When Assholes Play Monopoly...

...they land on Free Parking and demand all of the fines paid during the game even though the rule is optional and they never mentioned it before the game began. Now in the middle of playing they want an advantage that they shouldn't fairly receive.

Sound familiar?

The game of Monopoly actually has an interesting origin. The first version was created in 1904 by a Quaker named Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips and was called "The Landlord's Game." The purpose of the game was to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies - a purpose still served in the final version of the game we play today. Anyone that plays Monopoly will quickly learn that the way the game economy is set up in its essentials is predicated on two factors: luck and the fact that whomever gets the upper hand early in the game tends to destroy his opponents. See more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord's_Game

Capital is like gravity, once it attains a certain mass it just keeps attracting more capital to itself as by an unseen force. The unseen forces of capital are profit (which is reasonable depending on the circumstances) and usury (which is not). There are other techniques at work too, like the gaming of the system that exists when currencies are devalued by those issuing them or when stocks are manipulated so that they rise or lower at the whim of the bigger players.

When you play Monopoly you become aware of certain inherently unfair aspects of the game, and yet our lives are played out within an economy the rules of which the game attempts to emulate.

Food for thought.