Darrow, like many other Americans, was unemployed at the time and often played this game to amuse himself and pass the time. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, presented a game called MONOPOLY to the executives of Parker Brothers. As later printed in the game’s instructions: “In 1934, Charles B. Thirty-one years later, a man named Charles Darrow sold a game called Monopoly to George and Fred Parker. “Let the children once see clearly the gross injustice of our present land system and when they grow up, if they are allowed to develop naturally, the evil will soon be remedied,” she said two years before she patented her idea. Magie believed The Landlords’ Game would show the world as it is, and might hopefully inspire reforms. The tax would supersede the taxation of “productive labor, ” and such regressive taxes as those on sales would be eliminated. Magie was a disciple of Henry George, a 19th century economist who proposed that land was “common property,” and that as a way of mitigating the self-evident absurdity of owning nature, a single tax would be applied to landowners. Lizzie Magie named her grim reflection of life The Landlords’ Game, but you probably know it better as Monopoly. The game ends only when everyone is driven penniless into the ground, but for a single aristocrat who now owns everything. The poorer the proletarian player gets, the more he or she is squeezed there is nowhere to go that doesn’t demand a fee of some kind, and there is no respite. And crossing the wrong landowner sends a player directly to jail. Anyone desiring light and water had better open their wallet. Anyone interested in traveling a non-trivial distance has to pony up for a railroad ticket. In this game, oligarchs enrich themselves at the expense of tenants, the latter of whom only grow poorer as available land decreases and the cost of rent increases. In 1904, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Magie designed a board game to demonstrate the tragic effects of land-grabbing.
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