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Well, yes,you have rediscovered a core theme of criticism against the capitalist, consumerist mode of production anarchists and other leftists tend to raise, to

Well, yes,you have rediscovered a core theme of criticism against the capitalist, consumerist mode of production anarchists and other leftists tend to raise, together with commodification. There is a coherent view that most AAA video games are skinner boxes aimed at extracting cash and Indie Games being closer to the "original" idea of them, and there are real discussions to be had about grinding on that context as a worthwhile escapism vs. a symptom of a bigger problem vs. a tool to build emotional investment that will keep you subscribing. Don't get me wrong, I'm the old man yelling at the crypto cloud as well, but in this case I'm the old man yelling at business foundations of questionable morality. Providing healthy food, fodder for emotional and personal comfort and growth or shelter has very different business models and foundations from providing fast food/sweets, skinner Box Dopamine drips or artificially hyped status Symbols.

zenplant 5y ago
I agree with you entirely. Our society is very unhealthy in it's current form. But the fact is unless we want the economy to go into complete shambles (which we very well may need to happen to survive what's coming) we can't stop doing what we're doing. The difference I see with something like Axie, if done properly, is that instead of the big daddy corporation taking all the money from on high, there's potential for the consumer to partake in the success of the game. As an example I play a bunch of league of legends currently. During the pandemic it's been a godsend for spending time with my friends. We've all bought multiple skins during this time which has amounted to probably a couple of hundred dollars between all of us. You can also earn random skins, but because typically people don't play most champions these random skins often just sit there wasted. What if instead those random skins could be sold or traded to other players? Take it one step further, what if there were unique skins that only 1 player could have at a time? I could see something like that selling for thousands of dollars. It creates a load of economic activity at the cost of absolutely nothing. We're all already using the systems in droves, crypto/nfts are just a way to have some form of actual ownership. It's a brilliant concept, and the moral argument against it really is also moral argument against everything already in place in most of the biggest industries around.
- igorkraw 5y ago
  It feels like you are agreeing with me only to go back to defending the thing you call sick? My whole point is that we might not be able to change the system, but we can at least refuse to accept it. Other points touching on ideas you raise: 1. If I understand correctly, has a 20% premine system of AXS that represents ownership of the platform. Even if it didn't have a premine, this is the same as having a public corporation owning the platform. If Axie was a co-op where every player had 1 vote and would share equally in the profits, it'd be a bit differen, but otherwise, you can just buy tencent share if you want t participate in the success of the game 2. You are describing any game with tradeable assets, e.g. Pokemon. Right now, millionaires are making more money with pokemon unboxing (or maybe that fad died already), and similarly whoever has the best starting position will cash in on Axie...as long as enough people FOMO in 3. Which goes back to the dual fundamental sicknesses of capital tendency to concentrate and corrupt if left unchecked and profiting off of these easily exploited human desires without providing value in return. If you enjoy playing a game, you will pay for a game. That's fine. But we call artificial sparsity, spaced random rewards etc. dark patterns for a reason. Acting like the business model of e.g. brother's a tale of two sons and Axie are the same is disingenuous (and DotA existed without needing a company running the skinner Box...)
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
> Well, yes,you have rediscovered a core theme of criticism against the capitalist, consumerist mode of production anarchists and other leftists tend to raise, together with commodification. I think this is a much more fruitful (if ultimately tautological due to its very definition) form of argument; you're a modern socialist and modern socialist mores drive your criticism. That brings up two questions for me: 1. What's the point of bothering with commenting or thinking about cryptocurrency at all? Cryptocurrency is all about a belief in some market, which socialists reject. It would be like a market libertarian criticizing the Soviet Union on the basis of not having a market; ultimately fruitless. 2. Do you voice similar opinions on all capitalist issues in which marketing and commodification are present? It would seem from a perspective of utility that cryptocurrency is probably one of the least harmful examples of this phenomenon. Do we disagree on our utility metric? Does utility not factor into your ethical judgement (e.g. are you a virtue ethicist)?
- igorkraw 5y ago
  First of all, it's simplistic to say socialists reject markets see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism >Early models of market socialism trace their roots to the work of Adam Smith and the theories of classical economics, which consisted of proposals for co-operative enterprises operating in a free-market economy. Second, just because you reject something still means you are allowed to present arguments against it. Otherwise only those who hold crypto would be allowed to think or criticize it. You aren't giving arguments against the critiques presented right now, you are just going "ah, you are a socialist, that's why". If you disagree with the critique I'd love to hear your reasoning, but what does labelling and rejecting add? Third, yes, I do in fact. Marketing, exploitation and hostile business practices are my main problems with the current system, I don't have a moral problem with property, capital etc. If we can configure a capitalist system to be non-exploitative I'm down. One way (not realisable, semi-joking) could be to impose a hard cap on individual wealth (say 100 million, or a multiple of the median to make it timeless) with the excess poured into a UBI (land would need its own treatment but I'm just being funny right now). This would even out power dynamics, avoid dynasties and allow market forces to take hold. We can add a form of new-game-plus for those that need extra motivation, if you build up more wealth and hit 500mil, 1bn , etc you get a progressively more impressive Roman-style triumph as recognition - you still don't get to keep it though. Fourth, you are making a nonsequitur going to utility now without taking the time to define terms. I don't think of myself as a virtue ethicist nor a utilitarian, but I do think there are some things people want that a utilitarian would still say has negative utility. Is selling crack, fixing up people to opiods or drawing them into cults providing positive utility for you? How about adding extra sugar, salt, MSG and fat to food to make it more palatable with cheaper ingredients, and possibly more unhealthy and addictive? Is it positive utility to use marketing to create a perceived problem and then selling the solution?

