First off, go read this essay and then come back. Don’t worry; I won’t go anywhere. And it’s not very long.
Finished? Excellent. What Professor Horwitz is decribing is, of course, the cause-and-effect chain that led to the financial crisis the government is trying to solve via the throwing of money it doesn’t have. If you read the essay, you know that. If you didn’t, then I’m very angry with you for disrespecting my authourity and I’ll never speak to you again ever. But I’m not here to complain about the bailout; I’ve already done that a few times. I’m here to complain about World of Warcraft.
If you’ve ever played World of Warcraft, and you’ve ever grouped with other players for any length of time, you’re no doubt aware of the absurd lengths they go to to set up peculiar loot distribution "systems." Generally what happens is that people will decide that other people probably can’t be trusted to take only what they want and in reasonable amounts, so a system needs to be created to prevent them from becoming overwhelmed with greed and taking all the loot to build into a pile and sit on like a big fat dragon. Invariably this results in a loot "metagame" developing, wherein people attempt to take advantage of the rules to maximise their own gain. Other people then start complaining that those people aren’t looting "properly" and that they’re just greedy, and these accusations are then used to justify having implemented the system in the first place, and are used as justification for making it more stringent.
Sound familiar? Yep, it’s the same exact situation; you can’t really claim that the regulation created the greed, but the regulation sure did create the opportunities for people to exploit it. In an unregulated loot market, people roll on and win what they want, and there’s a whole lot less drama, and nobody’s getting in bed with the people who make the loot rules and trying to convince them to change the rules to favour certain people over others.
Just like I’m a supporter of the free market, I’m a supporter of the free loot market. It really does work. It encourages people to show respect for one another because then other people will show respect for them; hey, pass on this item that you only kind of want, and then maybe somebody else will pass to you later on an item you want more. Just like the free market, it doesn’t create human greed, it just harnesses it for the good of everybody. It’s an intelligent, honest system that’s not too proud to admit that greed has always been there, will always be there, and, with all due respect to Friedrich Engels, cannot be bred out of people by overbearing government. It’s a system that recognises that greed and tries to mitigate it by encouraging an environment in which helping onesself is helpful for others, but at the very least, even when that fails, it ensures that people are playing on an even field. Nobody gets advantages over anybody else.
Nobody gets free loot at everybody else’s expense, nobody gets free money at everybody else’s expense. What’s the problem with that?
October 3rd, 2008
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit, Games |
one comment
Yesterday, we tested the theory that says that if you issue more walks than you get hits, you don’t win. It turns out the theory is sound.
Today we tested the theory that says that if you commit more errors than you score runs, you don’t win. It turns out this theory is sound as well.
So maybe let’s avoid testing the theory that if you lose the first three playoff games you’re eliminated.
October 3rd, 2008
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
one comment
In any game where the player makes decisions, sooner or later there’s going to be a great big important dichotomy thrown your way; generally this is in the form of "choose whose side you’re on." In playing through The Witcher, I’ve recently been through two of them in close succession, so I’ve spent a bit of time meditating on the design principles behind them (that’s +1 hour for those interested, just like buying talents or brewing potions).
I’ve concluded that the forced dichotomy is only a fun mechanic when it’s in a pressure situation. You need to be in a position where you don’t have time to consider, negotiate or explore alternatives; otherwise, you’ll just come out of it wondering "hey, why couldn’t I do it this other way?"
I’m not enjoying explaining this in the abstract, so I’m going to give specific examples of Witchery. This will involve heavy spoilers, so they’ll be after the jump. Don’t follow it if you don’t want to get spoiled.
Read the rest of this entry »
October 3rd, 2008
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
no comments
The senate is now attempting to ram the absurd bailout through the house. How do they figure they’d do that? By adding even more pork to it, of course, in an attempt to appeal to every representative’s pet special interest and pass the cost on to us.
Write or call your representative. Make sure these people are acutely aware that the American people — the people they serve, and the people who will be footing the bill for this excess — are solidly opposed to it. If you want, you can copy the text of my letter, which I’ll post here for public perusal.
Also keep in mind that in a month we can arrange for everybody who supports a trillion-dollar payday for Wall Street and an unreasonable expansion of government power to be out of a job.
Representative SUBJECT_NAME_HERE,
I am writing to you to ask you to vote no on the repackaged bailout deal being sent to the house yet again. I and my wife are blue-collar workers who can ill afford to have thousands of dollars taken from us and given to Wall Street fat cats who made bad investments.
This bailout is not necessary for the survival of the economy; the bubble has burst, and no forced injection of taxpayer money — no matter how large — will reinflate it at this point. That is nothing but throwing good money after bad. Throwing a tremendous amount of good money after bad, in fact; money that does not belong to Washington or to Wall Street, but to the American people.
At the time of this writing, an MSNBC poll indicates that 65% of the people oppose this bailout (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26981897/). A poll taken by cnn.com is 63% opposed — a nearly identical percentage (http://money.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/42233.html). The people clearly do not want their money spent in such a reckless fashion, and, as a representative of the people, you have an obligation to respect that.
Congressman, if I were to lose money on a bad investment, would Washington arrange to pay me back out of taxpayer money? No it would not. Wall Street should not be held to a different standard from everyman.
Please, Congressman, vote with and for your constituents and against special interests and government-sponsored paydays for the few. Instead of being given huge amounts of taxpayer money, these people should be held accountable for their inappropriate behaviour — ranging from prosecutions for fraud for those who cooked the books (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41165-2004Sep22.html) to censure of the Federal Reserve for seven years of “easy money” politics and continually lowering interest rates (culminating in interest rates actually going negative: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=599907).
Please stand up for the people against the interests of big business and big government.
Yours in Liberty,
Darien
October 2nd, 2008
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
2 comments
Sorry to dwell on this, but Reason has a great article up explaining in pretty simple terms what actually happened in the financial world to lead to this idiotic government posturing. Reason surely does have a strong libertarian capitalist bias — it does call itself the magazine of free minds and free markets, after all — but there’s virtually no way to portray the current crisis as being caused by anything but government bullshit, and there’s absolutely no way to portray it as being anything like as dire as the government wants us to believe. This is just another cynical power grab of exactly the sort we’ve been seeing since 2001.
You know exactly what I’m talking about.
October 1st, 2008
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
no comments
