The End of My Childhood • Hacker News Board

Re: The End of My Childhood

#81

Post by dartos » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 2:38 PM UTC

fbrusch wrote: post #76

dartos wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that’s my point exactly. You need an offramp. The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your crypto. They would be the “greater fool” in this case. Even if you earn crypto, that crypto came from a “lesser fool.” You’re just the intermediary.

ether, Ethereum's native token, is required to pay for computation on a computer with peculiar properties (publicly visible, unmodifiable, unstoppable code, uncensorable interaction). If somebody finds that useful, he will need ethers, and you will be able to sell them yours. How would he be a (greater) fool?

This is true in the case of chains that have vms built in, (Not bitcoin, Monero, meme shitcoins) but being “gas” for vms isn’t “inherent” to crypto.

On a kind unrelated note, are there any compelling dapps on eth that aren’t financial tools?

When I was playing around with web3 and dapps in 2020 it seemed like the only dapps around were banking protocols and gambling.

Re: The End of My Childhood

#82

Post by underlipton » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 2:54 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #12

underlipton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that quote is correct. Let me restate it in a way that may appeal more to pessimists: Money is a form of mind control. You use money to get people, groups, institutions, to do what they normally wouldn't. Economics is the study of manipulating that power. Cryptocurrencies would then be, or was supposed to be, about radically resetting economic priorities, in part by washing away the old incentives (by cutting the…

> Economics is the study of manipulating that power. Hello! Your friendly neighborhood economist here. Economics is the study of resource allocation under scarcity. In your comment, I think you actually mean Game Theory and Mechanism Design, which are about assessing strategic behavior (Game Theory) and about creating mechanisms that align with strategic behavior to result in preferred outcomes (Mechanism Design, sor…

If I'm wrong on this subject (and I would be interested in knowing how "resource allocation under scarcity" and "manipulation of the behavior of the people obtaining and using resources" are mutually exclusive), I might say that it's a product of the layman's (my) relationship to "economics" and "economists". The contact the most people have with economists is usually, "Talking heads or disembodied voices telling listeners how they should feel about developments in various markets that are connected to whether or not they'll be able to find their lifestyle affordable." The emphasis is decidedly on application, which I imagine runs into game theory and mechanism design, to the point where a reasonable observer might consider the latter two components of (applied?) economics. ...Which raises the question: DOES anyone subscribe to this model? What would an expert make of it?

>you might find your thoughts more appropriately align to sociology and social psychology than economics

Since economics is an emergent property of agents interacting with other agents and their environment, I'm failing to see how I'm misaligned with any of the three. I've heard economics described as "sociology with a veneer of statistics", which is something I can't say I'm unconvinced by. I respect your status as a relative expert, and also as someone close enough to the subject to have a conflict of interest in characterizing it fairly.

Re: The End of My Childhood

#83

Post by tough » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:36 AM UTC

dartos wrote: post #81

fbrusch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ether, Ethereum's native token, is required to pay for computation on a computer with peculiar properties (publicly visible, unmodifiable, unstoppable code, uncensorable interaction). If somebody finds that useful, he will need ethers, and you will be able to sell them yours. How would he be a (greater) fool?

This is true in the case of chains that have vms built in, (Not bitcoin, Monero, meme shitcoins) but being “gas” for vms isn’t “inherent” to crypto. On a kind unrelated note, are there any compelling dapps on eth that aren’t financial tools? When I was playing around with web3 and dapps in 2020 it seemed like the only dapps around were banking protocols and gambling.

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