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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

If your game takes more than about 45 minutes, you're playing it wrong.

Free parking doesn't give you a bonus.

Every property must be sold when it is landed on, either to the player who landed on it or in auction.

The supply of houses and hotels is limited.

If you have a situation where no one has a monopoly and all the properties are owned, you have to make trades. If everyone refuses to trade, then you might as well stop because the game will never end, but you should still reach this point within 45 minutes.

The entire game was designed to be bad -- it's trying to show that owning land is evil and that who is rich in life is mostly based on luck.

The winner is supposed to be the person who rolls the luckiest.

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Wait, are you saying that in monopoly, the one who rolls the luckiest wins? I think that’s true.

I would like to point out that in real life, that is also the case. The ones who roll the luckiest also win. Think of your birth situation. You didn’t chose it.

Now, is Monopoly teaching anything remarkably useful about real life that could put you ahead? I don’t think so.

It’s a game! Since the strategy is limited, takes a long time, I don’t think it’s a great one.

I think it's teaching you something about how society should or shouldn't be designed. Whether this could be said to "put you ahead" might be the wrong way to think about it.

Why do so many, like many immigrants, start from nothing and end up very successful if it was just a dice roll? I mean, there's always that factor but it's certainly not everything.

This seems like selection bias. I would bet that far more people end up successful because they started out successful.

This. There are a lot of immigrants: So many simply aren't rich and never will be, really. I mean, how many migrant farm workers are there in the world? How many work in the fishing industry? How many in restaurant kitchens? Am I supposed to believe they will all be successful? Probably not. I'm guessing that the immigrants started off better than others.

We have to define what success is. Not all become millionaires, but most have build a good life for themselves in the upper middle class.

Data or it didn’t happen.

“Most” and “upper middle class” tells me you’re probably making this up whole cloth. “Most” Americans don’t make it to the upper middle class.

You are right that most immigrant rags-to-riches stories that immediately come to mind involve them getting off the boat with a handful of dollars to their name. But they seem to forget the value of the college degree that they carry and the lifetime of high-quality education that preceded their arrival in the US. The immigrants you speak of might not be as poor as you make them out to be.

I do not know if many American families can get access to the same resources for early education if they are not already from families that are economically affluent.

They don't. Very few people start from nothing and end up "very successful" (by which I take it you mean being rich and influential). You're just forgetting to divide their number by the number of people who start from nothing overall, which is Billions.

Was able to emigrate is a pretty strong filter in a lot of cases. Was able to immigrate is an even stronger filter. Just gathering the resources to leave is one thing, gathering the resources to be allowed in at the destination can be even harder.

Most of the immigrants I know spent a lot of time or money or both either personally or by their parents to get here. At least recebtly even the ones who left everything behind to start here with nothing at least had some talent at getting things done in beuracracy which is pretty useful.

Strange idea. Elon musk started in SA. Surely being born to Harvard professors in America is the ‘luckiest’ play but most of them are not billionaires. The winklevoss twins mismanaging their Facebook idea had a massive impact on their long term success.

The people that are born in first world countries and become radicalised over the internet to the point where they join a foreign fighting force in a third world country are squandering their ‘luckiest’ move of being born. That’s a win??

Talent is also luck. Everything is luck.

Whatever you describe as ‘everything’ can be dismissed easily with everything else.

Talent is built, educated, trained; genes are partially luck.

> Talent is built, educated, trained;

I think you are conflating talent with skill. You can develop your skill, but generally, your talent is viewed as innate or biological.

Most people can train to be good at basketball, chess, etc. But most people don't have the talent to be michael jordan, magnus carlsen, etc.

> genes are partially luck.

Partially? I don't think it is possible since you inherit all your genes. Genes are entirely luck as you had no say in which genes you inherited.

Your parents had some say in the matter, both in whether to have children at all, with whom, how many, when (IOW, under what financial circumstances), and what level of pre-birth testing for catastrophic birth defects they were comfortable with.

From an individual person, looking at what they had agency over, it’s 100% luck. From a multi-generational family or societal view, it’s not 100% luck.

(I also hold the view that some of what is often described as innate talent is also malleable depending on early childhood nurturing, nutrition, and education. That’s luck from the child point of view but not purely so from the family/society.)

