The Best Monopoly Game For Your Leftist In-Laws

“World Socialism will be achieved peaceably. Our military role is strictly defensive. Is that understood?” – Octopussy

cover

A capitalist, a socialist, and a communist were meeting up.  The socialist was late.  “I’m sorry,” he explained, “I was standing in line for sausage.  The capitalist asked, “What’s a line?”  The communist asked, “What’s sausage?”

When I was a kid, say, younger than sixth grade, I loved to play Monopoly® at Thanksgiving.  It was great – it was simple to understand, and it involved buying properties to make money from the other players.  My Mom and Grandma would play along.  The fun part for young-me was that if you played the game right and got lucky roles you could reduce the other players to bankruptcy and evict them from your house.  I’ll miss Mom.

After a while Monopoly™ became not a game I looked forward to, but one I dreaded at Thanksgiving.  Why?  The game goes on forever, and the biggest determiner to who wins isn’t great playing ability – it’s luck.  It’s like playing Candyland© with houses.  So, I guess in that respect, it’s like owning real estate in California.  Also, at Thanksgiving I decided that eating enough tryptophan-drenched turkey to knock me on my sorry Thanksgiving butt was more fun, and the couch was as soft as the Cowboy™ defense.  But that was before Monopoly© Socialism™.

TP.jpg

But is it a gluten and conflict-free toilet paper made in a sustainable carbon-neutral factory?

Through whatever mechanism that Amazon© uses to track my purchases, it decided that I might be interested in a copy of Monopoly™ Socialism® as well as the tree-free-vegan-bamboo toilet paper.  I’m sure the toilet paper is carbon neutral, but I was more interested in the game, but sadly, Monopoly© Socialism™ was out of stock.  Amazon™ assured me it would be back in stock soon enough.  Part of the charm for me were some of the (actual) questions that other purchasers asked on Amazon®:

  • Do I have to wait in a long line for the privilege of purchasing this game, like a breadline in Venezuela?
  • Is the board waterproof so Progressive tears won’t ruin it?
  • Are there rolling blackouts? Do the players get to eat zoo animals?

With purchasers asking those questions, I knew I was in with my people.  I hit “add to cart” and it was on its way.  It arrived last Wednesday.

Go.jpg

Before candles, what did socialists use for lighting?  Electricity.  Which might explain why there were no utilities on the board.

The box was smaller than the usual Monopoly© box – the reason being that instead of just folding up the game board into halves, it folded up into quarters.  No biggie.  I thought that we’d keep the board game on a shelf, and perhaps pull it out next month to Make Thanksgiving Uncomfortable Again©, but Pugsley saw it, and convinced The Mrs. that we should play it on Saturday night.  As it didn’t look like learning the rules wouldn’t require an advanced degree in game design nor require the Supreme Court to weigh in on disputes, I agreed.

supreme.jpg

I hear that after Ginsburg is gone, Leftists are worried that the decisions will be Ruth-less.

I have only one piece of advice when it comes to playing Monopoly® – do not allow The Mrs. to be the banker – she cheats.  I’m not making this up.  The Mrs. cheats gleefully and more-or-less openly (though she thinks she’s being sneaky) after a few glasses of wine.  It wasn’t three rolls into the game that I saw The Mrs. had been pilfering from the bank’s funds.  But The Mrs. obviously hadn’t been listening when I read the rules – the game is based on socialism, so you don’t win by having the most money.  You win by “helping” in the most projects, things like the “Rise Up” collective bakery.  If you help, you can put one of your Virtue Signal* tokens on the project while the community fund donates to the project.

*The game does not call these tokens Virtue Signal tokens, but the idea is to openly and publicly have other people pay for something that makes you look virtuous, so, to-may-to, to-mah-to.

topmarx.jpg

A Marxist, a Socialist, and a Communist tried to get into a bar.  The bouncer kicked them out after checking their IDs – “Come on back when you’re 21, guys.”

Money comes from the collective.  The game starts with 1848 dollars in the community fund, since the Communist Manifesto™ was published in 1848.  There is absolutely no reason to use one dollar bills in the game, so they tossed them in just for that joke so you can have 1848 dollars.  Nice touch.

I said the game starts with that much money in the community fund.  Every individual player starts with an socialist approved equal amount of zero dollars, so it was easy to see that The Mrs. was in a full on cheat when I saw she had a little pile of currency snuck back.  How does the game go if players don’t have money?  Easy.  If you don’t have money to buy property start a project or pay a fine, it comes from that initial pile of 1848 dollars, which gets replenished when you pass “Go” and get your living wage of 50 dollars, and you put in five for the community.

