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The Kid Should See This

Elizabeth Magie and the history of the board game Monopoly

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In Monopoly, you try to buy land, build properties, and get rich while bankrupting your opponents. It’s a classic American game with many popular versions… including an original version that was created to teach people how to prosper through sharing within their community.

This TicToc by Bloomberg video explains Monopoly’s surprising origins, which includes a set of rules where “players all shared money when someone purchased a piece of land.” From Wikipedia:

Monopoly is derived from The Landlord’s Game, which was created by Elizabeth Magie in the United States in 1903 as a way to demonstrate that an economy which rewards wealth creation is better than one in which monopolists work under few constraints and to promote the economic theories of Henry George and in particular his ideas about taxation.

The landlord's game
A fella named Charles Darrow revised the game and sold it to Parker Brothers as his own, and now we all play something very close to his version. Learn more about the history of the board game Monopoly.

Related gaming: 20 of our favorite brain games.

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