It's just a game, right?

[n2doc]

Jon Carroll
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Remember long, long Monopoly games played on rainy days with chums and pals? Remember how you never finished, and carefully preserved the game by putting it on an out-of-the-way end table? And remember how you never ever got back to that game and it sat there for a week or so until somebody gave up and put it away?

We played "house rules": I think probably everyone played house rules. Our two main exceptions to the standard rule book: We played that all fines and other penalties were put into the middle of the board, and the person who landed on Free Parking got all the money. This tended to lengthen the game because it put more money in circulation, thereby postponing bankruptcies.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/17/DD321ETRIC.DTL

Everyone who's played Monopoly knows that there's a certain inexorability to the game. Within half an hour or so, you know who the winner is; the rest is clinging on and tidying up and being cheered up by minor turns of fortune that turn out to mean nothing.

We already know who the winners are: The top 1 percent of wealthy Americans, the people the Bush tax cuts sought to help, the people who own, well, basically everything. Together, they have a "monopoly," the fun game for the whole family. Even if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, it's just a drop in their bucket, which is a darned large bucket.

[RandomThoughts]

1. Depends what winning is.

[Javaman]

4. Money doesn't bring happiness...

but it doesn't bring "unhappiness" either.

It's always up to the person who has it.

[RandomThoughts]

5. Nice way to say that :)

[ejpoeta]

2. wasn't monopoly created to show us the trouble with capitalism or something?

[tridim]

3. I win every time, because I always get Boardwalk and Park Place.

Players will sell it every time if they are even a little bit short on cash. Usually it takes no more than three tries. After that, just add 2 or 4 hotels and it's game over.

I'm not so cut-throat in real life, thank gawd.