With nearly 300 million units sold since its official release in 1935, Monopoly is hands-down the best-selling board game of all time (not including checkers and chess). But its success is fraught with misunderstanding and controversy, beginning with its very origins.
Elizabeth Magie was a writer and feminist in the early 20th century. She was an ardent supporter of Georgism, an economic ideology developed by social reformer Henry George which held that people should own the value they produce through their labour and that rent derived from land ownership should instead be the primary tax through which government is funded.
Magie sought to popularize George’s progressive single-tax movement by creating The Landlord’s Game, but she couldn’t find a publisher willing to take it on. The game spread by word of mouth and became a folk hit nonetheless until, eventually, it drew Parker Brothers’ attention.
Tristan Donovan, journalist and author of It’s All a Game, joins us to discuss how the point of The Landlord’s Game was lost – and perverted – over time. Plus, we talk about today’s surprisingly competitive market for board games.
