Victus Spiritus

Hmm, I'd guess that a lot of people probably think to themselves, “what the hell does WB do that he deserves 100k life wages, and the burger flipper only deserves one?”

But it's not really about 'deserve'. It's about reality. Did he violate anyone's rights? no? then he's morally ok. Now, did he do something amazingly wonderful to get that money? Well, maybe, but the important thing is that he did it without harming others. What he did resulted in success. It's not about how hard you work, it's about taking advantage of what is real.

You might really want your computer program to work, and you might have even worked very hard on it, but another programmer making a simple and easy program which works is the one who succeeds (at having a functional program). Reality doesn't conform to our wishes, and pointing guns (taxes, wealth distribution, etc) at people who succeed is the initiation of force, not an act of justice.

Anyways, as the first to comment, I was actually responding to my own initial thoughts on the matter, not anyone else's. I don't see what WB did that was so great, but it worked, and he didn't use force, and that's what matters.

Yeah, I was actually responding to my own initial thoughts on the matter.

I've thought about it a bit too. Like, how would Bill Gates play poker? It matters when the money matters to you. If he played for $100 pots, it would be as if he was playing for fake poker chips. It wouldn't be the same game for him.

Good breakdown. This is what annoys me with the entitlement mentality. I have one friend who is very argumentative about these topics. Except for a few with health limitations we all have an chance still to make it big. Some people get lucky and some bust their rear to get somewhere. I get concerned when people say that Warren shouldn't make that much and the burger flipper deserves much more.

Mark, first off, this article inspired me to do some thinking. I love articles that make me think about the way people perceive the world. Thanks.

Now, please allow me to indulge in some shameless self promotion. As i posted on your previous article here: http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/04/29/the-da… we can view all sectors of our life by thinking about them as independent, yet inter-related “games”.

Throughout this article, what you have really been doing is looking at how players with more or less “game pieces” react to the value of a single game piece. If you follow this train of thought, we can compare how people view game pieces in a virtual world such as “World of Warcraft” in relation to their real-life value.

Virtual game pieces in “World of Warcraft” , gold, are directly linked to real currency. They are an indicator of effort. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming) This has evolved to the point that sectors of the Chinese economy are based around virtual currencies. And so, to get a perspective on how the mega-earners like Buffet think of a single dollar, we can look at how players of “World of Warcraft” think of a single piece of gold.

If you like, you can even try the experiment on yourself. Play the game from level 1 to 80 and document your feelings about the relative value of a single gold coin.

If you do this, you will find that as your “earning power” or “wealth generation” ability increases, so too does your frame of reference.

For example, in the early levels, level 1-10, a single gold coin would be more then enough to completely take care of “living expenses” in the game for weeks (at that current level of usage). Thus, for the level 1-10 player, a gold coin seems to be a massive divisor of value that can be broken down and used piece by piece over a long period of time.

On the other hand, when we move to the level 80 range, we see that players no longer look at gold coins as individual units of measurement that can be broken down. Instead, players look at gold coins in groups of hundreds or even thousands before thinking about what they can be used for.

At the extreme limits, top players do not even consider gold to be valuable at all. At that stage of the game, social connections are much more valuable then even an infinite supply of gold.

This line of thinking can be directly applied to the real world. I would argue that our behavior in virtual worlds directly mirrors our behavior in the real world and the indicators of value… friends, guild status, items, gold… are different in name only.

If applied to the real world, we can see how the five year old boy treasures his five dollar bill, the twenty year old part time worker treasures his hundred dollar bill, and the big time earner treasures his million or ten million dollar “unit of social utility”.

Truly it is not the value of a dollar that changes, only our frame of mind in respect to that dollar based on our current position in the real-world money game.

After having gone through this line of reasoning, I believe that most of you will come to the conclusion that a man such as Warren Buffet does not see money in divisions of less then $100 000, or even $1 million. For such a man, it is possible that in his day to day life, money is not even considered.

To close, it is important to note that value means many things to many people. Speaking about myself, in many ways, I value love more then sums of money, depending on the situation. This is because the “playing field” of relationships (love) and the “playing field” of career (money) are inter-related, but not part of the same game. Our world is a intricate weave of many games being played at once where game pieces sometimes can flow directly (prostituion : love / sex for money) or not (love in world of warcraft usually does not equal love in the real world).

Thus when thinking about the value of a dollar, we must keep in mind the frame of reference someone is coming from, their personally held beliefs they have towards value, and what playing field we are dealing with.

Hehe, This is a long post, and a lot to respond to, but I wanted to say, an interesting thing happens a lot in World of Warcraft: the people at higher levels often have such an easier time at things (getting some items, gold, some materials) that they will be charitable to the lowbies. Often they give gold, but more often, in my experience as a giver and recipient of highbie charity, it's help with a dungeon, or farming some item, or getting through a tough quest.

There's something about the difficulty difference that makes it appealing. It could take the other guy hours of effort and he may not even succeed, but when the high level character helps, it takes a couple of minutes.

Of course, it's most enjoyable to help your friends, or potential friends. There are far too many strangers to help every random person that asks (and there are a lot of beggars in WoW). On my mage, I would sometimes help people get places (by using the teleport spell), but it got to be that I couldn't take the character to a busy town without having people ask every minute or so for a teleport, and if you turn them down, they actually get pissy about it.

Anyways, WoW gold is a really big pain to get. It's so expensive to get a character their epic flying mount that it's almost a barrier to bothering making an alt (alternative character). I can understand people buying WoW gold, because, as you pointed out, the dollar to them is worth much less of their time that they would have to spend grinding out the gold than the time of the gold farmer.

Btw, I've quit the game, but a nice way to get a few starting gold is to take gathering professions and sell your stuff on the auction house. Prices have inflated a lot on the AH, so you can make a lot of money there, relative to vendor sold item costs (cost of living stuff at low levels).

Probably one of disqus's developers or founders.

I chose a pic of Johnny Depp from fear and loathing in las vegas .

No particular reason.

This is my favorite line of your commentary Leland, and it's why I believe I'm fabulously rich already
“At the extreme limits, top players do not even consider gold to be valuable at all. At that stage of the game, social connections are much more valuable then even an infinite supply of gold.”

The model of multiple overlapping games is a powerful one. We can only influence so much of one game's results at a time with our personal energy. I'm doing my best to direct that effort towards a game that creates social and financial wealth, as I believe tools of high value can be connected to a prosperous business.

ps I played wow and had a couple of 80s so your analogy is perfect.

Thanks for that link David.

That movie has stuck in my head for years.

Beef jerky time!

Great anecodote. I think I lost 140k of retirement funds in 2008. I'm
still recovering.

Will pass along your idea. Aakin doesn't mind editing a wide range of
material although his specialty is in layouts and conversions.