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> In the past decade or so I’ve noticed more and more people referring to their discretionary consumer purchases as “investments”. “I decided to invest in a new

by saurik 5y ago

> In the past decade or so I’ve noticed more and more people referring to their discretionary consumer purchases as “investments”. “I decided to invest in a new couch.” “My newest investment is an xbox one.” “I thought it would be wise to invest in a new shower curtain.” This experience really really sucks in the world of "blockchain", because often the lines get blurred and people feel like they are very very literally investing (in money, not just time or attention or interest or whatever) in products they are using: to use the product at all you often own some amount of a utility token... whose value will go up if more people like you use the product (maybe even faster enough that you make money on your holding faster than you spend it on your utility usage, which is ridiculous)... and so the incentives on forums and reviews get skewed in ways that mere paid placements could only dream about. > If you’ve thought through a purchase and decided you want something then good for you. Go get it. But don’t lie to yourself by calling it an investment. And so it arguably isn't lying anymore, and everyone is now weirdly incentivized to lie about how much they like using the product or trade around misinformation about how much better the product is than competing products, as it no longer is about helping other people find the best product--or even getting everyone onboard with a network effect on a platform which you've invested your time in (which definitely happens: you do "invest" in sites like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, even as a pretty normal user)--but you actually kind of by definition of how it is set up often stand to make or lose money based on other peoples' perception :(.

nostrademons 5y ago
That incentive misalignment has been present for as long as people could purchase goods that have both utility today and resale or income-producing value tomorrow. It's why NIMBY policies and zoning exist ("Your home isn't just a place to live, it's an investment"), and it's why people drop hundreds of thousands on college and still often end up unemployable ("It's four years that are totally unique, and necessary for a good job" - except that you get that good job if you study an employable major, and actually study it, and you probably won't be partying a whole lot if you do that).
- saurik 5y ago
  Sure... but you are talking about a pretty narrow slice of purchases (by quantity if not price) in the grand scheme of things. What makes this so universal and so visceral with blockchain products is that you end up in a state where even your most trivial purchases are now tokenized with some pre-sale and some kind of "play/stake/use-to-earn" monetization model attached to an underlying "asset" that people "trade" on a "market".

by saurik 5y ago

nostrademons 5y ago

That incentive misalignment has been present for as long as people could purchase goods that have both utility today and resale or income-producing value tomorrow. It's why NIMBY policies and zoning exist ("Your home isn't just a place to live, it's an investment"), and it's why people drop hundreds of thousands on college and still often end up unemployable ("It's four years that are totally unique, and necessary for a good job" - except that you get that good job if you study an employable major, and actually study it, and you probably won't be partying a whole lot if you do that).

saurik 5y ago
Sure... but you are talking about a pretty narrow slice of purchases (by quantity if not price) in the grand scheme of things. What makes this so universal and so visceral with blockchain products is that you end up in a state where even your most trivial purchases are now tokenized with some pre-sale and some kind of "play/stake/use-to-earn" monetization model attached to an underlying "asset" that people "trade" on a "market".