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Today was another rough day. As a mid-level official of the government responsible for overseeing state-sponsored building projects, every day is a giant headache. Last year, you received orders to help manage the construction of a revolutionary piece of architecture. Not only does it uniquely symbolize your society in history but it is also enormous in size. Hence, acquiring the materials and maintaining the labor force needed to complete the project keeps you up at night. All of your managerial colleagues on the project are overtired and grouchy. The workers, who are actually doing the hardest labor imaginable under the hot sun - day after endless day, almost never complain. Complaining requires energy, and these workers need to save every bit of energy they have for the grueling task at hand.
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Despite all the drudgery, however, there is one moment of the week that almost makes everything worthwhile. For some reason, a few senior officials in the regime like you. They like your work and attitude - as you never complain. Well...not overtly, anyway. Several months ago, they invited you to join them to drink a few rounds of beer and to play a few rounds of a popular board game on a Saturday evening. After you won the first game, you were hooked, and your passion for this game, which is based on going from one life to the next - all on a simple grid of thirty squares, has been infectious. As a matter of fact, your bureaucratic pals would never even think of playing without you.
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Now, have you figured out where you are in both time (historical era - question #2) and space (geographic location - question #1)? Did you say sixteenth century France? Good guess, but please try again. Third century BCE Carthage (North Africa)? Sorry. You need to go back even further in time.
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This was quite difficult. Actually, you were an official designated to oversee the construction of a pyramid for the Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt around 2500BCE. Beer, which was handed down from earlier cultures, was consumed by Ancient Egyptians and documented in their writings. And the board game you were playing (and winning)? It was called Senet - meaning "game of passing" - from one life to the next. Winners were thought to be favored by the Gods (i.e Ra - the sun god). Congratulations! Senet was created between 3500-3100BCE and is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) board games ever played.
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A Modern Board Game
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Let's try another one. This one is much easier. Hint: This board game is being played all over the world right now by people from all walks of life.
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Rather than thirty squares, this board game has forty spaces. First, each player selects a token - a small silver symbol to move around the board. One can choose from a top hat, a thimble, an iron, a race car and a few others. No one wants the iron. Everyone wants the race car. Players roll dice to move around the board. Most of the spaces are properties. The object of the game is to buy as many properties and build as many hotels on them as possible for the purpose of charging high rents to other players who are unlucky enough to land on the squares you own. There is money and mortgages, and a player can even go to jail. (If nothing else, the photo at the top is a giveaway)
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Of course, the game just described is Monopoly, and it is the Senet of our time. It is played on nearly every continent, and many countries have their own versions of the game including Croatia, Malaysia, Malta, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) among others. France and Germany have approximately two dozen versions based on their major cities. If one feels like playing Monopoly oriented on the beautiful streets of Caen, France (the site of a fantastic peace museum), for example, the Caen version of Monopoly can be ordered online and shipped to your home in a matter of days.
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From "The Landlord's Game" To "Monopoly"
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While Monopoly is fun to play, it ultimately teaches and reinforces the values of capitalism. To survive in a Social Darwinist economy (survival of the fittest, extinction for the rest), one must learn to buy low, sell high, invest whenever possible and learn to be ruthless in order to knock out opponents. The original inventor of the game, however, had a diametrically opposite set of ideals.
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In 1903, a critic of laissez-faire economics and plutocracy (a monopoly of wealth by a few rich people) named Elizabeth "Lizzie" Magie (1866-1948) designed The Landlord's Game for the purpose of exposing the corrupt values of unbridled capitalism - greed and competition at the expense of one's fellow man (and woman). As a disciple of the economic thinker and one-time candidate for mayor of New York City, Henry George (1839-1897), Magie subscribed to his idea that a tax on land could and would solve the large and highly unethical disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor. Hence, wealthy absentee landlords, who collected high rents from tenants in slum properties, were targeted by the game as the cause of much of society's woes. For these property-owners, tenants were no more than payers into their lives of self-aggrandizement - not human beings.
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Her board game caught on in various circles, but it would be reinvented and taken to a whole new level of popularity by a person who latched onto a revolutionary business trend in the 1920s - marketing. Charles Darrow (1889-1967) was a Philadelphia plumbing engineer without a job after the 1929 crash of the American stock market. As one of millions of victims of the Great Depression, he had plenty of time on his hands. In that time, he decided to rework Magie's game. Rather than having a didactic bent against the free market, his version was made to celebrate the economic system by giving everyone the same opportunity to succeed in making a fortune through the buying and selling of property. Nonetheless, the ultimate goal was to force your opponents into bankruptcy and acquire all the property. He also made the board more appealing by applying bright colors and basing the layout on the streets of Atlantic City, New Jersey with Boardwalk and Park Place being the most valuable squares.
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After getting retailers buy his game - renamed Monopoly - for their stores, it became a hit with the public in only a few years time. Between the anti-laissez-faire pedagogy behind Magie's original game and the end result - a celebration of free-market capitalism by consumers during the Great Depression, the irony is utterly staggering.
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Wanted: A Game Called "Liberty and Equality"
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Unfortunately, the United States and much of the world has been playing a real game of monopoly for far too long. A relatively few individuals still control the direction of the economy - often to the detriment of honest working people. Some economic advancement and social mobility still exists, but the window has been closing for more than three decades. When the housing market crashed in 2008, it was due to an international collusion of unscrupulous financial interests and their stalking-horses in government. Rather than being punished, a few of the main sponsors of the crisis (AIG, Bank of America), were bailed out, and the very executives who destroyed the economy were not only retained but rewarded with bonuses on top of their six and seven-figure salaries. At the same time, a countless number of families have been evicted from their homes since the collapse due to job loss and consequent foreclosure. They did not receive a bailout.
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President Obama was sincerely outraged by the executive bonuses. Yet, he was told that the government could do nothing as the financial incentives had been written into their contracts.
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That is doubly outrageous.
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Monopoly is a game played for entertainment, and most players presumably keep the competition in perspective. For younger children, however, would not a game that teaches players to tend to the needs of the community after buying property be of great value? There should be a space where the player spends time befriending social workers and learning about the struggles of the working-class and the poor - and several more spaces in which players learn the joy of devoting their time and money toward helping others through charity and meaningful social interaction in the neighborhood.
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For the fortunate few who have landed on "Boardwalk," it is their ethical obligation to help others struggling on other squares.
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We have rolled the dice in real-world monopoly and lost. Ought we not redesign the board once again to allow for equal amounts of entrepreneurship, economic justice and security?
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Key Source
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Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (New York: Penguin, 2008)
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To view the highlights of a 2006 study on the widening disparity of wealth worldwide by the National Center For Policy Analysis (NCPA), please click onto the following link: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=13949
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For additional information and images of Senet and Monopoly, please click onto kleostimes.tumblr.com to the right and check postings for 6 May
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(Photo: The coveted Boardwalk square in the board game Monopoly)
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J Roquen