The board game “Monopoly” as it was called in my youth still goes by that name. It was originally patented by left-wing feminist Lizzy Magie in 1903. It became popular in many countries, including the United Kingdom where I spent the years of WWII. It was a popular game with my male contemporaries, who enjoyed taking money (bank notes that came with the purchase of a Monopoly game) from their game-playing companions.
I enjoyed playing this game from the outset, though I slowly liked it less as it became clear the object was not only to become richer than your colleagues at the table but to ruin them financially if you could. By age fifteen, most of the players I knew had the objective of ruining the other players very clearly in mind. I then found the game ugly and gave up playing. Later I realized that those who won by ruining all of the other players also lost their only source of income at the Monopoly board; it was surely a poor win.
For the next 40 years I did not play Monopoly. However, one evening on a working day, when I had been out of the house until seven p.m. and we had just finished dinner, my five-year old daughter, Lara, asked me to play Monopoly with her. Groaning somewhat internally, I said “sure” as cheerfully as I could and the game began. We played on the floor, one each side of the board, with the bank’s money separately at another edge of the board.
I need not describe the initial hour, in which the players slowly acquire property until, at a crucial stage, they have enough grouped properties to be allowed to build housing on those properties. In Monopoly, the construction of the first house on any property makes little difference to the outcome of the game, but building the third or fourth house can raise the rental (for those who land on that square) to at very high level. This is the time in the game when those whose strategy is less good among the players, or whose luck is less good, start to lose their money and are eventually ruined.
Lara knew none of the above, but her observant and caring nature brought about a new strategy when we each started to consider building a second house on one of our properties. It was her turn to build and l noticed her eyes looking over to my side of the board. I asked, “What is it you are looking for?” She answered, “I want to know if you have enough money to pay the rent on this property if you land on this square.” A simple addition made it clear I had enough money, so she built the house. Next it was my turn, and I said to myself, “I can play that way too. Let’s try it.”
I did so and she continued in the same vein, and we prospered, and continued to do so until we had the maximum of buildings allowed in the rules of the game. Monopoly is designed very well so that nobody need lose if you all play the game cooperatively, but the inventors never tell the players that. Lara and I not only prospered but we brought the bank to its last few dollars. We went to bed satisfied with our gains, leaving the bank solvent.
It had taken a girl of age five years and two months to demonstrate that cooperation beats competition if you persist in it.