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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#121

Post by xg15 »

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…

By what definition would you consider a medieval abbey useless? I can't follow you.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#122

Post by jakemal »

mminer237 wrote: post #117
jakemal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds more like a Ponzi scheme in a Gold farming disguise to me. I would agree with this if the primary income stream came directly from the increase in value of Axies as the game attracted more users. From my understanding, the income comes from acquiring and selling in-game currency rather than from the Axies themselves. Is this a bullshit job? Maybe. Ponzi scheme? I don't think so. If people are working this…

The in-game currency's purpose is to breed new Axies though. If there wasn't increasing demand for Axies, SLP would be worthless.

Is that the only use of the currency or just one possible use?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#123

Post by sam_lowry_ »

renewiltord wrote: post #50
seibelj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example of a bullshit job?

The wikipedia article has examples from David Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Here is the original publication of the essay: https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/

I have anecdotal evidence that it took financial circles by storm. One very well known CEO in the financial industry even wrote a book inspired by David Graeber a few years later.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

smugglerFlynn wrote: post #78
beaconstudios wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wher…

> 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.

You can also do so if, say, you are an anarchist who views capitalism as a system of exploitation and employment in wage labor as a modern form of slavery, which rather invalidates the idea of, rather than assuming the existence of, perfect airlines, perfect employees, or perfectly enforced (corporate) law.

I mention this because...well, you might want to read more of Graeber’s work (or even just more of Bullshit Jobs) to understand why.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#125

Post by cochne »

renewiltord wrote: post #50
seibelj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example of a bullshit job?

The wikipedia article has examples from David Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

I'm not totally convinced after looking at that. "duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;"

Is duct taping code never optimal?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#126

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

_jab wrote: post #90
HWR_14 wrote: post #14

How is this not a Ponzi scheme?

The claim seems to be that the game will attract people who don't view the game as an income stream, but rather just as a game. They pay the entry fee, and then may also buy assets from other players, thus funding the play-to-earners. I think there's a slim chance this could be a viable business plan, but probably not in any socially-good way. The mobile games industry reaps a good chunk of its profits from "whales",…

I love it.

No one plays the game because it's fun now. But in the future, the game will be fun, and people will pay to play it.

Right now, it's just crypto where you can spend your time AND money to get a return instead of just your money.

Got it.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#127

Post by originalvichy »

seibelj wrote: post #21
originalvichy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I read his writing, and I also read his Debt book and found it unimpressive and unconvincing.

If you read his book from cover to cover and found nothing that you would count even close to a bullshit job then alright I guess. You probably wouldn’t get hired to optimize resource usage and cut down redundancies in a private enterprise anytime soon.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#128

Post by kmeisthax »

beckingz wrote: post #7

Certain jobs sufficiently far from the obvious value creation have a tendency to look useless. In many cases they are useless and could be bundled into other jobs, but when a job is over loaded there is efficiency to unbundling them. Factor in the communications synchronization overhead and it's no wonder that small organizations can perform incredible work. Large organizations have scale though.

One of the interesting things about Graeber's typology is that it includes things that you wouldn't consider to be bullshit jobs. There's an entire category of his typology dedicated to jobs that destroy productive output; like if a business were to hire lawyers to sue the pants off of competing businesses. They get a competitive advantage by increasing everyone else's compliance and legal costs.

I believe this particular categorization could apply to game development in the context of NFT or microtransaction driven gameplay. The economies that these games provide are specifically engineered to increase user spend by targeting "whales". Someone being paid to play a game for someone else is providing a valuable service; but the game doesn't just exist naturally. It's designed. Building a game so that you need to pay to skip the grind is a bullshit job. And if that's a bullshit job, then the people selling their Axies and other game resources have transitively bullshit jobs, even if their own job is not inherently bullshit.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#129

Post by beaconstudios »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #116
beaconstudios wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Graeber is an anarchist, his criticism of bullshit jobs is about sustaining the centralisation of power, not techbro idealism. There is no reason outside of power dynamics why airline desk staff need to exist to comfort disgruntled passengers, because the existence of disgruntled passengers who need to be shooed off is a consequence of the airline industry.

Don't assume vested interest, like techbros do. Graeber was an anthropologist, and the book builds on his work more than on his views.

I don't doubt that, but being an anarchist doesn't mean you can't criticise authority from an objective position. If anything, critiquing authority and power might lead you to both write this book, and take an anarchist position.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#130

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

gitfan86 wrote: post #105
duskwuff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a there there without an underlying token that's gone up XX% in the last N months and everyone hopes will still go up XX% in the next N months? Alternatively, even simpler: where is the money coming from ? A bunch of people playing a game are a closed system, and no value is created by playing the game. If the only reason why players are earning money from this game is because more people are continually b…

This is what people don't seem to understand about BitCoin. It is cashflow negative, Money has to keep coming in to keep the price up due to paying miners. It is totally fine if you think BTC is better than the USD or Gold for whatever reason. But Bitcoin is still cashflow negative. You have to keep pumping money into it to keep up its value. Where is that money going to come from? Is it coming from Tether? Is it com…

I must admit I don't understand why it is "cashflow negative". I'm not invested in any crypto, but I have thought about it, and my casual thoughts have come to the opposite conclusion. The higher the price of a cryptocurrency, the greater the interest in mining and investing. It seems like a positive feedback loop to me. Why is it not?
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