Anti-Monopoly

Anti-Monopoly is a board game created by Ralph Anspach, a professor at San Francisco State University, as a deliberate answer to Monopoly. Anspach felt that Monopoly left players with the impression that monopolies were desirable, and he designed his game to show how harmful they can be to a free-enterprise system and how antitrust law works against them. In the original version the board starts in a monopolised state, like the end of a finished Monopoly game, and players act as federal case workers who bring indictments against company cartels in order to restore a free market. The later Anti-Monopoly II lets each player choose to play as a monopolist or as a competitor, with different rent and building rules for each. The game was first planned for 1973 under the title Bust the Trust, and its history includes a ten year trademark dispute with Parker Brothers that ended in a settlement. It remains in print from University Games.