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Commonopoly!


September 5, 2013 | Marina Galperina

Forget Monopoly. That’s why we’re all fucked.

Unlike Monopoly, the goal of Commonopoly is not the exhaustion, through monopolization, of a virtual stock of goods, but rather the expansion and preservation of a self-propelling sustainable system of recycling, production and distribution.

Commonopoly is a project from Big Hope: Miklós Erhardt, Dominic Hislop, Elske Rosenfeld. They refer to it as an “artwork” in quotes. “Artwork” is too much about private ownership of things, of ideas. This is a collaborative, open-source effort where resources are pooled to avoid depletion. The content of the piece is generated through the process of creative participation and documentation of the “game.” The documentation provides “large scale theoretical proposals of economic alternatives to market capitalism.” It’s all about solidarity.

How do you play? It’s a bit complicated.

Colour Code:
The different interactions have been grouped into five colour coded categories to encourage players to engage with the many different, sometimes overlapping, sometimes contradictory aspects of alternative economic practices/theories

purple Commons reclaiming public space as a communal resource providing access to knowledge as a communal resource
blue Sharing pooling resources, sharing and exchanging skills
red Exchange negotiating exchanges of services – a mini exchange ring
green Free giving or receiving something for free
brown Theory learning and thinking about different alternative economic theories

Here’s a larger guide and full rules. Get to it.

Or you can go back to being an asshole and play Poker.

Related: The New Weathermen. You can do some eco-terrorism #biolulz on artificially modified lawns. Like lawns of country clubs. Hint.