No, not really. Being able to build and train a talent or skill is all luck. You need time and access and, in general, money to be able to train these things. I'm not sure that a kid that has spotty access to school is lucky enough to build their talent if it doesn't match up with society. Women (and young girls) aren't always even given the opportunity - unless their talents are homemaking and raising children.

An ex I knew got into the 5th highest university in the country starting from a completely average high school, with a broken family after five years out side the schooling system. Was that luck? No, it was a descision made and adhered to over a decade. Other people in her class got teen pregnancies.

Human decision exists and luck is a cop out. Burying meaning and choice in statistics and randomness is giving up at life.

So, she was lucky enough to be able to work, perhaps? Was she able to participate in extracurricular activities (not everyone can). "Broken Family" is used for simple divorce cases or death in the family: These are not death sentences. She was lucky enough not to get pregnant too young, which can basically mean that she could get birth control and didn't have mishaps, which might include rape or incest related pregnancies.

A woman I knew... her son got a full scholarship to university because he played baseball. He never got to finish school - because he wound up having a genetic condition that didn't allow him to play. Your friend didn't have these sorts of health concerns.

It isn't that it is all luck, sure. Yes, she had to work hard. But lots of her luck was already there. She probably wasn't Amish, for example, otherwise she wouldn't have school after 8th grade or something. She wasn't sick. She didn't have cancer. She probably wasn't starving. And so on. Even if she had some of these, you've witnessed an exception, not a rule.

It was funny for me to read on the bible that talents of gold/silver where just a measure of economic unit.

Gimme some talents too!

I've thought about that a bit and I personally think the story implies that he who gave them already had a fair idea of who would be most productive.

Sorry, can you extend this thought. I didn't quite get it as english is not my first language. But seems an interesting idea.

> Surely being born to Harvard professors in America is the ‘luckiest’ play but most of them are not billionaires.

Most people regardless of their background are not billionaires. Background certainly increases the chances, though.

> Strange idea. Elon musk started in SA.

Strange idea. There are people born into privilege all over the world. '"We were very wealthy," says Errol [Elon's father]. "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe."' 'Errol returned to South Africa with a half-share in a Zambian emerald mine, which would help to fund his family's lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers. ... It was that lifestyle, Errol says, that turned Elon into the kind of merchant adventurer who would later break the rules of the motoring business with Tesla, then go on to change spaceflight with SpaceX.'

Correct.

I'm a little bit disheartened that no one in this thread has linked to actual data... There's a LOT of study on this topic: Social mobility in the US is measurably atrocious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...

Lets just enumerate the options:

1) Success is determined by luck. People will complain that one person being more successful than another is grossly unfair.

2) Success is determined by extrinsic deterministic factors or uncontrolled intrinsic factors. People will complain that people aren't doing anything to 'earn' their success - it was in some sense inevitable.

3) Success is determined entirely by intrinsic deterministic factors that are in the control of the individual. More morally palatable, but suggestive that any gradient of accomplishments is actually reflective of a sort of selfish 'technique hoarding' (I'm not quite sure what to call it) by successful people. They should really be forced to share their techniques until everyone is equal.

The underlying issue here in this thread isn't how success is achieved; it is the concept of different outcomes for people. Which is a good philosophical point but not practically useful - nobody can point to a system where equal outcomes have led to anything like the material comforts of a world where a gradient of different outcomes is encouraged. The world simply isn't very fair and we've all got to roll with that.

That said, some places with material comforts are more fair than others. Consider e.g. the Nordics vs somewhere like South Africa.

> being born to Harvard professors in America is the ‘luckiest’ play

Why would that be the luckiest? I would think being born as the child of a billionaire vastly increases your chances of billionairedom than being born the child of Harvard professors. The same goes for being born in South Africa or most any country that is not totally wartorn or sanctioned atm. The son of an African dictator will probably have many more chances at significant wealth than someone born to abusive parents in opioid-ravaged 'flyover country', regardless of the relative economic positions of their home countries.

There absolutely is a takeaway - and it isn’t just that luck is important in winning - it’s that luck is everything.

We like to live under the illusion that we are in control of our lives. We are not. We can set a general course, control this or that small, immediate thing - but so much of what we ascribe to our own success or failure is just sheer dumb luck.

