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I haven't played Monopoly for many years now. The last game was with three housemates at university. One housemate was winning and really enjoying his triumph over the rest of us. So I suggested to my other two housemates that we form a cooperative. We would let each other off rents on our properties. The standards rents would apply to anyone not in the coop. And you could leave the coop if you wanted. None of this is forbidden in the rules of Monopoly because it has little market regulation.

Within a remarkably short space of time the monopolist had lost his dominance and the rest of us had flourished. He went bankrupt and the rest of us agreed to end the game as joint victors. I felt as though we perhaps played it more to the spirit of the original game that Monopoly had been derived from and found a non-monopolist solution.

Stuart :progress_pride:

A few years ago I shared this story on Twitter and then had angry libertarian men complain that I'd cheated and had actually made a cartel, not a cooperative. They weren't happy that I pointed out that no rules had been broken. In fact it was the lack of market regulation in Monopoly that allowed us to do what we did. Plus we did it fully openly and the fourth player was able to join our coop if he'd wanted.

I still don't agree that we were a cartel as there was no secrecy, deceit, or defrauding going on. We were very open about forgiving rent and doing better deals within the coop than the 'official' prices outside the coop. Anyway it was funny to see libertarian men be unhappy about something happening due to very limited market regulation (no rules saying you couldn't discount rent or undercut the guide prices).

Although Monopoly is so often presented/framed as an individualistic game of capitalist dominance, it doesn't actually have to be played like that. The system might strongly encourage that but the players can behave differently. A better way is possible.

It did teach me that a bunch of libertarian men are all in favour of lower regulation until you use that lack of regulation to behave cooperatively to help each other.

I've had a lot of (I get the impression, American) people tell me I'm wrong about the rules and that we weren't allowed to do what I said. I appreciate that many of those that need to tell me I'm wrong are unlikely to read this far but it may be helpful to check the rules of the Waddingtons edition that was the "genuine" version in the UK. It doesn't mean you are wrong about your rules but you aren't correct about the "official" rules of the game we were playing.

Our genuine UK edition (from the 80s but seems similar to this 70s version) explicitly had a rule about not being able to collect rent if the property owner hadn't asked for it before the next dice roll. At no point does it tell you you can't make gifts. It tells you you can't make loans. 3.bp.blogspot.com/-6_HeeUb95K4

Not that actual evidence of the rules we were playing with (here's side 2 of that Waddington edition 3.bp.blogspot.com/-TVoDpsHD_aM) ever mattered to those people. They just needed to tell me I was wrong because they felt I was wrong.

It is hard because so many of us fall into this xkcd.com/386/ even if we've not bothered to check or even allow for not fully understanding a situation first.

xkcdDuty Calls