I always loved playing Monopoly, I have been playing since I was born. My first time must have been when I was 3 years old. Today I play it on my Nintendo DS, on my PC, and even on my phone/Pocket PC. I still enjoy it tremendously. Critics of the game have pointed out that you can get tired of playing Monopoly, since it is always the same, and it lasts for a bloody long time, before everyone goes bust, except the winner.
Of course, they are right, which is why my generation is so lucky: now I play alone, with five other AI players. Artificial Intelligence or CPU players. They never get tired of playing Monopoly, they will play as soon as I order it, they will also lose on command (once set at the easy level), because I still have to lose one game.
I lost only once at Monopoly, you don't want to know the result. I was 7 years old, I hit my playing partner in the face (common assault), destroyed the game, destroyed a table, threw a chair out of a window (damaging property), and I sulked for a week. Thankfully I lost only once. A second time... and certainly I would have started a Nuclear Third World War on your head! Because, you know, this is human nature, in the West. This is who we are! No one needs to be ashamed of it.
Now, it is difficult to buy everything, to land on everything, so you have to pay big money to get all those lands from the other players, and this is when playing with brainless people is essential. It has been said that anyone had a price, and if you have enough money to throw away, you can always buy anything you want, everything that exists in the world, even the government! I always risk it all, this is the sign of a real capitalist winner. The Shock Doctrine would also come in handy, or The Prince of Machiavelli if you insist on being old fashion.
At first this is difficult, because though everyone else seems to go around the board like if there was no tomorrow, and win cash right left and centre, you always appear to be stuck forever in a loop. You never pass go, you always end up in prison.
No problem, I just mortgage everything I buy, and somehow that leaves me enough money to buy out everyone else out of it all. So at the end I own everything, and everyone pays me a fortune. As soon as I build my first house, that's it, I simply have to wait a few rolls of the dice, until everyone goes bust and that I acquire all their money and everything they might still own that I don't already own. Monopoly is such a satisfying game, as long as you always win.
If you had never heard of the game, and even, did not know I was talking about a game, you could potentially be horrified right now. Because the very basis of Monopoly, our international national symbol of all that we are and represent, is all about becoming the richest person alive, but also to ensure that everyone else goes bankrupt, and hopefully die a painful death. And when they do, cheer up and open a bottle of Champagne, you have won the game of life!
I find it terribly ironic that I have enjoyed winning at Monopoly for most of my life, and yet, in real life, which is more or less based on the very same principles, I never owned anything, and my partner is about to lose our apartment to the bank, because of the depression. I have never applied those same principles in life that I have applied for so long playing Monopoly. And so, my partner and I are totally bankrupted.
Others have won, the banks, they are the ones popping up the Champagne right now. They have been for a very long time, and no one will allow them to go bust. We all pay dearly to sustain them before that happens, so they can continue to finance houses and hotels, and repossess it all when we default on our payments. It never fails to happen, as soon as a little economic depression shows up, every decade or so.
And the worst part of it all, the Bank has become God, the God of the capitalism religion. The Bank is all powerful, has always existed, is omnipresent, it knows everything about you. And the money it lends you, is not based on any asset it had to acquire, or even on assets of others they have a claim on, or money or gold they have at their disposal. That money is created out of nothing, with each loan, guaranteed by the government (us). And when we all go bankrupt, the bank simply finally acquire everything we own. This is not in the instruction manual, or else, no one would play Monopoly.
Actually, the real worst part of it all, is that despite registering record profits of billions in recent years, on our back, whilst we were all going bankrupt, banks still managed to go bust themselves! And, we bailed them out! If it was not so ridiculous, meaningless, plain stupid, and sad... I would cry myself to death.
One has to wonder, who thought of this system, or who was able in the first place to impose it on us all through time. I suggest we leave it out of our history books, something we have become very good at. We don't want future generations to know how brainless we were at playing Monopoly, do we? I could not justify it, it would bruise my die hard capitalist Ego.
One could be tempted here to talk about a great analogy of the game of Monopoly, the real great corporations buying everything they can, because they have unlimited funds, and, remember my strategy, everyone has a price. And once you own everything, you can charge whatever you want, and people pay, and then they go bust.
This is how it actually happens in real life, and these large corporations eventually end up owning everything, including us. They do whatever they want, even dictate politics worldwide. But at the back of it all, there is always a large bank supporting them, making it all happen. The almighty bank, our God of capitalism.
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