One advantage of ChartaCourse is that you really can make it your own. You can fill it with your own idiosyncratic, eccentric materials. We're professors, after all -- we should own our eccentricities!
So, with a special shout out to Property and Estates & Trusts Profs: Here's a really fun and useful means of teaching about the power of different conceptions of the right to exclude, and of inheritance laws, to shape society.
I've created 4 new set of rules for the board game Monopoly, each reflecting a different economic and legal structure. I embed the rules within my ChartaCourse chart, and find volunteers to bring in Monopoly boards. Student are randomly assigned to one of the 4 games, and are randomly assigned to roles within them. Then we play. But -- critically -- we also record the results with regard to:
- the amount of economic activity within the game, and
- the economic mobility of the players.
1. Capitalist Monopoly
Students are often surprised when I say that under its normal rules, Monopoly is a rigidly socialist game. After all, it's all about free enterprise, isn't it?
No. Any politician who proposed a law that would require all people to (1) begin their lives with exactly equal resources, and (2) be paid equal wages throughout their lives, would make Bernie Sanders look like Ayn Rand. But those are the normal rules of Monopoly.
So, I created rules for capitalist monopoly, in which the players start the game in very different economic circumstances, and some players are able to capture part of the labor-value of others. Below are the rules:

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Naturally, there is a little grumbling by the person who is 'born' as player E, and a little crowing by the person 'born' as player A -- but that's hardly unexpected or unrealistic.
The capitalist game usually devolves into two separate games. The poor have nothing the rich want, and the rich have nothing the poor can afford. Therefore, they do not trade with each other. The rich players trade with each other, the poor trade with each other.
The poor quickly exhaust the resources they have on hand, and their survival depends upon their ability to accumulate and manage increasing amounts of debt, usually at the forebearance of the rich, who want them alive because they have captured some of the value of their labor.
There is economic mobility among the rich and the poor, so that Player B may end with more resources than Player A, and Player E may end with more resources than Player D. But so far, no Player D or E has finished the game better off than a Player A or Player B. Player C, by contrast can have significant mobility up or down, depending on skillful play and the luck of the die.
2. Western European-style Democratic Socialist Monopoly
The idea here is that resources are divided slightly more evenly than under a more capitalist economy.

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This game always has the highest level of economic activity, as measured by properties bought, sold or traded, and houses or hotels built. Although there is significant disparity between the starting resources of the parties, most of the players will interact and transact with each other, except that Players A and E will often not transact with each other. Because of this, these games often are the liveliest ones in the room.
There is limited economic mobility among the players. Still, it is rare that a player will move up or down by more than 2 positions.
3. Pre-1989 Eastern European Socialist Monopoly
Resources are divided very evenly, but the heavy hand of the state sharply reduces the utility of individual initiative and removes much of the fun and energy of the game.

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This game features the largest amount relative economic mobility between the players, so that occasionally even Player E will end up with more resources than Player A. However, the ending absolute differences among player resources are usually very small. Moreover, as a group, the players usually end up with less money than they started with.
The players usually discover that too much economic activity is counter-productive, since they usually lose more than they make by having a monopoly. Therefore, while economic mobility is the highest in this game, economic activity is usually the second lowest. In addition, as a subjective matter the students seem to have the least fun with this game.
And finally, just for the grim humor of it . . .
4. Stalinist Monopoly
Last time I played this with my students, I was the first person executed.

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This game is a lot of macabre fun. The players soon discover the best course is to avoid economic activity and, as their resources dwindle, they often find an advantage to being imprisoned, since they don't have to pay rent or fear 'disappearing.' The 'disappeared' rules are meant to mimic the paranoia of the Stalinist state -- if you show up in places of high power more than once, or display unusual luck, you are eliminated. The only fun is this game is watching each other try to avoid death.
I've played this one with family. The good news is that unlike most Monopoly games, this one is usually over well within 2 hours.
What lessons are taught from all of this?
For me, there are several:
1. Distribution of resources is in part a product of the strength of the right to exclude under various systems.
2. The rules of the capitalist game have strong implications for debates about the estate tax. When some players start the game with more resources than others could hope to accumulate in several lifetimes, the relative economic mobility of the players is extremely limited.
3. The fact that some players amass resources by capturing the value of others' labor, and that the advantage obtained is carried forward into following generations, is a great launching point for a discussion about slavery reparations.
4. When wealth is distributed wildly unevenly, in part because a strong right to exclude prevents redistribution, economic activity can actually decrease. That may be why, for example, we associate less economic activity with a society dominated by a landed gentry. Moreover, what looks like one game can actually divide into very separate games -- picture the completely separate worlds of landed gentry and ordinary laborers in early 20th century Britain, for example, or the separate worlds of Wall St. bankers and the homeless.
5. There is joy and fun in enterprise that doesn't really exist when free markets are squashed.
6. Relative economic mobility, promoted by a weakened right to exclude, can mean lower absolute economic mobility, so that what appears to be an improvement for the poor may actually be a worsening of conditions for everyone. In many ways, happiness in playing the game seems less about relative economic mobility than about a robust opportunity to participate in the economic system.
7. Don't mess with Stalin.
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