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I feel compelled to repost a comment of mine from the simutrans thread: — So, this is totally pop-evolutionary-psychology, but I think the relevant predisposi

by jl6 5y ago

I feel compelled to repost a comment of mine from the simutrans thread: — So, this is totally pop-evolutionary-psychology, but I think the relevant predisposition is towards hoarding. For 100,000 generations, humans (and our ancestors before then) have had to gather and store food and other supplies to see them through the winter (or other hard times). We are wired to do this because we would have died out if we didn’t. Building games let you build up your hoard of stuff (whether trains, rails, buildings, tiberium silos, green circuits, …) in a tight feedback loop that repeatedly triggers the “this is my stuff, now I am safe” dopamine response. This also explains collecting hobbies, and goes some way towards explaining the desire for wealth acquisition in general.

imtringued 5y ago
In keynesian economics the desire to hoard is known as liquidity preference because you want things you hoard to be immediately accessible i.e. liquid and require compensation to cease keeping something immediately available. Most physical objects deteriorate over time which makes gold inspired money an exceptionally poor way to keep track of things because the things that deteriorate disappaer but the gold that represents the things that deteriorated did not. So people hold onto gold or money without limit as it does not capture the full cost of deterioration leading to an imminent crisis in an economy that is not growing because the ponzi scheme has been exposed.