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By taking things to their extreme you end up grouping things together that in practice behaves very differently, that's not really a practical approach. Disagre

By taking things to their extreme you end up grouping things together that in practice behaves very differently, that's not really a practical approach. Disagree with too many points to list but in general the asset list is more like "things that generate money" (shares/farms/rent), speculative assets. Then you added a more meta category that's not about assets.

kybernetikos 5y ago
I think maybe our disagreement is based on us talking about different categories. The category I'm looking at is not 'things that generate money', and I'm not taking things to an extreme here. I'm much more talking about things that have value only because people think they have value. That's mimetic value. These things are valuable because the meme of them being valuable has infected society. Like money, or art, or education (except in narrow practical fields) or entertainment or a notional (but rarely practical) ownership claim on a company, or intellectual property, None of those things would have any value at all if people didn't think of them as valuable, or treat them as valuable, or respect them. Notably, a farm does not fall into this category. It is a physical asset that produces other physical assets; that's utility value, not mimetic value. You can eat its output for food or burn it for energy. The more meta stuff is about how even physical and utility value assets are often partially acquired based on mimetic elements. So people pay more for a car that makes them feel like an international spy than they do for a car that gets them from A to B, so the meme of feeling like an international spy has increased the value of the simple physical asset.
- johanneskanybal 5y ago
  Well it was when you included shares into that category I got triggered I suppose. Although we're at an extreme point in time right now speculation wise the fundamentals still hold true that shares represent a way to partake in the revenue of a company (much like a farm which is why I included it). A company where dividends is an important part of the valuation will be valued differently if they stop paying dividends, that there's a delay is just a technical detail.

kybernetikos 5y ago

I think maybe our disagreement is based on us talking about different categories. The category I'm looking at is not 'things that generate money', and I'm not taking things to an extreme here. I'm much more talking about things that have value only because people think they have value. That's mimetic value. These things are valuable because the meme of them being valuable has infected society. Like money, or art, or education (except in narrow practical fields) or entertainment or a notional (but rarely practical) ownership claim on a company, or intellectual property, None of those things would have any value at all if people didn't think of them as valuable, or treat them as valuable, or respect them. Notably, a farm does not fall into this category. It is a physical asset that produces other physical assets; that's utility value, not mimetic value. You can eat its output for food or burn it for energy. The more meta stuff is about how even physical and utility value assets are often partially acquired based on mimetic elements. So people pay more for a car that makes them feel like an international spy than they do for a car that gets them from A to B, so the meme of feeling like an international spy has increased the value of the simple physical asset.

johanneskanybal 5y ago
Well it was when you included shares into that category I got triggered I suppose. Although we're at an extreme point in time right now speculation wise the fundamentals still hold true that shares represent a way to partake in the revenue of a company (much like a farm which is why I included it). A company where dividends is an important part of the valuation will be valued differently if they stop paying dividends, that there's a delay is just a technical detail.