What Monopoly taught me about economics By mirko in Politics Fri May 01, 2009 at 04:16:31 PM EST Tags: monopoly, economics, !boobs, traders, wealth, growth, greed hasbronomics (all tags)
	My phone is a Palm. I installed the infamous software version of Hasbro's flagship game: Monopoly. I first happened to find it quite boring. Then it caught me like whatever flu will make the news next month. What's it about? You know the drill: buy property, hope the others will land on it. Collect 200 every time you pass go. Conquer the board, bankrupt the others by raising the rent whenever possible, thus forcing them to mortgage, then quit... ...or so I thought.

ADVERTISEMENT Sponsor: rusty This space intentionally left blank ...because it's waiting for your ad. So why are you still reading this? Come on, get going. Read the story, and then get an ad. Alright stop it. I'm not going to say anything else. Now you're just being silly. STOP LOOKING AT ME! I'm done! comments (24) active | buy ad ADVERTISEMENT In the real world, such a situation is either omnipresent or absolutely improbable. As a money-maker, you don't hope to win... Not the whole thing anyway, otherwise, they who owe you also belong to your workforce and you'll have reached a nation-like level. This is not what you want. What you want is growth. You achieve growth by ensuring your goods and services keep selling to the masses who still can afford it. It's the same in a game of Monopoly. Whenever the game ends, it's finished. You may just count your money, then restart another game from scratch... then worry about Tarbosh (what the fuck is that for a name ?) caus' he's about to buy that yellow card you count on. So, after some time, I used to win all the games. Then I began focussing on the final wealth. Trying to optimize it, to get it to the highest level possible. Here's what that game taught me about economics: Ensure you own some property in most of the board districts, so that you can block your opponents. Stations and utilities won't make you rich. Never. But there's always someone who'd swap some of these for the last of that color that you're after. You always need to know of the carrot in your arsenal: the special stuff that even the richest, the most powerful is after. In the real word, this'd be drug, a piece of ass, a finely crafted antique collector, or whatever someone might unrationally see as a must-own. Play at most against 2 significant opponents, if there are more, find a way to take these out of business, otherwise, because of the granularity of properties distribution, you risk never to be able to make it to the next point. Focus on at least one district. It could be any, except the first, dark blue one (more an annoyance to the competition than anything else). Mortgage anything else if you have to, but build there. The rent should be at most a third of what you opponent currently own. Be patient. In most cases, it will take around 6 rounds until your opponent begin to lack of money. Good. Bankrupt your opponents until you own more than half of the board. The easiest to bankrupt are the ones that bought the most property: there's no way rent collection will have made  them enough money to compensate these acquisition, especially when they traded some of their most valuable for a station and/or the water utility. That's also the reason you mortgaged some of your properties, remember? Unmortgage your property, it's time to milk your victims: build. But remember: this has to last. From there you may adopt one of the following strategies: Accept some of their trades: let them have one color with hotels. But just one: you can restrict yourself, they cannot: they WANT, they even NEED to win. So, let them be greedy, but not dangerously. Refuse all of their trades. Prevent them from building. Build enough houses around so that their wealth won't increase after a round through your buildings. They may however still make a little money so that the game last. This game has however one huge difference with reality, or maybe it's a similarity but here it is: everybody collects his salary, unless he's in jail, and even in that case, he might still perceive the rent you'll HAVE to pay when on his property. This infinite supply of money, 200$ at a time per player, is the growth you should target. There's not anymore, so either you make them believe there's more in order to steal them what they have, and then you're one of these rogue traders, or you can -very confortably- live with that. A word about the Free Parking option: IRL, it would be some government contracts. In the software, you either decide to exploit this or not. Let's say that it might bring more wealth to the game, which is not bad. But it does so at the expense of realism: I'd personally love to get rid of the 200$ salary if I were to follow the Free Parking rule. Sceptical? Think about this everytime you hear about ANY economics-related fact in "teh nuz"... then come again.

Poll

My personal world domination plan take the red pill 0% take 2 blue pills 4% create the fight club 4% join Al Qaeda 14% buy and sell virtual shit 14% become immortal, then buy the world one thing at a time 23% play the stock market 0% get rich stealing shit, then become legitimate 14% enter politics 9% be a lawyer 0% live in Monaco and wait for a rich heiress to marry you 9% seduce a Saudi princess 0% Hollywood 4% deal drugs 0% WIPO 0% Votes: 21 Results | Other Polls

Related Links

Also by mirko