What government bailouts can teach us about World of Warcraft
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?
