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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#71

Post by foxfluff »

renewiltord wrote: post #45
HWR_14 wrote: post #14

How is this not a Ponzi scheme?

So a Ponzi scheme works like this: * You take money from investors * You then claim that you are making money from some legitimate business * You return money to earlier investors by just feeding them the money later investors put in So who are the early investors here, what's the legitimate business, and how are we taking money from later investors to give to early investors? EDIT: Guys, it's not a zero-sum game. Yo…

> So who are the early investors here

"Gameplay requires the purchase of three Axies, which currently cost in the hundreds of US dollars each."

> what's the legitimate business

"By blurring the line between “player” and “worker”, the game has effectively built a Ponzi scheme with built-in deniability. Sure, some users will be net gainers and other users will be net losers, but who am I to say the net losers aren’t in it for the joy of the game?"

So I guess the "legitimate business" is making the game interesting for people who.. enjoy it?

> and how are we taking money from later investors to give to early investors

I don't know how the in-game mechanics work but later investors also purchase Axies and somehow that money ends up in the hands of the former investors. Maybe not automatically, I guess it depends on what in-game actions you take, but given that you first have to invest before you can play...

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#72

Post by jimbob45 »

nightski wrote: post #23
jimbob45 wrote: post #9

My problem with these Play2Earn games is that it provides a dark motivation for kids to play them. Previously, you'd play something like Doom or Quake because you enjoyed it and you'd quit after an hour or two because it would rapidly become repetitive and boring. You knew deep down that you were wasting time on recreation and that you should probably do the things you should be doing (e.g. the dishes, reading a book…

I'd be careful telling people what they "should" and "shouldn't" be doing with their time based on your contrived opinions.

Reading books and maintaining personal cleanliness are controversial activities now? In what clown world should anyone ever be advised to play video games instead of doing those things?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#73

Post by newaccount74 »

renewiltord wrote: post #45
HWR_14 wrote: post #14

How is this not a Ponzi scheme?

So a Ponzi scheme works like this: * You take money from investors * You then claim that you are making money from some legitimate business * You return money to earlier investors by just feeding them the money later investors put in So who are the early investors here, what's the legitimate business, and how are we taking money from later investors to give to early investors? EDIT: Guys, it's not a zero-sum game. Yo…

The investors are the players hoping to make money from the game. The players have to buy Axies to play the game.

The "legitimate business" is playing the game to get more Axies that you can then sell.

The later investors then buy Axies that the early investors earned by playing the game.

As soon as exponential growth stops the system collapses.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#74

Post by nlitened »

advisedwang wrote: post #29
mherdeg wrote: post #18

Is this different from the phenomenon described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming ? Honestly it seems like a pretty great career -- you get to spend your time indoors, probably somewhere climate controlled with electricity and restrooms. This is way better than the workhouse. Whoever is buying these things as a collector is basically donating their wealth to others, like a kind of privatized welfare. If p…

Except that we end up spending a vast amount of human effort doing work that fundamentally doesn't need to be done. There's no actual economic output to paying people to break rocks.

Imagine there’s a multi-billion dollar industry where some people record sound waves made with their vocal cords, and other people pay _real money_ monthly to have a chance to replay those waves for entertainment only.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#75

Post by beambot »

duxup wrote: post #6

Sorry to get a bit off track: So is web3 just “ blockchain related things “ ? I feel like web3 as a term usage has exploded to the point that I’m not sure what people are talking about when they say “web3”.

Generally refers to decentralized technologies that somehow benefit from blockchain-like data structures. For example, you can compost these three technologies to build a decentralized webserver.

- Filecoin & AR Weave: decentralized file storage. Spend tokens to store files, earn tokens by storing others' files.

- ENS (Ethereum Name Service): DNS-like system for addresses.

- Smart Contracts of various sorts (e.g. Ethereum): Similar to perpetual AWS lambda functions. Spend tokens to publish & call functions; earn tokens by executing functions.

