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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#361

Post by 8note »

nradov wrote: post #157
999900000999 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's an economic drain if you fire all the rock breakers, and they end up on the streets. With automation coming for most jobs, we can either live in a low to no work Utopia or a hypercapitalist hell. Given recent trends, my money is on hypercapitalist hell.

People keep claiming that automation is coming for most jobs, and yet we still don't have reliable, affordable robots that can do basic tasks like cooking a decent hamburger or stocking store shelves or snaking a plugged toilet. This belief in major automation advances is more like a religion than something grounded in hard science. Sure automation will gradually increase over time but it's going to be a long, slow g…

A huge amount of automation goes into cooking a decent hamburger, stocking store shelves, and snaking a toilet, mind you.

I'm not sure id consider those basic, either. A toddler couldn't do any of them

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#362

Post by presentation »

Dowwie wrote: post #206

The next wave of exploitation in this web3 space will involve lending practices. Kids will pledge their digital assets as collateral to buy other goods on margin. Their assets will lose value in the market and the kids will receive margin calls to restore balances or forfeit everything in the game, including reputation.

I just looked up a youtube video about Axie and it seems this is already happening lol

https://youtu.be/xKgV4V0aq7M?t=328

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#363

Post by PeterisP »

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…

The original article seems to assert that there are essentially no non-grinder buyers (which would be a key distinction from the gold farming) that in this case the existing grinders are selling the items to the new-potential grinders who are paying an initial investment with the hope of recovering it by grinding - if that's the case, then it is essentially a classic pyramid scheme where you as a newcomer pay so that future newcomers would pay you more afterwards; which works until the stream of new incoming money dries up.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#364

Post by gitfan86 »

wyager wrote: post #359
gitfan86 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All assets ( BTC, Stocks, Gold ) are priced on supply and demand. If demand goes down for BTC the price will go down. It doesn't matter if the fed prints money or not BTC needs a constant infusion of new investment to keep the price up. Unlike a company with positive cash flow who could buyback shares and never get any new investors and still keep the price up.

> If demand goes down for BTC the price will go down. Indeed. What may be missing from your model is that demand for BTC comes not just from people buying it, but from people holding it. > BTC needs a constant infusion of new investment to keep the price up. No it doesn't. Why do you say this? Where the market clears has essentially nothing to do with "new investment".

Stop and think about what you are saying. If everyone in the world stopped buying TVs and instead held onto their current TVs the demand for TVs would go to zero. What would the market price of TVs be when there is zero demand?

How do you think BTC miners pay for the graphics cards and electricity? NVIDIA doesn't take BTC as a form of payment. So money is constantly leaving the BTC network to pay for electricity and graphics cards. The only way that happens is if money is also coming into the BTC network

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#365

Post by AussieWog93 »

devteambravo wrote: post #333
mattnewton wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After that work is done though, the value of the content being transcribed is increased. They are solving the problem that the actual dialog spoken by the actors and audio cues aren't captured in a non-audio format yet. Axie is creating problems when designing the gameplay and allows people to sell solutions to it; they could easily just provide the "value" at the push of a button.

Yeah, that's the basis of my issue with it all. Value created by people who do not benefit from it whatsoever.

>Value created by people who do not benefit from it whatsoever.

That's basically all work?

Bakers get paid to make bread for other people's consumption.

Mechanics get paid to fix other people's cars.

Transcribers get paid to make media accessible for other people.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#366

Post by [deleted] »

balaji1 wrote: post #319

Who else immediately ordered the book on Amazon? Lol Bullshit Jobs: A Theory https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141983477 The first review is lit. Quoting: """ Manifesto for the Professional Class Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2018 This review was written at the desk of a salaried office job, where I am paid $65,000/yr to do virtually nothing important, so I mostly sit in my chair and listen to podcasts and audiob…

[deleted]

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#367

Post by azemetre »

tduberne wrote: post #207

I did not read the book, but my understanding of "bullshit job" is a job that is useless to the entity paying for it: you could remove that person completely, and everything would continue to work. This seems very different from what is at play here: the game studio very carefully designed the game to attract those grinders, and this is how the studio makes money. The article clearly sees this as well, by labeling th…

The point is that bullshit jobs don't contribute anything to society (at least my take after reading the book).

If the game studio never existed not much in society would change, let's go even further and say all game developers never existed. Society wouldn't change. Now lets get rid of all the elementary school teachers. Would society drastically changed?

One of the core points in the book is that the "more prestigious" and "higher pay" a job is, the likelihood of it being bullshit is high. While important jobs like janitor, barber, or a retail worker are very important and pay terribly.

I'm a programmer that develops CRM software. If my company cease to existed the world wouldn't even shrug.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#368

Post by PeterisP »

devteambravo wrote: post #333
mattnewton wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After that work is done though, the value of the content being transcribed is increased. They are solving the problem that the actual dialog spoken by the actors and audio cues aren't captured in a non-audio format yet. Axie is creating problems when designing the gameplay and allows people to sell solutions to it; they could easily just provide the "value" at the push of a button.

Yeah, that's the basis of my issue with it all. Value created by people who do not benefit from it whatsoever.

That's the exact opposite of the term "bullshit jobs" which is about the situations where people are getting paid (sometimes even quite much) for doing something that does not create any value, where the work done is bullshit.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#369

Post by shazzdeeds »

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…

This is addressed in the original white paper. In a world where BTC is valued at 1M USD/coin you’d also expect a decent amount of day to day usage. Miners could still make decent profits based on transaction fees just from confirming blocks even once the Coinbase rewards stop. I’m not saying that’s currently the case, but that is the design. Also if miners are making a profit off let’s say $40k/coin and the price goes down to 30, yet there’s still a profit for some miners, how exactly does that become unsustainable?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#370

Post by rStar »

balaji1 wrote: post #319

Who else immediately ordered the book on Amazon? Lol Bullshit Jobs: A Theory https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141983477 The first review is lit. Quoting: """ Manifesto for the Professional Class Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2018 This review was written at the desk of a salaried office job, where I am paid $65,000/yr to do virtually nothing important, so I mostly sit in my chair and listen to podcasts and audiob…

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