The Landlord’s Game
Patented by Elizabeth Magie in 1904, the object of this game was to illustrate the economic inequality inherent in the renter/owner relationship. From Wikipedia:
Magie based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate.
The game was manufactured beginning in 1910. In 1935 the patent was ultimately purchased, ironically, by Parker Brothers; they wanted to buy the patents of all competing economy-based board games so as to have a monopoly on the genre. (via Toys as Socialization Agents: Monopoly vs. The Landlord’s Game » Sociological Images
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