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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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581–590 of 700 posts

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#581

Post by imtringued »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #463
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…

If the SP500 stopped going up in value would you still be interested in the project?

I would expect it to pay dividends or do stockbuybacks until no more shares are publicly traded.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#582

Post by animal531 »

thombat wrote: post #230
cardosof wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is what happens with any open world MMO. There's no storyline to finish, there's no ending, and game devs have incentives to keep players playing forever (the more hours a player plays, the more likely he will spend more money). There's only two ways to keep players playing: new content and/or grinding mechanics. Grinding mechanics are way, way easier to create. You can even reuse sprites and just chan…

Now you've made me wonder: those hours I spent mesmerised by watching the colourful display of Windows 95 defragging the disc, would I have paid a monthly subscription for it? What if they'd added achievements, or leveling up? "Congratulations! Your wizard can now restructure directory chains!"

I once defragged a drive multiple times, which promptly killed it, so I'm not sure how turning it into a game would have turned out.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#583

Post by imtringued »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #263
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #260

The thing I really like about this article is that, at least in my mind, it really helped me clarify what I think of as "Bullshit Jobs". It's not so much "do you consider your job useless", but it's more along the lines of "Is your job set up to fulfill tasks that were, generally, arbitrarily designed by some gatekeeper?" A great example of this is tax departments at large companies that look for tax avoidance strate…

> On one hand, these strategies can save companies many millions of dollars, but on the other, they really produce nothing of value and are just a product of the complexities of a (human designed) tax system Businesses that spend less money on taxes can spend more money on expenses, such as payroll and higher quality materials and land, or it can allow them to sell products/services at a lower price, providing a comp…

The most boring tax system is a landvalue tax and nothing else.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#584

Post by imtringued »

chii wrote: post #423
shkkmo wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax avoidance just moves the tax burden around, it doesn't create value. Tax collection and tax compliance does create value, but spending time specifically figuring out how to pay as little taxes as possible creates no value. It see likely that some level of bullshit jobs are an unavoidable side-effects of value producing activities. The interesting part of the idea comes from thinking about how we can structure tho…

> Tax avoidance just moves the tax burden around, it doesn't create value. only if you believe that taxes paid is automatic value added to society. > pay as little taxes as possible creates no value it doesn't create value, it retains value for those who created it.

It is almost automatic value added to land values.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#585

Post by imtringued »

armchairhacker wrote: post #58

We should create a game like Axie infinity, but instead of making money from useless Axies you make it from writing code. And then since crypto is bad we just pay people with regular money instead. Also maybe have them sign a contract for working fixed hours and/or completing a project in X time. So you know, the project actually gets done.

Bountysource?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#586

Post by somewhereoutth »

mgraczyk wrote: post #432
somewhereoutth wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah but a change in the price of BTC does not in fact create any value - it just means that that $100 now corresponds to less BTC. You can profit from that fluctuation, by being on the right side of the cash exchange at two separate points in time. Somebody else will be on the wrong side of that exchange (well, in aggregate anyway - there will be many somebodies on either side) and will suffer a corresponding loss. Si…

The same (incorrect) reasoning applies to literally anything you don't physically use including USD, equities, gold, land, etc.

USD is useful because you can pay taxes with it, equities represent an income stream as dividends from a (presumably) successful business, gold can make jewellery etc, land can be rented out.

Even the supposed utility of BTC - as a money transfer mechanism - does not require the price to be anything other that not zero.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#587

Post by imtringued »

999900000999 wrote: post #37
advisedwang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

There is no such problem with negative interest rates :)

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#588

Post by somewhereoutth »

syspec wrote: post #455
somewhereoutth wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat is created by banks - by originating loans. A bank does not actually need to have that money to create the loan - it is not transferred from somewhere else, it is just that the bank's balance sheet expands. There are rules on how much a bank is allowed to create, as you might imagine. The BTC system does not create money - you can follow the creation of a coin system to its eventual destruction and discover that…

I completely agree with you, but I’m wondering if you could help me debate the counter argument: “The same is true of stocks, if people decide to stop putting money in, no money comes out” It comes up whenever I make a point similar to yours above, and I haven’t had a good answer for it

Stocks represent a share of a productive asset - the (presumably successful) underlying business. That business includes capital goods and other assets having intrinsic value themselves, and also the value created by organising them together. The profits can be distributed as dividends, or used to grow the asset (buy more machines or whatever).

Of course speculation muddies the waters, but you can see how important annual accounts etc are - to ensure the business really has the value it is being ascribed.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#589

Post by Exendroinient »

Jobs which don' create positive value to the world are not bullshit. Our western economy is mostly based on the meaningless consumption of stupid things. These products have to be marketed and pushed into clients by manufactered believe that they need to buy it. Other part of this are the zero-sum games. Trick people into buying it by introducting artifcial scarcity.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#590

Post by somewhereoutth »

imtringued wrote: post #576
mgraczyk wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same (incorrect) reasoning applies to literally anything you don't physically use including USD, equities, gold, land, etc.

If I have all the ice cream in the world and it spoils in a week because I cannot eat all of it then it is not that wrong to say that its utility to me is zero. By the way his argument is that any absolute value ascribed to a currency is arbitrary or rather that there is no correct number.

more that BTC is of course not a currency, because it is not backed by a state entity. I can't pay taxes with it.
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