[tslug]

Your money is a microscopic magnetic domain of bits on a hard drive on a computer in a bank somewhere. If you acquire twice as much, you didn't even get a new bit, because you prolly already had at least 32 allocated, if not more, just one of them flipped its spin orientation to represent a "1". It's pretty stupid.

Money is an addiction, like a high score for the world's oldest, most fucked up MMO called "capitalism". This MMO has been patched so heavily that it's totally unmaintainable, incomprehensible spaghetti code. The gameplay is wretchedly paced, totally unbalanced, and unfair due to the ridiculously silly positive feedback loops strewn everywhere. It rewards people lavishly for bullshit work that doesn't really benefit our species much less the species we're busy exterminating through neglect. It really needs a total rewrite from the ground up, but that's called "revolution", and it's generally bloody and awful and no fun.

So the fix is to stop playing the game. Ween yourself off money. You don't need much of it to get by. The lower you get your burn rate, you'll find the happier you get. Bills put a lot of subconscious burden on you.

And do something deeply satisfying. Cloud computing infrastructure isn't that for you anymore. Move onto something that resonates deeply. Get into the import/export business and take what you've learned to an entirely new field. Which field to pick? Try something you dreamed of doing as a kid. You were more honest with yourself as a kid.

[Rygu]

Thanks for the eye-opening analogy!

[throwawaydotcpp]

"Try something you dreamed of doing as a kid. You were more honest with yourself as a kid."

Don't think I agree with the socio economic commentary a whole lot - after all, the capitalism MMO is what brought me my childhood dreams - but the above statement is deeply true. It guided me for part of my career. But I lost my way.

[tslug]

It's not just commentary. I'm a game developer (http://davetaylor.name). I assure you, capitalism + our national laws + the international treaties our nations have agreed to is a game. It's the Old Game.

Catch is, the rules (laws) of the Old Game are such a complex mess that we have to hire expensive lawyers at hundreds of dollars an hour just to interpret slivers of the rules that apply to our particular situations. It's not fair to those still at level 1 (in poverty) still learning to play the game and who can't afford to pay people just to know the rules. Even at level 100 (extreme wealth), no one likes that they have to hire armies of attourneys just to protect themselves from being the targets of lawsuits.

This is poor game design. We learned years ago that players don't read manuals. That's why games don't come with them anymore. We learned they can't even stand tutorials. What they want is intuitive gameplay and gentle pacing, so that their minds aren't blown with the whole wad at once, and so that they can get a sense of steady progression and accomplishment. That's definitely not what the Old Game has to offer today. Perhaps it once did, but not anymore.

Today, the Old Game essentially tells us: "Congratulations. You've graduated high school. Maybe. Now, the rules moving forward are... incomprehensible. Don't suppose you have a few law degrees? Oh no, that's right. High school. OK. Better get a job, or you'll be homeless and will starve. Cool? Oh, unless you're rich, in which case, don't worry about it. You have no obligations." You haven't played any games like that because they wouldn't be compelling.

Worse, the Old Game has evolved to a point where it now tries to place a monetary value on all things. Its precept is that all your problems can be solved with money. Need new laws? Spend money on lobbyists. Need new politicians? Spend money on their campaigns. Need a date? Spend money on a dating service. Need excitement? Spend money on travel. Need new cloud infrastructure? Spend money on coders.

What modern game has a single currency that satisfies all your desires? It's hard to think of one, isn't it? That's not by accident. I assure you, we tried it. It doesn't work. We discovered empirically that money just isn't that satisfying. You need things that can't be bought, like random loot drops, level ups, status, new goals, friends, exploration, surprises, emergent behaviours, challenges, defeats, victories, romance, and more. We've even learned the importance of breaks. Too much is too much.

The Old Game is losing its competitiveness. It would have flopped long ago if it were not for the fact that playing it is mandatory. You need it to clothe yourself, eat, shelter yourself, and receive medical treatment to not die.

But read that list of items more carefully. We have 3D printers marching steadily towards finer-grained resolutions with more materials and can now build just about whatever we need, even tools, homes, and clothes. We have the ability to automate the gathering of our own energy, the ability to grow our own food (you can eat healthier with a fish tank and some algae than you can visiting most supermarkets now), the ability to diagnose and even treat ourselves.

The costs of living are plummeting. We are approaching autonomy. These things subvert capitalism, because they subvert your need to change the spin of more magnetic domains on your bank's hard drive.

You are in an incredibly enviable position. You have an enormous amount of potential excess income, probably a decent savings, and certainly a valuable skill set (for now- you know you can already feel the competitive heat from younger, cheaper minds than yours). You can continue to play the Old Game while scaling back your dependency on it so that you can transition to a new game of your own choosing.

I get that it's frightening, but I assure you, it's mostly your addiction to money that makes it frightening. The Old Game certainly hasn't kept up with the times, but it does know how to addict its players, and it keeps us playing by frightening us with scary potential consequences if we stop playing it.

I don't want to trivialize the risk, but to put it in context, the outcome is the same for all of us. Game over is death. You don't lose or win. There's no high score or prize. All we can do is decide what games we want to play getting there.

I don't recommend playing the Old Game anymore than you absolutely have to. It's just not well designed.

[michaelochurch]

Money is an addiction, like a high score for the world's oldest, most fucked up MMO called "capitalism". This MMO has been patched so heavily that it's totally unmaintainable, incomprehensible spaghetti code. The gameplay is wretchedly paced, totally unbalanced, and unfair due to the ridiculously silly positive feedback loops strewn everywhere. It rewards people lavishly for bullshit work that doesn't really benefit our species much less the species we're busy exterminating through neglect. It really needs a total rewrite from the ground up, but that's called "revolution", and it's generally bloody and awful and no fun.

You win the Internet for Saturday, August 16, 2014. That is all.