zenplant 5y ago

I agree with you entirely. Our society is very unhealthy in it's current form. But the fact is unless we want the economy to go into complete shambles (which we very well may need to happen to survive what's coming) we can't stop doing what we're doing. The difference I see with something like Axie, if done properly, is that instead of the big daddy corporation taking all the money from on high, there's potential for the consumer to partake in the success of the game. As an example I play a bunch of league of legends currently. During the pandemic it's been a godsend for spending time with my friends. We've all bought multiple skins during this time which has amounted to probably a couple of hundred dollars between all of us. You can also earn random skins, but because typically people don't play most champions these random skins often just sit there wasted. What if instead those random skins could be sold or traded to other players? Take it one step further, what if there were unique skins that only 1 player could have at a time? I could see something like that selling for thousands of dollars. It creates a load of economic activity at the cost of absolutely nothing. We're all already using the systems in droves, crypto/nfts are just a way to have some form of actual ownership. It's a brilliant concept, and the moral argument against it really is also moral argument against everything already in place in most of the biggest industries around.

igorkraw 5y ago
It feels like you are agreeing with me only to go back to defending the thing you call sick? My whole point is that we might not be able to change the system, but we can at least refuse to accept it. Other points touching on ideas you raise: 1. If I understand correctly, has a 20% premine system of AXS that represents ownership of the platform. Even if it didn't have a premine, this is the same as having a public corporation owning the platform. If Axie was a co-op where every player had 1 vote and would share equally in the profits, it'd be a bit differen, but otherwise, you can just buy tencent share if you want t participate in the success of the game 2. You are describing any game with tradeable assets, e.g. Pokemon. Right now, millionaires are making more money with pokemon unboxing (or maybe that fad died already), and similarly whoever has the best starting position will cash in on Axie...as long as enough people FOMO in 3. Which goes back to the dual fundamental sicknesses of capital tendency to concentrate and corrupt if left unchecked and profiting off of these easily exploited human desires without providing value in return. If you enjoy playing a game, you will pay for a game. That's fine. But we call artificial sparsity, spaced random rewards etc. dark patterns for a reason. Acting like the business model of e.g. brother's a tale of two sons and Axie are the same is disingenuous (and DotA existed without needing a company running the skinner Box...)

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

> Well, yes,you have rediscovered a core theme of criticism against the capitalist, consumerist mode of production anarchists and other leftists tend to raise, together with commodification. I think this is a much more fruitful (if ultimately tautological due to its very definition) form of argument; you're a modern socialist and modern socialist mores drive your criticism. That brings up two questions for me: 1. What's the point of bothering with commenting or thinking about cryptocurrency at all? Cryptocurrency is all about a belief in some market, which socialists reject. It would be like a market libertarian criticizing the Soviet Union on the basis of not having a market; ultimately fruitless. 2. Do you voice similar opinions on all capitalist issues in which marketing and commodification are present? It would seem from a perspective of utility that cryptocurrency is probably one of the least harmful examples of this phenomenon. Do we disagree on our utility metric? Does utility not factor into your ethical judgement (e.g. are you a virtue ethicist)?

igorkraw 5y ago
First of all, it's simplistic to say socialists reject markets see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism >Early models of market socialism trace their roots to the work of Adam Smith and the theories of classical economics, which consisted of proposals for co-operative enterprises operating in a free-market economy. Second, just because you reject something still means you are allowed to present arguments against it. Otherwise only those who hold crypto would be allowed to think or criticize it. You aren't giving arguments against the critiques presented right now, you are just going "ah, you are a socialist, that's why". If you disagree with the critique I'd love to hear your reasoning, but what does labelling and rejecting add? Third, yes, I do in fact. Marketing, exploitation and hostile business practices are my main problems with the current system, I don't have a moral problem with property, capital etc. If we can configure a capitalist system to be non-exploitative I'm down. One way (not realisable, semi-joking) could be to impose a hard cap on individual wealth (say 100 million, or a multiple of the median to make it timeless) with the excess poured into a UBI (land would need its own treatment but I'm just being funny right now). This would even out power dynamics, avoid dynasties and allow market forces to take hold. We can add a form of new-game-plus for those that need extra motivation, if you build up more wealth and hit 500mil, 1bn , etc you get a progressively more impressive Roman-style triumph as recognition - you still don't get to keep it though. Fourth, you are making a nonsequitur going to utility now without taking the time to define terms. I don't think of myself as a virtue ethicist nor a utilitarian, but I do think there are some things people want that a utilitarian would still say has negative utility. Is selling crack, fixing up people to opiods or drawing them into cults providing positive utility for you? How about adding extra sugar, salt, MSG and fat to food to make it more palatable with cheaper ingredients, and possibly more unhealthy and addictive? Is it positive utility to use marketing to create a perceived problem and then selling the solution?