In the board game Monopoly, the goal is straightforward: Accumulate property, control the board, and financially ruin all of the other players. It was created in 1903 as The Landlord’s Game by ardent anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie to educate people about the economic and social destructiveness of concentrating land ownership in private cartels. (It’s not for nothing that each Monopoly game box is adorned with a caricature of a top-hatted, robber-baron tycoon, dubbed “Rich Uncle Pennybags.”)

This post was originally published on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.