Post AX9Fi5eAg9VBrCETJ2 by Serenus@mas.to
(DIR) More posts by Serenus@mas.to
(DIR) Post #AX9D8JhAlnvn5tRzge by carnage4life@mas.to
2023-06-28T10:36:08Z
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The fact there’s a crypto industry is breakdown of capitalism. The core thesis of capitalism is you produce things of value and get paid for it. So it’s net beneficial for society by incentivizing people to invent iPhones or Google search.Crypto provides nothing of value just get rich quick schemes
(DIR) Post #AX9D8KQY36E9McgEPg by carnage4life@mas.to
2023-06-28T10:40:34Z
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The bug in capitalism is the implicit assumption that people’s willingness to pay for something indicates it is of positive value.People are willing to invest in a Ponzi scheme because of the opportunity to get rich. That doesn’t mean Ponzi schemes have value to society.
(DIR) Post #AX9D8L4beAGnMrQDqq by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-06-28T10:41:37Z
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@carnage4life If society is made up of people who perceive value in spending money to take a chance at getting rich, then Ponzi schemes, crypto rugpulls, lottery tickets and MLM organizations all have value to society.Just not the *right* value, depending on who's looking at it.
(DIR) Post #AX9ELwX1mwwDGHlbN2 by Serenus@mas.to
2023-06-28T10:55:17Z
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@wogan @carnage4life I don’t think it’s unreasonable to reject the relativist view here, at least to a certain extent. Value is subjective, but it’s hard to argue that the energy usage that’s gone into crypto (and the pollution related to that) isn’t a net negative for something that doesn’t meet any needs.People do want money to be comfortable and do the things they want, but if gambling is the only hope they’ve got, that’s a testament to society’s failure, not to the value of gambling.
(DIR) Post #AX9EbFjwee9LBA6ol6 by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-06-28T10:58:03Z
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@Serenus @carnage4life Society *is* the people that are causing it to fail, though. Everyone in the world (I'm sure) has a set of values, morals and ethics that conflict with the behavior they observe around them, and it adds up to "society is dooooomed". Goes as far back as the infamous Cicero quote.I don't think we're a species capable of the synchronization required to align on what "good" values are (it's literally not in our genes to do that).
(DIR) Post #AX9EjvmiDY27tXXclU by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-06-28T10:59:39Z
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@Serenus @carnage4life We would have to:* Select arbitrary values not grounded in the natural world (eg: green energy good, alive animals good, plastic trash in ocean bad)* Agree, and enforce those values throughout all of society (since these are planet-level impacting values and we share the same planet)The only practical resolution is to become an interplanetary species where every group of homogeneous-expressed values can uniquely fuck up their world in their way.
(DIR) Post #AX9Fi5eAg9VBrCETJ2 by Serenus@mas.to
2023-06-28T11:10:30Z
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@wogan I don’t think it takes selection of values not grounded in nature. All people want to live, barring unusual exceptions. People want to be able to satisfy their needs and wants. That’s all natural and fundamental, I’d argue. Crypto’s a threat to the former, insofar as it exacerbates climate change. It’s a poor vehicle for the latter, given that you’re as likely to lose everything as you are to gain from it.
(DIR) Post #AX9FwYbhnnVljIyfUu by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-06-28T11:13:08Z
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@Serenus "All people want to live" => Voluntary euthanasia policies, including non-terminal cases"Satisfy their needs and wants" => Demonstrable short-term self-sabotaging behavior is commonNeither of those are axiomatically true, so you can't derive a truly fundamental/natural value from either statement. Humans are not the same as physical constants, where you can definitively say "mass attracts mass" and then it's just a question of *how* that works.
(DIR) Post #AX9G9BsnbNQh13zsLg by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-06-28T11:15:25Z
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@Serenus Universal values are a non-starter, unfortunately - thousands of years of history have proven this, even as recently as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Dubai buggered off and wrote their own Universal Declaration that suited their culture. So we couldn't even agree on that, as a species 😂
(DIR) Post #AX9GqqdpwCufsYoeLw by Serenus@mas.to
2023-06-28T11:23:17Z
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@wogan I did note “barring unusual exceptions” for the first. And, arguably, many of those non-terminal cases are because they can’t meet their needs/wants (e.g. MAID discussion in Canada).Self sabotaging behaviour isn’t contradictory to fulfilling needs and wants in many cases. It’s often something that satisfies some short term need, at the cost of a person’s long term interests. We can agree that it’s generally not optimal, but it’s still satisfaction of needs/wants.
(DIR) Post #AX9Ogjrx3sx3c26nFg by markstahl@universeodon.com
2023-06-28T12:51:05Z
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@wogan@carnage4life I feel like you are confusing the creation of value with the transfer of the symbolic embodiment of value (i.e. money). People want money because of what it enables. But just moving money from one person to another isn't necessarily an economically valuable action.If I mug you, I've transferred value to myself. Therefore, based on your logic, I conclude mugging is a useful economic activity because I've increased the amount of money in my pocket.
(DIR) Post #AX9VTi8iscWwAAgiyu by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-06-28T14:07:11Z
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@markstahl @carnage4life Crime is *absolutely* a useful economic activity. It's just not useful to the victims 😂
(DIR) Post #AXBi1dYpzv5dZelalc by markstahl@universeodon.com
2023-06-29T15:37:10Z
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@wogan @carnage4life Exactly. To which I give you cryptocurrency speculation! 😉
(DIR) Post #AXBn85fysWfGHR0Kq8 by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-06-29T16:34:23Z
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@markstahl @carnage4life I am genuinely surprised that people still fall for rugpulls. The most recent one was literally this past Tuesday: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=chibi-finance-rug-pulls-for-1-million