Yesterday I watched my daughter and her friend play the Byron/Ballina version of Monopoly. It was mildly ironic and a little sad. A game of property where kids like these, without intergenerational wealth, won’t own property. Monopoly is a horrible game. Mainly because it never feels like a game. It feels like a reenactment of everything that’s wrong with our relationship with property. According to a google, Monopoly started with the name, The Landlord’s Game and was invented by a woman who only got $500 for the patent. Classic patriarchal capitalism in action! And nice work grooming kids into sociopaths so they can be ruthless property developers of the future. Yuck.
I never liked Monopoly. It always went badly for me. I always lost. I could never see the point in the rampant property hoarding, had no desire to erect a hotel, and never wanted more than one house. As a kid living in housing commission, I was happy with just one. If someone landed on my property I didn’t get why I’d be charging them rent if they were just visiting. So I wouldn’t. I also never bought any other properties I landed on. I just travelled around the board collecting my universal basic income of $200, I tried to avoid jail, won the odd beauty contest and waited for iron and boot to pop over to say hi. My instinct to redistribute cash made the other kids angry. No one wants to play Monopoly with a budding socialist. When the losers create solidarity, it makes them harder to dominate and oppress.
Some kids become scary playing Monopoly. They are prepared to send each other into bankruptcy to win. Nice kids became tyrants. I’d saved some money so if someone got into trouble on Mayfair, I’d bail them out. They could pay me back. Without interest. Or not. This apparently ruined the game. The inability to send a player to the wall because one of the kids kept helping was seen as ‘cheating’. The kid with the most money, and all the properties with the massive developments, had undergone a personality change.
The sweet kind 12-year-old was laughing maniacally while their younger brother grovelled and begged for respite. ‘Please let me go this time, I can’t pay’. I couldn’t stand it. I found watching people hit poverty while others got rich just from ‘chance’ so upsetting it made me have an anxiety reaction. So I’d swoop in and pay the fine. Or I’d suggest that you don’t have to pay the fine, just keep rolling. That would send the property owners into a rage, because that’s ‘not the rules’ and more often than not the board would be kicked and the game ended.
Revolution and redistribution of wealth were not allowed. Social enterprises not allowed. Rewilding Pall Mall, not allowed. Community gardens not allowed. What is allowed is jail. Gambling. Property hoarding. Selling off of utilities. Winning by causing others hardship. And most importantly, just keeping going until one person owns everything.
What’s scary is that Monopoly isn’t even as bad as the real game we’re forced to play. In that game we’ve privatised child care and aged care. We charge for university. Some people are homeless while others own so many homes many sit empty. Fossil fuel companies and big banks write the rules. The government owns and controls the mineral resources under the surface of the land. People are anxious, and sad, and drug-dependent, and lonely. We lock up people who have escaped tyranny and persecution in offshore jails. We chop down forests for woodchips. Koalas become extinct.
We pollute and poison and perpetrate violence. That’s how you win. Life on planet Earth becomes impossible. Billionaires who are winning the game plan to colonise Mars next. Newsflash: they’re not taking you.
I hate that game even more than Monopoly. Why would you keep playing a game where only a few people win? It sucks.
But it’s not too late. We CAN change the rules.
And then everyone can win.
It’s not socialism. It’s fair. And unlike Monopoly, it’s actually fun.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
