The secret reason the Monopoly board game was invented

Economy Nilgun Salim
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Monopoly is, by far, the world’s most popular board game, but only a few know who its inventor was

According to the BBC, the inventor of Monopoly is Elizabeth Magie, an Illinois-born who created the game to prove that capitalism is bad.

The initial idea came after she read Henry George’s ‘Progress and Poverty’ to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for them.

First, Magie created the game called “Landlords Game” in 1904 that was very similar to today’s version and the innovation was the “Prosperity” and the “Monopolist” rules sets.

When using the “Prosperity” rules, the winner was the one who started with the smallest amount of money and managed to double it.

The “Monopolist” is similar to the style from nowadays: the one who has the most money and who remains the only player after he charges fees from those who fall on his property wins.

The purpose of the two playing styles, in the vision of the creator, was for players to experience “a practical demonstration of the system by which land was gained with all the consequences that followed.

The game gained huge popularity among the left-wing intellectuals from Harvard, Columbia or Wharton.

Charles Darrow played the game and later sold a modified version to the Parker Brothers.

He claimed to have invented the game, but later on, the company found out that he had bought the patent of the one that Magie has created and re-launched the Monopoly game by eliminating the first set of rules.