Monopoly has been a staple of American culture ever since it began to be mass produced in the 1930s. A once beloved game is in desperate need of some changes in order to make it relevant today. What do these changes look like?
First off-- the idea of going to jail has to be completely reinvented. The rules of the game allow for someone to do their time or pay a fee to get out of jail. If we want to make the game more relevant to the current times, it would be more realistic if once you begin to accumulate wealth you don't have to go to jail at all. I'm not representing the radical idea of getting rid of the jail space altogether, but it should only be available to any player in the game that is almost out of money, or does not have much in assets.
In order to truly represent modern society, we should also drastically increase the prices for property and fines while also lowering the amount of money that players get while passing "Go" if "Go" is meant to represent an average amount of income for the players. This, of course, presents other rule changes, such as providing lower amounts of money (income) for passing "Go" to any players that are women or other minorities.
The last rule change that is necessary for an updated form of Monopoly lies in the set up of the game. In the beginning, everybody is given a certain amount of money that will let them begin to buy properties. If this is under the assumption that this money is a collection of savings by the player, then it is completely irrational to provide everybody the same amount of money to start the game. In order to provide a realistic game, the money should be distributed randomly, therefore, some players will begin the game with more money and already owning property while others are forced to work their way up from the scraps that they are given to start with. This is under the presumption that not everybody in life starts with equal opportunity.
In conclusion, the game of monopoly was intended to represent the problems with the free market system and the monopolies that would emerge from this system, but the game is just not completely accurate. There are many more factors that go into the system than what the game represents, such as the social implications and biases that are connected to our society. So if I were to make a suggestion to anyone reading this, I would say that you should just switch to the game of LIFE, it's much more fun and much less cynical.
