Free market transactions are entered voluntarily. The game of Monopoly forces transactions based on the dice. You don't get to choose where to "rent". There is no price competition.

Monopoly better illustrates how an economy works when it is based on intervention, central banking, and government privilege. For example, the game nicely illustrates the coercive nature of taxation. When players land on either of the two spaces requiring them to pay a tax, there is no pretense of the tax being voluntary or justified by the provision of "public goods." The income and luxury taxes are simply taken from the player against their wishes while they are given nothing in return.

Instead of viewing the game as a market economy, the classical definition of monopoly, "a special grant of privilege by the state," should be applied to the game. Think of each square as an individual monopoly grant. Since the government has the ability to give out these grants, think of the government as the initial owner of each square at the start of the game. The initial price players pay for their land goes to the game’s bank and should be thought of as a cost of lobbying the government to receive the monopoly grant. Then imagine that government compels the other players to buy from you and you from them, when a player lands on a grant of monopoly privilege.

The game’s winner is not a wonderful entrepreneur but just the best rent seeker.

So bosox is fairly correct. The game accurately depicts many aspects of the sort of economy that the Left has built in the US and Europe. One based on government, not on free markets.

Outstanding analysis by dipplayer!

Sure, there's no price competition if you don't trade anything with other people. If you do, then there is...

"So bosox is fairly correct. The game accurately depicts many aspects of the sort of economy that the Left has built in the US and Europe. One based on government, not on free markets."

Lol, no dipplayer, that's not what I said... not at all....

NB - thanks for the warning. What should we do to prevent this and sustain capitalism?

And when you take the "Tax" money and put in under Free Parking, to give to whoever lands there, you are illustrating Forced Redistribution, again an aspect of a command economy, not a free one.

A command economy deals entirely with supply, not demand. It artificially limits demand and what consumers can purchase, true, but it does not involve compulsory purchasing as Monopoly does. False analogy.

Compulsory purchases are the opposite of a socialist economy. No free riders. No bailouts if you go bankrupt. Pure capitalism.

Much like Emac, that analogy finishes second in a beauty pageant and only wins $10. But in Emac's case, he lost to a blobfish.

And if the bank runs out of money, the rules tell you to use slips of paper, or to simply PRINT MORE. That sounds familiar.

So what else do you call a forced purchase of say, health insurance? How is that not a command economy? It certainly isn't free market.

The Affordable Care Act doesn't involve compulsory purchasing 2wl?

Like I said, a command economy regulates what needs to be produced. Nothing to do with demand. Next time you want to make up analogies of a command economy, try comparing it to Diplomacy. Your firms can only produce for the military :)

2WL, your comment makes no sense. If you control the supply, you control the demand. My electric company is the only place to get electricity in my city. How is it not compulsory for me to buy from them if I want electricity? If the government has the monopoly (or has granted the monopoly to some third party) on cars, or toilet paper, or pencils, then if I ever want any of those things, I have no other choice.

Maybe command economy isn't the right term. Do you have a better one for an economy that is based on the government's granting of monopolies and privileges?

A board game.

Or the USA circa 2013....

Has anybody else noticed that you can't really play Monopoly without, at least temporarily, losing friends?

I'll leave it to others to sort out which macroeconomic system that means Monopoly analogizes....

So I was right, Dipplayer is of the No True Scotmans school of thought. Nobody is sufficiently capitalist for him, because capitalism exists only in his theory textbook.

"And if the bank runs out of money, the rules tell you to use slips of paper, or to simply PRINT MORE. That sounds familiar."

Not really. But laissez-faire types don't seem to grasp how central banking works. Or how command economies work.

Monopoly is much like real life. The secret to winning is to be the banker, help your self to money when no one is looking and hide it under the table.

Putin, as usual, you have no comprehension of anything I've said.

LOL @spyman

So you didn't just say that western Europe and the US aren't free market economies.

..... and Putin emerges with a completely off topic comment to distract the thread from the discussion at hand.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

They are not. In the US at least, Education, Banking, Healthcare, Housing, the Auto Industry, etc. have been nationalized with a veneer of private ownership. Government makes the rules. It is more important to have lobbyists in Washington DC than to have a viable business plan (see Solyndra).

putin, the no true Scotsman fallacy is, indeed, a fallacy, but it also doesn't follow that every man is a Scotsman; and if large numbers of Scotsmen have been observed protesting the non-Scotchiness of a particular man, then the fallacy is very possibly *not* being committed, but rather, a stringent definition is merely being preferred.

Dipplayer didn't claim that tourism was picking up in Mogadishu, Somalia without one shred of evidence whatsoever to support the statement.

Dipplay did make an extensive statement that Putin didn't respond to in any meaningful way whatsoever, but of course it was redundant of me to point out that obvious fact.

Dipplayer hates monopolies because he wants to punish success. Monopoly is inevitable in a market economy. Capital centralizes in the hands of the profitable. There is no grand government scheme for monopoly. When government stands out of the way - mergers and acquisitions proceed apace. Government intervention is the only thing keeping them at bay.

Dipllayer also fails to realize that in a command economy, housing prices would not be so unequal and would be as close to being free as possible. There is no rent control in the game of monopoly. Prices go up exponentially for landing on the same space. The so-called "redistribution" on free parking is a made-up house rule, and anyway it simply goes to one of the competitng landlords, who in any case might be the richest of the lot.

Toilet paper is now a nationalized commodity in Venezuela.

"They are not. In the US at least, Education, Banking, Healthcare, Housing, the Auto Industry, etc. have been nationalized with a veneer of private ownership. Government makes the rules. It is more important to have lobbyists in Washington DC than to have a viable business plan (see Solyndra)."

Then I comprehended you perfectly well.