone else, and though no fault of your own you slowly lose it as one person takes advantage of the opportunities that you didn’t get, like landing on the best properties etc. Eventually the point of monopoly is that 5 of says 6 players end up going round the board, never quite dying, but never being able to progress, at all. That loops is whole point of the game. The hopelessness.
Now irl you don’t start of equal. You actually start of even more disadvantaged then your opponent, so monopoly as a game makes an even more damaging point, that even in optimal conditions, capitialism is stupid.
The properties were all owned before I even got to roll the dice for the first time. Ahh being a millennial is chefs kiss
Didn’t the woman who came up with monopoly create it to teach the flaws of capitalist thinking? Then some guy stole it from her and capitalized. Classic.
The game was called The Landlord’s Game patented by Elizabeth Magie. Further information on the relationship between it and monopoly has its own Wikipedia page here: History of Monopoly
The point of monopoly was literally to show how bad capitalism and monopolies where. It was created as an educational tool to show what happens when too much real estate is owned by monopolies. It was never meant to be a “fun” game. It was originally called “The Landlords Game”.
Sometimes flipping the board (aka abolishing capitalism) is your only option.
That’s why the game was created, to show how the system is rigged and all the money finishes up at the banks.
I do hope this train of thought continues to propagate. It’s the same train of thought that was pervasive in France, 1789.
It kept coming back over the next century as France tried different things (the Terror, installing the Bourbons, killing some Bourbons, etc) and whenever people noticed that capitalism wasn’t being stable and people were hungry, sick or miserable, the cracked the guillotines out for more piles of heads.
Bibles of truth right there. Love it…
One more nuance I don’t see mentioned in this thread yet:
If everyone plays like a communist, and nobody buys property–you just roll the dice and pass Go every so often–everyone’s money increases forever.
I’ve never played monopoly, but I think I get the premise lol. “Don’t pass go” is all I can tell you about the game… and I don’t even know what it means
like the corporate world, the game is rigged towards the ruthless, selfish types. I never really understood how it was supposed to end. Everyone goes bankrupt and one person ends up with all the money is how it always went at our house growing up. If you lost at monopoly consistently to your sibling as a kid, you’re not the capitalist
