You DO NOT NEED to stack the game at the beginning for this to happen. This ALWAYS happens because of rent. The game is NOT fair, because it allows those with a slight and random money advantage to charge rent, which inevitably transfers all the wealth from the other players to the richest ones, who start to inflate rent prices and extract all the income of the poorer people as rent.

That's the original point of the game as designed by the Georgists. Unless you tax wealth or multiple property ownership heavily, or you heavily regulate rent, the wealthy use rent to extract income from the other people.

That lesson was always the point of monopoly of course:

The game is named after the economic concept of a monopoly—the domination of a market by a single entity. The game is derived from The Landlord's Game, created in 1903 in the United States by Lizzie Magie, as a way to demonstrate that an economy rewarding individuals is better than one where monopolies hold all the wealth.[1][6] It also served to promote the economic theories of Henry George—in particular, his ideas about taxation.[7] The Landlord's Game originally had two sets of rules, one with tax and another on which the current rules are mainly based.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)

Played Monopoly with my family. Wife and 3 kids.

Wife started to dominate with some lucky rolls and some ridiculous mistakes from my preteen kids. It was a grim look, our only hope was to unite our lands and wealth. Become one unit that would hopefully miss all these fucking hotels and houses. We ourselves, with our combined strength had 75% of one row, with all the railroads. Also, some scattered houses on islands.

Once one person has the majority of the board, it's close to impossible to come back. Even with 3 players uniting with meger money and property. Had to make deals to survive extra turns for that one last grasp of victory.

It was ripped away from us. One roll we land on a hotel, ok. Our last stand. Sell all hardware, turn island properties. She had already taken the railroads from us to transfer her money across the planet.

Breathe.... we made it. One more roll, we had about 4 spaces to make Go and get our bullshit $200 wage. She laughs in our faces, she makes that with just slave labor railroad workers alone.

We roll 3. Land on another hotel. We have nothing left....the last gasp before the long dark. Save us from this monster.

I make people hate me when I play monopoly. I hate the game as much as I hate the system it was originally meant to mock. So every so often, people I know will keep trying to get me to play.

Monopoly Pro Tip: buy everything you can afford, put as many of the little houses you can on it, but don't upgrade to the big pieces. When there are no more small pieces, you can simply bleed everyone dry.

I've had people literally flip boards in anger.

And every time I hear someone say "that's not fair", I respond "I know it's not, But 'what's fair' doesn't matter in capitalism."

Yes, I get a little preachy with it.

But hey, I've almost never been asked to play again by the same person.

TIL. The version we played growing up had London based locations. Never realised the original had NJ based names.

If you had picked the shoe you could pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but you wanted to be the dog. Do you know how many dogs are on the Forbes list of billionaires? None.

Wtf, an income tax? This wicked game must be trying to make kids believing in welfare? What's next? Social security bullshit? Jeez..

100 people get together and they order a 100-slice pizza. The pizza arrives, they open the box and the first guy takes 80 SLICES. And if you try to say, "hey, could you maybe just take 79 slices - WELL THAT'S SOCIALISM!"

It's not because you're lazy. It's because you're stupid, worthless and lazy. Go and inherit some money like reasonable people.

Elizabeth Magie is in the houseee

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

Wait. Americans have their own version of the monopoly ?

That's the point of the game.