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This reads oddly to me. In particular, I don't see what makes any of this narrative different to anything else you can make or sell. Indeed, most folks that a
by taeric 4y ago
This reads oddly to me. In particular, I don't see what makes any of this narrative different to anything else you can make or sell. Indeed, most folks that are making money are doing it by selling their labor or thought work. That is, any discussion of "intrinsic value" is doomed to be axiomatic. Things have value largely because we agree for them to have value. And indeed, a ton of "wealth" is built up on the value others place on things you own. In the "real world" it gets crazy in the modern finance world, as much of your cash spend will be based on borrowed money. For business, it is common for much of your current inventory to be heavily on financed currency. (Well, I thought it was, having to check that claim.)
This isn't necessarily a praise/defense of crypto currencies. At large, I confess I don't understand what value they have if it isn't reflected outside the chain they are counted in. I just don't understand this take on trying to find intrinsic value of it. There is none. Same as the paper in my wallet.
I do find the artificial scarcity of in game items amusing. The scarcity is, essentially, required for many of the plot points in so many novels. When it starts happening, though, we rightly recoil at the absurdity of it.
- tlb 4y agoI think the problem is the scale of the money. No one is worried when people pay $10 for some intangible thing like in-game bling. But NFTs sell for amounts of money people associate with cars or houses, and it gives them icky feelings when other people can throw around money like that.
- taeric 4y agoWell, again, I was not trying to make a defense of crypto. I'm more just not at all clear on what Stephenson was arguing. Trying to come up with intrinsic value reasons on things is doomed to failure. Somewhat obviously so.
- hgsgm 4y agoThat's exactly his point. He believes putting value on status signals is toxic. He doesn't want people buying fake valor. It's the "I fucking love science" of the art world, and he detests it.
- taeric 4y agoThanks! I'll try reading this again with that framing. I definitely missed that. I'm not entirely clear that changes my overall confusion. Other people are free to value things differently than I do. I'd be more worried about efforts to prevent that. (With some obvious caveats.)
- senthil_rajasek 4y ago>Same as the paper in my wallet. Except paper money is understood and used by all today to make transactions and thus useful.
- taeric 4y agoI don't feel that is changing my point at all? It is the value others put in that paper that makes it worth trading.
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoThe value of paper money is in it's utility as a transaction aid. It has currency.
- taeric 4y agoRight, I'm not really trying to get into an economics debate about currency. It is a far more nuanced topic than I care to discuss and is heavily "by definition" depending on when/where you are. (In particular, the easy "stupid" hypotheticals usually just boil down to strength of the one arguing.) My point here was largely that I don't get where Stephenson was trying to argue. Even some of the points made in the slides are somewhat silly. If Jack's family could have sold their home to get enough money to build a new one and have food, they would have done so. But, of course, that wasn't the story. So trying to nitpick odd choices there are post-hoc justifications. Are we just wanting to beat up on the silliness of scarcity in video game items? I mean, I'm all for that. It is silly. It is also silly that people are willing to pay money for the items. But that happens with or without market wide scarcity. (Just see the items in Candy Crush and its ilk.)
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoMy counter argument was only to your comparison to paper money.
- 4y ago
- ricardobeat 4y agoNone of that is disputed in the article or the talk, you seem to have missed the point: it's not that the intrinsic value of things "isn't real", but that people were expecting things to have value (in crypto) without a connection to labor, personal experience or needs. Think generative artworks.
- taeric 4y agoRight, my point is that it seems Stephenson seemed to have originally felt that there was intrinsic value to something. And then starts asking why you and friends would care about the trinkets you can sell, when that is irrelevant. Typically, by definition, you sell things that someone will give you more currency for than you currently value it.
- hgsgm 4y agoHe says that buying stuff in games (which he considers achievements as the ovly valid stuff, disparaging cosmetic items) is gauche. People pay for a lot of bad things, and Stephenson opposes that. He thinks crypto is fine for buying things of value.
- taeric 4y agoBut that is just it, what are "things of value?" If I have a waterlogged copy of a book, it is worth less, even though the argument would be that the value of the book is the story in it. (I don't even have to get into books that have had their covers removed by sellers and then were not recycled properly. Clear evidence that the book has no intrinsic value.)