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Can Socialist Monopoly compete with Capitalist Monopoly?

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We all know how the game of Capitalist Monopoly works: one player wins and the rest lose, at least until the next round. But what if you are a permanent loser? That is unfair. The most obvious solution to this crisis is to remake the rules in your favor.

Brilliant minds among the loser community have made repeated attempts to make new rules that would allow them to become winners. They mostly ended up with appointing one of the players to be a dictator (usually themselves), who promises to redistribute everything on the board equally so that everyone wins. The dictator appoints assistants and together they become the government. For this plan to work, the government must forcibly take over all the property on the game board. Thus the government becomes a monopolist and the sole big winner. All the others become perpetual lesser winners: equal among themselves, but not equal to the government and its officials. Let's broadly describe it as Socialist Monopoly.

But not all the state-run rental properties on the board are equal, so the game goes on. Now the selection of winners becomes wholly dependent on a player's personal relationship with the government. Those who are not the relatives or good friends with the government, become losers. The latter can still stay in the game by participating in an intricate system of bribes, kickbacks, and exchange of favors. Those unwilling to play by these rules become the ultimate losers and are despised by everybody. Usually they are the people who would previously win in Capitalist Monopoly.

When all the redistribution has been completed, Socialist Monopoly becomes a really boring and tedious game. The government deflects the growing dissatisfaction by adding a new rule: all players must blame the former winners of Capitalist Monopoly for sabotage and obstructionism. After all the said former winners quit and leave the table, the interest in the game is sustained with the help of cheap vodka, which also helps to suppress mutual resentment and hatred. The game ends when all players, including the government, lose all motivation to go on, or fall under the table into a puddle of their own vomit, whichever comes first.

The most common explanation for the failures of Socialist Monopoly is that the brilliant minds of the loser community simply haven't got it right yet. This gives everyone hope that someday there will appear a sharper, more brilliant loser who will get it right.

And so the dream lives on, about a game where everyone can be an equal winner while still being able to enjoy the game without ending up hating everyone else, sending the most successful players to jail, and falling under the table in a drunken stupor.

Thus, the efforts to reinvent Monopoly never stop. Below are just some failed examples. Will you take the challenge and create a game of Socialist Monopoly that actually works?


Progressive Monopoly

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Communist Monopoly

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Socialist Monopoly with lines - Polish style

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And so on...

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Some more, fresh off the Interwebs...

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And another oldie...

[img]/images/Food_Stamps_Word_Cloud.png[/img]

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I've got another game!

Review: Komissar, the cold war board game

Tip: If you look in the bottom-right of the first photo, you'll see a shot of Komrade Direktor Red Square when he was a child. And if you look at the box in the last photo, you'll see him in his old job where he was tasked with hassling stock traders, wearing a smart suit, and being more ripped than Arnold Schwarzenegger.


Red Square wrote:And another oldie...

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I generated one of the text of the Kube homepage as of this comment:

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Using this website.

Just goes to show you that Dear Leader's always gotta be the biggest guy in the room!

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My family will be getting the only correct version of this game, the Communist edition. That one is obviously the only fair version of this game!! Hours of fun await us, Comrades!

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This game is called Bernie-opoly: The inner ring is where Bernie's people play. The outer ring is where the capitalists play. There can be up to 15 players, but only 3 players can be capitalists, while the remaining 13 players are Bernie's people. All money paid from the outer ring goes directly into Berne's pocket. All money paid out to the inner ring comes from Bernie's pocket. All money owed from the inner ring is forgiven after each turn around the board. The game ends two ways - 1. After all of the capitalists defect in the middle of the night. 2. When all of the capitalists' debt to income ratios have caused the bank to stop giving them loans. Bernie's people think they win every time, while the last capitalist standing gets a box to sleep in on the street. The only true winner every time is Bernie, and so it is a Bernie-opoly.

NOTE: This version of Bernie-opoly will only be available during Bernie's first 5 year plan cycle. After that, the outer ring disappears and the game will consist of only the inner ring and Bernie's pocket.

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We haven't reinvented the entire game, but we have modified some elements. A while ago, we invented the People's Dice of Equality, posted here:

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And these are the People's Dice of Equality, government edition:

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Red Square wrote:We haven't reinvented the entire game, but we have modified some elements. A while ago, we invented the People's Dice of Equality, posted here:

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And these are the People's Dice of Equality, government edition:

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I petition the Direktor to make the pips on the dice hammer and sickles to constantly remind us that competition is a useless thing and that, in the end, the State always wins.

Red Square wrote:We haven't reinvented the entire game, but we have modified some elements. A while ago, we invented the People's Dice of Equality ....

Bernie's People win on two through eleven. Snake eyes or boxcars they must roll again.

Capitalists' point is always one the hard way. Naturally, they are not allowed to crap out.

So it's pretty much still the same game.

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Lev Termen wrote:
Red Square wrote:We haven't reinvented the entire game, but we have modified some elements. A while ago, we invented the People's Dice of Equality ....

[highlight=#ffff00]Bernie's People win on two through eleven. Snake eyes or boxcars they must roll again.[/highlight]

Capitalists' point is always one the hard way. Naturally, they are not allowed to crap out.

So it's pretty much still the same game.

I find this offensive on behalf of the Lizard People and those who identify as Locomotives. And what do you mean Kapitalists can't crap out? I thought they already did, and that we're just waiting for the signal to dig the pit and load the rifles.

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RUSSIA BANS POLAND'S 'COMMUNIST MONOPOLY' BOARD GAME

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Newsweek wrote:Russia has banned Poland's popular, but controversial, Soviet-inspired board game Kolejka, Poland's state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) reports.

Kolejka, which translates as “queue”, was branded the “Communist Monopoly” by the country's media after its release in 2011. The game is inspired by Monopoly, which teaches players about capitalism and the free market, but instead it simulates money dealings in the planned economy of Poland's Communist past.

The aim of the game is to buy everything on your shopping list before other players do, with everything from food to furniture in short supply. It comes with a set of historical materials, recreating the difficulty of acquiring goods during the Cold War in a country such as Poland. The game also incorporates a black market for goods.

Kolejka has been a hit in Poland, spawning spinoffs and expansions and being used as a teaching aid in history classes, and it has been translated into English, German and French. But the Russian authorities are not fans.

Over the weekend, IPN reported that Russia's consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor warned that the game is perceived as “anti-Russian” and excessively critical of the Soviet system. Russian authorities asked Trefl, the company who bought the game's license from IPN, to either remove the direct historical references from it or risk getting the product banned.

“IPN did not agree to the implementation of these changes and that is why Kolejka is no longer in Russian shops,” a statement by IPN reads.

Andrzej Zawistowski, director of education at IPN, said the request was “absurd” and misunderstood the whole point of the game.

“Russia's claiming of Soviet history as its own leads some Russians to think that criticism of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state is also a vilification of modern Russia,” he said in the statement.


 
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