tradable attention, untradable self
pvp, pve, winning capitalism, or designing better games?
capitalism, just like any good game, ships two game modes
PvP: how can you?
the game is making money & the fun is flexing. git good or you won’t have safety, status, sex.
trading. the crudest form of pvp. redistribution of existing value. gordon gekko, 1987: “money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred — from one perception to another.” he named the game. next one buys in. numbers go up.
making a business. creating value. youd think this is PvE, but capital is pvp. you need the next investor so your valuation goes up. the game is convincing people on some vanity metric — DAU, or “ARR” you & your YC bromates pay each other
PvP answers “how can you?” with tradable attention: price + n+1, a number that go up as more people join
PvE: who are you?
the other mode is you against entropy
selfmaxxing. communitymaxxing. meaningmaxxing. the room that knows your name
no opponent. no numbers. & none of it can be bought or sold — you show up & let the world and others record that you did
PvE answers “who are you?” the untradable self: the who that stays when no numbers exist
crypto and winning capitalism
crypto is interesting because it tries to compress meaning & money into one object. the coin is the membership. the self is the coin. one ticker answering both questions at once.
it’s the first financial instrument that tries to BE a self
but it’s more interesting to imagine some distant future where the belief finally separates from the bag: when we hear about “bitcoiners” who don’t hold bitcoin, worshiping satoshi as a he-who-never-sold god.
the law is in the essay about america: the self cannot be bought — you just had to be there. nobody minted pokémon people. veterans are veterans. your childhood memories can’t be sold
so a self tied to a number is, by definition, not a real self. we’ve established that all economies are born to die. when the number go down — all numbers die — the fake self dies with the chart. real selves don’t get margin called
post-capitalism and designing better games
the mistake isn’t pvp. number go up is a great game!
post-capitalism is looking a lot more Star Trek than Star Wars
more people will start enjoying the game once they adopt the abundance mindset: money, just like food, should be fun and enjoyed
i think the mistake is expecting money to be both the score & the player
because games are fun even when you lose, when the rules are explicit and agreed upon
so post-capitalism game design needs laid out rules:
tradable attention for pvp — infinite economies born to die, with ending printed on the ticket
the untradable self for pve — free, unbuyable, unaffected by numbers
memenomics (this publication) is the field of study to design such games