Conversation

I’ve realized the reason I’m not a socialist or communist is that they’re just as obsessed with money mattering more. They just want rich people to matter less. Hence ideas like MMT, progressive taxation, UBI, etc.
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I don’t mean ineffable priceless stuff or conviviality phlogiston. Just things like a fun cozyweb discord that makes good memes where money is somewhere between useless and negative value in partaking. Often, money-matters-less things are time-based things.
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This is one reason quiet quitting etc is do hilarious and fun. People literally mining a thing money can’t access: private time.
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Money has a legibilizing, flattening effect no matter the source. Whether it’s a rich guy buying a public space, a cartel of penny-ante fans patreonizing an artist, degens blowing up stimmy checks, or ubi or whatever. The problem is 90% money, 10% the source flavor.
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When people see the world through money, it’s honestly hard work to see them as human. Doesn’t matter if it’s a billionaire or a small-time influencer furiously shilling something and viewing the world through a conversion funnel. If your API is money you kinda self-dehumanize.
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It’s not all social. For eg one of my favorite beyond-money things to do is cook for myself. $2 worth of ingredients, ton of info about my own tastes that’s basically useless to the rest of the planet. An entire 1-person food economy. I could run it even if I was last human.
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I suspect this is the reason people find social media oppressive and extractive. They don’t know how to pay attention in ways that are hard to turn into money and useless to the algorithms. That’s what shitposting is. Being useless to the time-money transformer algorithms.
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I should write a thing “the art of being useless” I mean I’m already the guy stanning mediocrity, it’s not like my reputation has much further to plummet 🤣 Notable that it’s the “money” people (all flavors) who seem most offended by my mediocrity-stanning
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Being mediocre is actually a great way to definancialize anything. 80-20 principle. The first 80% of utility is 20% of the financial value, the last 20% is 80%.
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Another way is to way overdo the excellence. 6-sigma to 9-sigma is high value. 1-sigma and 12-sigma are both generally low value. But 1-sigma is way easier.
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I’d estimate about 80% of the output of my life in the last decade is too shitposty to meter or monetize. That’s how I stick it to the Man. And the Masses.
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Note: “Free” is a monetary idea. If you want various things to be free, you’re still trapped in a money frame. “The best things in life are free” is bullshit. They tend to be valued in post-money ways.
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To be clear, I’ve always been like this, even when I had no money. This is not about the marginal value of money going towards zero as you get more with age and savings. It’s about having a higher dimensional space of value with non-money vectors.
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