The blockchain aspect is merely a way to have verifiable incentives without explicit trust between actors.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#76

Post by netcan »

Osmose wrote: post #60
netcan wrote: post #42

As I was reading Graeber, it's useful to imagine useless job economies of the past. Is a medieval abbey "useless?" Clergy? Servants to the clergy? How about courtiers? Courtiers' dress makers? These classes represented a small part of most societies in the past, though not always that small. In any case, it's obvious that whatever needs these jobs serve are cultural. Don't underestimate culture. Money is a cultural c…

What's the cultural value provided by sitting on Axie and grinding for hours?

I'm not sure "value" is the correct question. Value depends on... values, I guess.

In any case, I suspect Graeber would have advised asking them. The grinders in manilla. The currency buyers, traders, etc. Cultural reasons are hard to extract from their cultural context without resorting to essentialism.

There are differences between a game where money comes from grinding, even if 3rd party and outsourced, and a pay-to-play currency. I suspect the people participating in that economy have a narrative, and that it makes some sort of internal sense. That's culture.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#77

Post by Retric »

beambot wrote: post #59
Retric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AC costs money, in most of the world they would do without and have extra heat from the PC. Also, limited range of motion plus extremely long workweek quickly results in RSI.

This feels like a "let them eat cake" reply when compared to agrarian labor...

How much money people make is a separate question, but playing games is likely worse for the body than most forms agrarian labor. Excluding accidents with heavy machinery.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#78

Post by smugglerFlynn »

beaconstudios wrote: post #20
seibelj wrote: post #2

I disagree entirely with the thesis of "bullshit jobs". Unless it's a government job or mandated by regulations, someone is paying for a task to be done voluntarily. Therefore it isn't bullshit to the payer, even if it might seem like bullshit to the worker. I have never stumbled on a single job that wasn't government-required labor that had no purpose whatsoever, and furthermore the laborer wasn't able to quit.

So if I paid you a salary to dig a hole and fill it up again, ad infinitum, that job would have inherent value just because I'm paying you to do it? If so, welcome aboard.

Just for the record, some of the examples Graeber uses include airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive, middle management, and corporate compliance officers.

You can call these jobs “bullshit” if you rely on an oversimplified version of the world where perfect airlines, perfect employees, and automatically enforced laws exist. Unfortunately, that’s also the exact view I often see in tech, where people tend to devalue work of others because its value does not seem to be self-explanatory in the first 60 seconds they spend on analysis of the situation.

In real life your lost baggage experience would suck without the person behind the airline desk, you org won’t be able to scale without middle management, and your business would suffer budget cuts due to legal fines because the only proper way to stay legally compliant today is (surprise!) to hire a compliance officer.

Good luck inventing some imaginary perfect-world systems where those issues do not exist and do not require extra staff you label as “bullshit”. Any kind of system which is designed and managed by people will have flaws and will require extra jobs handling these flaws. These jobs are not bullshit, they are valuable because they allow the system to exist and stay efficient.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#79

Post by ericjang »

nlh wrote: post #38

A thought exercise you should undertake if you're thinking about / talking about crypto/NFT/web3-related projects: If the financial instrument that underlies the project were to stop going up in value XX% per month, would you still be interested in the project? I do this a lot because I've made the conscious (and perhaps financially foolish) choice to stay away from everything crypto/blockchain related (for now, at l…

I agree with your point that the operative word here is "earn", and not "play".

To play the devil's advocate: many crypto developers continue to build in the space (or have done it in the past) despite large drawdowns in token prices (denominated in USD). Would that constitute a sufficient signal that "there is something real there", distinct from the question of "is the valuation too high"?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#80

Post by Aunche »

originalvichy wrote: post #13
seibelj wrote: post #2

I disagree entirely with the thesis of "bullshit jobs". Unless it's a government job or mandated by regulations, someone is paying for a task to be done voluntarily. Therefore it isn't bullshit to the payer, even if it might seem like bullshit to the worker. I have never stumbled on a single job that wasn't government-required labor that had no purpose whatsoever, and furthermore the laborer wasn't able to quit.

Read excerpts of his book or his essays on the topic. You might be suprised.

I've read his essays, but not his books. Graeber does what every popular nonfiction writer does. He starts with a provocative conclusion, and cherrypicks data to support it. Bullshit Jobs is particularly bad in this aspect.

https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullsh...

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