It’s not like that happened.  We didn’t make it all the way back to Go.  None of us even made it all the way around to Go.

The game ends either when a single player wins by playing all of their Virtue Signal tokens.  The game also ends when all of the 1848 dollars of community money is gone.  And if you run out of the 1848 dollars?  You lose.  Heck, everyone loses.

1848 dollars doesn’t last long.  And we’re not good socialists, so we all lost.

That loss, I think, is the underlying message of the game.  In socialism, pretty soon you run out of other people’s money to spend and everyone loses.  The game cost me $19.99, and it will be worth it to bring it out during Thanksgiving to be slightly more interesting than whatever snoozefest is going on in Detroit®.  It’s not like we wanted to talk to the Leftist side of the family anyway, right?

prius.jpg

I think if there Batman©-type Virtue Signal™?  It would have Justin Trudeau’s face.  I mean, without makeup.

But you can’t buy the game for $19.99.  It seems like Hasbro® has stopped making it.  Why?  I don’t know, and it’s useless to speculate if it sold out or if Hasbro™ folded to political pressure.  If you want to buy it on Amazon™ now, it’s selling for (cheapest price with free shipping) about $45, though it looked to be a bit cheaper elsewhere.  After playing the game, I certainly can’t recommend it at that price, unless you really want to trigger your Leftist neighbor/friend/relative.

gender.jpg

Maybe we should start calling Facebook™ and Twitter© Socialist media?

The reviews by purchasers at Amazon© are very positive, and they’re by verified purchasers.  The negative reviews, however, aren’t by verified purchasers, and one of them is obviously by someone who never even bought the game.

The reviews by websites on the Internet weren’t really reviews.  They were a listing of complaints that Monopoly® Socialism© didn’t accurately portray socialism.  I’m thinking that the talent of these people has been wasted – where were they when they could have been complaining that Marvel® movies don’t accurately portray superpowers or that Breaking Bad© isn’t a realistic view of teacher insurance policies in the Albuquerque Public School System?

It was as if this minor and humorous critique of socialism in the form of a board game had to be beaten back because the one thing that Leftism cannot stand is . . . being made fun of.  My favorite line from a review was this one where the reviewer almost (but not quite) achieves self-awareness:

Reading between the lines, the game’s designers are saying that with no incentive to work nothing gets done.

Somehow, that was intended as a dig against the game designers.  But it turns out that it’s an accurate representation of reality.  If there is no incentive to work, nothing gets done.  Period.

The simplest version of that statement is, “if you don’t’ work, you don’t eat.”  I’m pretty sure the reviewer (who has written thousands of posts for a clickbait site) would probably not show back up to work if they stopped paying him – he wouldn’t keep writing what the boss said if he couldn’t pay the rent or buy soy milk and chicken tendies.

venz

Socialism looks great on paper.  Unless that paper is in a history book.

It’s clear this game isn’t a real take on socialism, because the end of the game doesn’t feature a failed government, a population in near-starvation, shattered lives, and a blasted economy that will take a generation or more to heal.  In our house, the game ended up with a second bottle of wine, a different game, and a nice evening.

The one negative review that’s correct is this one, and it’s mine:  Socialism is a silly basis for a game, because everyone always loses.  And that’s why Monopoly® Socialism™ caused so many Leftist panties to twist:  because it got it 100% right.

 

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

15 thoughts on “The Best Monopoly Game For Your Leftist In-Laws”

  1. Years ago, I had a friend dating some foreign man, who made the comment: “I dunno. I don’t think Socialism would be that bad.” Whether she was corrupted, terribly ignorant, or both really doesn’t matter. She, in a different situation, would be willing to embrace what Venezuelans face every day. That’s insanity, but seems to be an insanity that’s becoming more widespread.

    1. And that’s the scary part – socialism is seen (by the kids) as a way to get “more” or “their fair share.” They never think what they’ll have to give up . . .

  2. 1) JW, your captions this time out are absolutely ON FIRE! Bravo!

    2) “I think if there Batman©-type Virtue Signal™? It would have Justin Trudeau’s face. I mean, without makeup.
    Sorry, but I thought the blonde in the blue dress in that pic was Justin Trudeau.
    Canadians…a little help here, eh…?