I’ve had some ridiculous, absolutely undeserved successes over the years, I’ve been struck with serious illness out of the blue, I’ve seen friends with so many plans for their lives ahead snuffed out by illness and accident. I’ve seen the class clown rise to high office, and the prodigy work in a chip shop. We make choices, but against a sea of endless variables and influences, they make little difference.

People used to cite the fates, or their god or gods of choice - because they couldn’t explain the absolute randomness of the path of a life. I think you’ll find precious few people who, in their dotage, will say their life went to plan - and that doesn’t mean everyone’s a sad failure, rather that you end up places you never even dreamt of - because we really aren’t in control.

All these comments about the reasoning behind the game are wrong. Hackers new econ is as narrow as possible.

Read this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-...

Monopoly is about the ideas of Henry George for one set of rules, versus our land enclosed rentier reality.

"The most important choice in life is who your parents are."

The fantastic book[1] The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality by Branko Milanovic points out that the 3 most-important correlated determinants of financial success in life are, in order:

1. Geography (which country you're born in)

2. Parents' finances

3. Your gender

These 3 explain the vast majority of the variance in income between people. Knowing these 3 facts about a person allows you to predict their income with high accuracy (small 90% confidence interval).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Haves-Have-Nots-Idiosyncratic-History...

And given that there's a limited number of good parents, there's a competition for those spots. The most skillful win.

It's more complicated than that. In Monopoly, it's a combination of luck and not being an idiot. Similarly with life.

> The entire game was designed to be bad -- it's trying to show that owning land is evil and that who is rich in life is mostly based on luck.

First, the current rules aren't how the game was designed.

Second, the game was designed to show that private capitalist rent-seeking was a bad way to live because someone one and everyone else lost. It was half of a two-part game, where the other part was a socialist version where rents were paid to everyone to share, and everybody won when the poorest player doubled their money. If Monopoly was designed to be bad, then every competitive game is designed to be bad.

> The winner is supposed to be the person who rolls the luckiest.

Not true. The person who makes the most deals probably wins. This is simple to see mathematically, as each deal is a win-win that benefits the dealmaker more than the other players.

Anyway, most popular kids games are wholly or mostly luck (Candyland, Parcheesi, Trouble, LIFE), and kids enjoy them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game

> Anyway, most popular kids games are wholly or mostly luck (Candyland, Parcheesi, Trouble, LIFE), and kids enjoy them.

Is it the case that Monopoly is a kids game? I don’t know a single kid that wants to play Monopoly.

Candyland isn’t even luck based. It is 100% predetermined by the shuffling of the cards.

> Candyland isn’t even luck based.

> It is 100% predetermined by the shuffling of the cards

I feel like there has to be a typo somewhere in here. A game being predetermined by the shuffle is what makes it luck based, no?

Predetermined luck (luck of the card shuffle) versus luck of a dice roll (luck of events during the gameplay). Two types of luck, though yes they are still both luck.

I loved monopoly when I was a kid. Not a young child, mind you - past the candyland age, but definitely at the age of Parcheesi, trouble, and life. I more had trouble talking my parents into playing it with me.

> It was half of a two-part game, where the other part was a socialist version...

Georgism is NOT socialism.

"If your game takes more than about 45 minutes, you're playing it wrong."

Or different. What takes time to infinity (and is key part to us) are the trades and auction parts. Because everyone, also the ones not directly involved, tries to influence other members decision in their favors. Then you have temporary joint ventures and loans with interest, etc. etc.

Well, quite often the game ends dramatically with aborting, because some felt cheated and others could not take the pressure ...

If you like the theme and 'feel' of Monopoly, but want a better game, have a look at Acquire: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5/acquire or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquire

Acquire is a game about acquiring a real estate empire. It has more strategic depth than Monopoly, and arguably captures the spatial aspects better (or at all). And, most importantly, doesn't drag on as long.

Trump: The Game is actually a good game design, but the branding is, uh, a bit tacky. (If you can get the original 80s printing, it's much more subdued.)

It's funny. If you play the game "wrong" you might actually have fun. Seems like we naturally changed the rules to try to make it more fun.

As long as you don’t complain that the game takes forever, like many people do.

Yep, the rule is not "the banker can place it up for auction" per the article, the banker MUST place it up for auction.

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