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435 sats \ 11 replies \ @elvismercury 21 Sep 2023 \ on: The Origins of Value 4 Value as Far as I Can Tell bitcoin
I'm glad that people are seemingly open to the spirit of giving to reflect appreciation for stuff that the normal pricing mechanism doesn't do a great job of valuing, but I really don't get the magic. Our public television station (and I assume every other one in existence) would periodically go on giant campaigns, making the same V4V argument: you get a lot of value from our programming, donate what you think it's worth.
I don't understand why bitcoiners and adjacent are viewing this as some giant conceptual breakthrough. I guess it's now financially feasible to throw a few sats into a musician's open guitar case? Which is nice. But it's just another aspect of money, the same logic we've been talking about since 2008.
Interesting to see it laid out this way, though.
I feel a similar ambivalence toward the donation aspect of value for value. It’s part of why I have a hard time bounding SN to that context.
In part, SN has this donation dimension, but it feels like there are other dimensions that I’m yet to articulate.
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It's a really interesting problem and runs pretty deep, imo. People have these different kinds of machinery in their heads about this stuff. The example I like is that if a friend asks you to help her move, and you do, and then she tries to pay you cash afterward, you will probably feel insulted: you did the labor as part of your "friendship contract" and you were probably even kind of glad to do it; and the "obligation" your friend assumes is to buy you beer and pizza, and to return the favor -- or some comparable favor -- some other day. This is very deep, neurologically, in how social primates work.
But for a whole other class of interaction, and transaction, we have this glorious thing called money, which is just amazing that it can even work as a concept, and it encodes how much we value things, so you give me a pizza and I give you money, and it's amazing. But it taps into a very different vibe.
And so how do those things interact in a community? And esp one like SN? My sense is that even though there's money at the heart of it, it's this real human sociality that is the key, and how can "real" money help that to flourish, and how can they interact?
There's like 5 PhD theses in this project you're building. Maybe more. Makes me think that that's an area of opportunity, to tap into that expertise / labor. Hmmm.
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if a friend asks you to help her move, and you do, and then she tries to pay you cash afterward
She is me lol. I'm aware of the problems with this enough that I'll usually disguise it as a dinner or drinks or something, ie I know people actually do these things to accumulate social capital (even if they aren't conscious of it) ... my reciprocation drive is so high though I need to literally spend it down.
There's like 5 PhD theses in this project you're building. Maybe more. Makes me think that that's an area of opportunity, to tap into that expertise / labor. Hmmm.
If you have any ideas about how I'd begin to do that, I'd be very interested.
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my reciprocation drive is so high though I need to literally spend it down.
Ha! Well, to give you a tiny bit of psychotherapy, as long as the favor is freely given, doing a favor for someone you care about really is a gift to both parties. The relationship is enhanced by it. Both of you become closer as a result. That's a hard thing to internalize, I know (I'm kind of like you in my aversion to being socially indebted) but it really is true. That truth, plus the traditional potlatch of pizza + beer, is enough.
If you have any ideas about how I'd begin to do that, I'd be very interested.
I am about to hire an economist who's a very creative thinker. I'll discuss with him, I'm sure he'll have a bunch of ways to make this concrete. Will get back to you!
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One difference I came up with after stewing a bit is that SN feels more like information trading than information broadcasting ... it's more personal and the payment aspect has the potential to enhance rapport.
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I like that metaphor: it's the difference between being at a lecture (on the good end) or a wedding and there's some dude sitting across from you droning on and on (on the bad end); and being in an actual conversation. There's value in getting broadcast at, but it's a very different kind of value.
Thought experiment of two alternate-reality SN variants:
- a SN that is a really kick-ass place to go to download info about events, like a really good information depot.
- a SN as a place where really good / rich / interesting conversations happen about those events.
It seems like if you were hell-bent on one of these cases, you'd do different things. I don't know what the differences would be, but the two realities seem distinct enough to warrant different approaches, though I couldn't back up that intuition right now.
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There's also the bystander effect acting in the case of a broadcast. "I don't need to pay because someone else will." ... This effect may grow as SN does and it just isn't that significant yet.
It seems like if you were hell-bent on one of these cases, you'd do different things.
Off the top of my recently caffeinated head ...
download info about events
I think this looks more like a video game.
interesting conversations happen about those events
And this looks more like an online community.
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My guess as to why bitcoiners see v4v as a breakthrough (your words not mine) is that it is a different model from the ad model. Many products for bitcoin audiences are not going to get ad funding. More importantly many bitcoiners have views that aren't "brand safe". Value 4 value is also a feedback mechanism to know if you have hit on something that resonates. You can't really get that with the ad model.
There's also this deep seated anti-capitalism thing in people. I've noticed in myself and others around me. There is a deep anti-capitalist message in our books, movies, TV, and general culture in the west. The villain is almost always a capitalist. Now, as bitcoiners we know the difference between free markets and the corporatism system called capitalism in the west but the cultural dogma is that money is evil and businessmen are greedy. When is the last time you saw a popular movie where the capitalist was the hero. There are some examples but not many.
I say that for this reason. We have a deep unease about asking for money. It varies between people but many folks I know have a very unhealthy view of money. They don't see it as a tool for exchanging value. They don't see it as tool for expressing gratitude. They don't see capitalism as a system of voluntary free trade. So v4v is a breakthrough for many and my guess is that our culture is one reason for that.
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Value 4 value is also a feedback mechanism to know if you have hit on something that resonates. You can't really get that with the ad model.
Well, you can, just on a quite different timescale, and with different capex requirements, usually. But fair point.
There's also this deep seated anti-capitalism thing in people. I've noticed in myself and others around me. There is a deep anti-capitalist message in our books, movies, TV, and general culture in the west.
I think that's a good point, there is a general cultural stink to it, and there always has been, which is interesting to consider. (E.g., so many stories from the bible. Stories from classical history.)
Working hypothesis: some of this vibe comes from the fact that, psychologically, there are at least two kinds of value, as @k00b and I are discussing elsewhere in these comments, and these two values have some relationship to each other, but are not identical. And people really hate when one is mistaken for the other, but at scale, the only one that has ever worked is the market-transaction model. So people feel opposition to that, since their lives are dominated by it in a certain way.
Tyler Cowen has written an interesting book on the virtues of the corporation, to try to redeem it from villainy. Can't recall the name off the top of my head. Mises goes on and on about this too, though of course he would.
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There is a commonality between the public television model and v4v except that public television actually does have ad sponsors. The other aspect that I only briefly hit on is the feedback / non-financial contribution aspect of v4v. It is missed by many people. With No Agenda producers contribute art, music, content, and insight to the hosts of the show. It indeed is not a new idea but an old idea made new by the approach and technology.
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Sometimes an old idea + new tech becomes, in essence, a new idea. Not trying to diminish that. In practice, this could be one such, though I haven't seen it manifest here yet in a substantive way.
Wrt public television advertising: do they still? I remember, as a kid, there would be those in-show reads sometimes (e.g., the Lawrence Welk show would have LW actually talk about some product in the middle of it, which now seems so surreal to reflect on) but I remember that falling away. Although I guess there were sponsorships ("This show is brought to you by xxx") which are ads after a fashion.
No free lunch, either way.
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