Last night I played Monopoly with my new housemates out on Treasure Island, and a couple of friends of one of the housemates. It had been a long time since I had last played, and I realized this time more than I had ever realized when I was younger that the game was intended to mirror some important societal realities. When you're a kid, "monopoly" is just another odd word, not unlike "scrabble", "backgammon" and "yahtzee". Playing the game is supposed to be an innocuous family pastime, not necessarily a lens into the capitalist system.

By the end of the night, we all had to agree that as board games go, Monopoly is extraordinarily painful to play. And not just because it lasts a long time - when you start to bargain amongst each other for property and buy houses and hotels, it can speed up very quickly. It's painful because inevitably somebody will begin to come out ahead, and you can watch things progress as the game becomes more and more polarized. The rich player is able to consolidate her monopolies, and the poor players regretfully dole out ever larger sums. Players go bankrupt slowly, one by one, and when you're out first, there's nothing to do but stand by and brood. Few Monopoly games ever get completed, because the outcome seems clear and inevitable long before it becomes a reality.

Even the winner spends much of the game in a conflicted emotional state. Sure, you're winning, and you've got a lot of money and property that you can strategize with. But when your ruined competitors are also your friends sitting around the table with you, you start to get that robber-baron guilt. And pretty soon, you don't even feel like completing the game yourself.

At one point, when I was paying out the nose to land on a square where the eventual winner had built a hotel, it felt not entirely unfamiliar. I realized this was because I feel very much the same way about the prospect of paying Comcast nearly $60 per month for internet service. On Treasure Island, Comcast has a monopoly on high-speed internet. And that's a reality. By moving there, I effectively rolled the dice and landed on their square.

When I was little, Monopoly would give me fits. As much as I hated losing most games, I hated losing Monopoly the most, and I think it's because the innate cruelty of the system was so apparent. That a game can start out looking so very much like perfect competition and end so very inequitably really got my goat.

You have to sometimes wonder if the widening of the American gap is a signal that one giant Monopoly game is progressing towards its end.