Nina Turner is a former Ohio state senator, web persona, and self-described democratic socialist. She typically feuds with libertarians about “Medicare for All,” minimal wage, and different financial insurance policies.
This week, she tweeted the next: “There’s actually a youngsters’s board recreation that demonstrates that ‘free-market capitalism’ at all times results in one particular person controlling every thing.”
There’s actually a youngsters’s board recreation that demonstrates that “free-market capitalism” at all times results in one particular person controlling every thing.
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) July 26, 2023
One presumes that she is referring to the board recreation Monopoly. Assuming that is the case, this can be a deeply flawed reference. In reality, Monopoly’s winner-take-all dynamics don’t mirror poorly on capitalism, free markets, and even property acquisition.
First, a little bit of historical past. Monopoly was designed within the early 1900s by Lizzie Magie, a feminist activist, anti-monopolist, and a disciple of Henry George—a Progressive Period economist who supported a single tax on land worth. George’s views weren’t completely incompatible with free markets; he supported free commerce, opposed protectionist measures like tariffs, and thought a single tax on land worth was probably the most environment friendly manner for the federal government to boost income with out penalizing growth and different productive financial actions.
Magie wished Monopoly—initially referred to as The Landlord’s Recreation—to advertise Georgism by displaying that monopolists grabbing up property is a pernicious hazard if not counteracted by a land worth tax. Monopoly was by no means meant as an argument in opposition to free market capitalism per se.
As such, the foundations and recreation mechanics do not precisely undermine the legitimacy of the capitalist system. As most individuals know from enjoying the sport—which is weirdly standard, regardless of being considerably unrewarding at each informal and superior ranges of play—Monopoly entails rolling cube, transferring recreation items onto recreation areas, shopping for property, and amassing lease. Gamers earn extra money from their properties if in addition they personal neighboring areas after which develop them. There are beneficial properties available from buying and selling properties with different gamers, however market mechanisms are principally absent.
For example, the quantities of cash earned by touchdown on areas is prearranged by the sport’s guidelines. In a free market, a landlord may cost roughly with the intention to entice renters and compete in opposition to rivals; in Monopoly, rents are set in stone. If something, that is an argument in opposition to government-imposed lease management.
The truth that gamers should go bankrupt, one after the other, till solely the sport’s winner stays is a perform of the sport’s design, not of capitalism. Certainly, this mechanic is definitely so poorly developed that video games of Monopoly typically finish nicely earlier than this level is reached: Individuals incessantly stop the sport as a result of it takes so lengthy. Even underneath circumstances artificially engineered to succeed in an end-state the place “one particular person controls every thing,” per Turner’s description, the sport typically would not work out that manner.
If Turner wished to study extra about free markets—and play a way more pleasurable recreation than Monopoly—she may take a look at Catan. In Catan, gamers acquire and commerce assets in different to accumulate settlements, construct roads, and additional develop their land. The buying and selling mechanic is vital and, in the long term, rewards all gamers: On the recreation’s finish, all people’s civilizations are extra spectacular than they might have been with out market-induced cooperation.
(For extra skilled board recreation followers, I’d additionally advocate Agricola, which exhibits how arduous it was for folks to feed themselves previous to the creation of capitalism. Its tagline is “The seventeenth century, not an easy time for farming!”)