    3) The game needs more realism, and even more PC. Every time you pay into the community fund, there should also be an obligatory crotch-kick, delivered by the bank standing in for the state.
    There should also be a proviso to multiply the fees charged based on race and gender. 6X for white males, 5x for white females, 4X for white gender-confused, etc.
    Black handicapped transgenderbender lesbian players, for example, would simply get half the remaining money of all white players, just because. Call it the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton Rule.
    Japanese-American players get put in jail the first time they pass it, but on the next turn, they get out, and get 10% of the funds in the Community Chest.
    Every time a white player passes Go, all other players must repeat out loud, “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”
    And so on.

    4) Bonus idea: Public Domain
    Someone who has the actual game (elbow dig hint, buddy) should recruit a full rainbow of Diversity to play it, as if it were Celebrity Poker, and film the hilarity with multiple cameras, then edit it to a 60 minute (or less) mockumentary. get Thomas Sowell or Ben Stein to do an after-action commentary, and I’ll kick in half his appearance fee, as long as I get a personal copy of the show on disc.

    Your move.

    1. 1) Thank you! I liked putting this one together.
      2) I’ll have to leave that one to Canada – but how cool is it that their PM is a “Man of 1,000 Faces”?
      3) We never passed Go, so there was no way to replenish the Community Fund. Our utopia was obviously sabotaged by horrible fascists!
      4) Okay, that would be hilarious – even better would be Ben doing play-by-play.

  3. What you wrote about The Mrs. as banker reminded me of long ago, when I was just a little engineer playing Monopoly with the family. My younger sister was banker, and she, too, was caught (by my mother; I was oblivious) adding to her funds from the bank. My mother demanded to know why. Quoth my sister: “Because I wanted to win!”

    Good times …

    1. My sister just destroyed my favorite game, although it wasn’t Monopoly. Then she narked on me when I hit her for it. That was her version of winning. She did become a good little socialist later on. School teacher in Seattle. I almost feel sorry for the kids there. But of course, Bill Gates contaminated the area first ( no sexy pictures of Bill, pretty please, John )

    2. Indeed! We did have fun playing the game – the only version of Monopoly that ends on a satisfying timeline.

  4. “Reading between the lines, the game’s designers are saying that with no incentive to work nothing gets done.”

    Therein lies the great flaw. If you “pay” me the same whether I work hard or not, or even whether I work at all (We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us), then why would I work hard? I have this conversation with Amish all the time when they complain about road workers standing around holding shovels. It seems inconceivable that you would be at work and not working like crazy. I tell them that for the workers, they get paid the same if they are going hog wild or if they are holding their stop/slow signs in one hand and their phone in the other. It still makes no sense to them, their culture demands hard work whatever you are doing.

    What is compounding the problem is that the U.S. is growing steadily more socialistic at the same time we are importing huge numbers of people that are very comfortable with that system. In a nation full of Amish, the social stigma of being lazy would keep problems from getting out of hand. In a nation full of mestizos who grew up in a third world craphole socialist narco-state? No problemo.

    1. My first internship – they told me to go clean out a vehicle. I busted my butt and cleaned it well in an hour. “John, that was supposed to take all week.”

      Sigh.

    2. One of the things kids learn when they’re raised right is that mildly hard work is actually pleasant, especially if when done there is some visible or tangible result. Your Amish (German~American) interlocutor is spot on. How boring!

      But if / when you find yourself in a culture of cheaters, all bets are off. Ask anyone who grew up in Brasil. Or any of the Rom.

  5. John – – MAGA mega hugmongus YUGE expansive galacticall-sized KUDOS…… And I mean really big KUDOS, if you get my drift !!

    Your excellent HATE SPEECH herein shall reverberate in the empty craniums of Socialist sophists everywhere !!

    Again, thanx for Marx skewered in the flanxx, boiled slowly in oil with a hydrochloride purgative !!

    Elvis, after shooting JFK is to have said, “Son, thay’s how it’s done. Only John Wilder could do it better”, or words to that effect…..

    Yeah, these are the good ole daze. Thanx.

  6. If you think about the US collapse, you will realize how bad the USA is.

    The US gets worse by the day.

    Everything is illegal.

    You cannot have secrets.

    Everything the government does is secret.

    You cannot vote.

    Protesting is illegal.

    Owning a gun is illegal.

    There is no one to tell.

    No one cares.

Comments are closed.