The True Face Of Wealth

[Muratus del Mur]

this was supposed to be an article for the Council, as part of the info i sometime share with them. These are things relevant for ruling MD not playing it. Why i share this ? because it does no harm and shows you certain things that might be needed to known publicly (about the level of things i consider when i talk about authority and decisions in md)


Price
price is an illusion in itlsef. Value does not exist. There is a minimum of "USABILITY" but that comes free. Its only rarity that puts a price on usability and "need". THis is no novelty for most of you. Value only exists in comparison to something, never alone.

There is an illusion that some things are valuable on their own, but its an illusion. What happens actually is that these things compare their value to other things than the common ones but they still compare in order to obtain a value.


When ruling and deciding in a closed system such as MD, one must consider the values. What makes drachs valuable? their attack? no that one is just a usability part. It is their rarity. To prove that the usability of drachs is not relevant i will give you next example.

The usability of drachs can be obtained by converting a useless but rare item into its value and then buying the drachs for their usability. Basically , where the value originates, is not usability but RARITY.


"Mastering the "void" so to say, to make an analogy to the book, means not to master the wealth of md, but what is missing.
This concept applies to a lot more things in MD and in RL very much alike.

Christmas in MD represents an intentionate ripple. The things gifted during this event get balanced by other things that i consider more valuable to me. For example, it is useless that everyone in md gets a drach right now, if after 6 month only very few will be around. That is the way i balance certain , otherwise hard to balance, events. No i win't give drachs for chrismas, i just gave an example.

Lack of weath or of a certain value is what puts things in motion, not the value itself. I go buy cola, make money to get it, move my ass from computer to the shop, all because i don't have it not because i have it.
When a rarity limit its reached, some things cant get more "value" added to them. For example, state can make money out of plain paper, but if it makes it out of degradable buscuits, it wont work. The same way, morphs might be the rarest thing around (or not) but because they are basically unobtainable by normal ways, their value suddenly drops because people no longer see them as a target.

Its this sort of things to consider with pumping something with value (like closing the cave) or reaching certain lower limits of interest while keeping rarity (unachievable creatures).
THe beauty is that these things apply even when they reach out of our view/understanding range. For example, one can make something scarce for increasing its value (diamon mining corporations destroy diamonds to increase their value) , but ... things can go further. Something can reach zero and maintain its value. It happens with extinct things, where rarity went to zero limit. It happens when a person dies and suddenly his ignored work becomes "valuable".

There is also a hidden use of this. This is the way to create attractors. It seems our mind is sensitive to more information that we are conscious about. Making a piece of info hard to get is one thing, it will defenetly attract, but consciously. Making a piece of info unobtainable, under the right conditions, will act as an invisible attractor.

Spelldocs (now on hold) have just 5 (was it 6?) public levels. Yet it is for their 7-9 levels, the secret levels, that a certain category of people get unexplicably "attracted" into md. A lot of you know the strange feeling i am talking about. This can reach extreme limits, i could for example dictate the preferences of people by taking certain things beyond the unachievable limit. For example, you have not way of realising this now, but if i move mprphs entirely beyond the achievable limit, make them gone from md, it will create a unconscious need for color and every single things talking about color or having a little bit of color in it will become suddenly more appealing to you. This is like homeopathy just not with chemicals but with ideas, unseen ideas, and NO these are not subliminal messages, is something different...i dare to say unexplored before.


The build materials of an arhitect are not bricks and mortar, they are lines on a paper that make those brinks and mortar to be a certain way.

I hope you found this article usefull,
and my "excuses" to the council for making such things public, but for them i reserve better 8 fold balance, one day, but it wont be me telling it, it will be them grasping it.

[Roland]

So I might get excommunicated for this, but I find most of everything coming out of your mouths a bunch of bullshit. Life is what it it is. You look to deep for meanings right in front of you. I appreciate the fact that everyone wants to look beyond, but well see: Look to your own heart, it speaks the truth and is sometimes the most broken mirror of all. Stop bitching and start apprecitating what lays before you. I mean seriously???


OFF WITH HER HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Chewett]

[quote name='Roland' timestamp='1291172581' post='73897']
So I might get excommunicated for this, but I find most of everything coming out of your mouths a bunch of bullshit. Life is what it it is. You look to deep for meanings right in front of you. I appreciate the fact that everyone wants to look beyond, but well see: Look to your own heart, it speaks the truth and is sometimes the most broken mirror of all. Stop bitching and start apprecitating what lays before you. I mean seriously??? OFF WITH HER HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[/quote]

Actually most of this stuff is intresting, And i can see how it indeed does apply. Look at angiens before they were released, you dont pay 5 gold for one now do you?

If things like this is intresting, i recommend you look at a book titled "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely. Its along this same thread and i found it exceedingly interesting.

[Curiose]

Not to sound off topic or what not, or to start a forum war but:

Roland. I can't help but decide whether you have either: A. Lost it. B. Completely snapped for whatever reason because you've been suppressing this pent of anger or C. Complete shitfaced, i.e. drunk.

Either way, I find your post to be completely disrespectful and even more so out of character. I find no meaning whatsoever as to why you would even say what you said. Even so, what you said was unnecessary.

[Muratus del Mur]

The only reason i don't wipe md lands with your corpse in an epic show of force , is that i don't want to create the false impression that i am not open to criticism. I embrace negative comments as a challange to prove my point better or to learn something from them. Many have disagreed to me or even fighted with me, however they had the required decency, and I don't tolerate someone to be rude just because he is against me.

The world needs such people like you, otherwise if we were all philosophers we would starve while admiring the process from a theoretical point of view. Imagine everybody realising money is an empty joke, or that the 4000$ ring they worked for could be very well 4$. Maybe recession will open or permanently close some minds. Someone needs to be the slave in this ecosystem, to sustain us the thinkers. So, Roland, you are indeed a very useful specimen. Don't mind "the bulshit that comes out of my mouth" , we neeeed you as you are.

P.s. i keep thinking about that joke i wanted to do, a message saying "congratulations you won md, you can go now".

[Roland]

Mur,

My apologies. I DID not post that. I am actually shaking I'm so mad. My 15 year old nephew not only took it upon himself to post that bologna, but also sent out an extremely vulgur email to my co-workers, and my boss (who is a fundamental Christian). I just spent the last 20 minutes getting my ass handed to me by him (thought he was going to fire me for a minute, as it is my company computer). I am truly sorry, and hope the post can be removed. Now I am going to call his mother, and the shit will really hit the fan.

[Prince Marvolo]

[quote name='Muratus del Mur' timestamp='1291165439' post='73888']

The build materials of an arhitect are not bricks and mortar, they are lines on a paper that make those brinks and mortar to be a certain way.

[/quote]


As a student architecture I have to disagree with that line...

An architect can have this magnificent idea on paper, making the "bricks and mortar" to be extrordinary good looking, etc
Yet if it can't be built, or collapses there is no use of it.
OR, it can look amazing on paper, but aweful in real.
Some things do need to look good in real, fysically, and not on paper, or in the mind.

[Muratus del Mur]

appology accepted

@Marvolo
For that kind of arhitecture yes, but for architects that build small worlds, beauty is mandatory and it has to be on paper as well as in practice. MD would not be of any good without its art and just its thoughts and plans...nor would be of any good if it had beautifull shape but crap concepts behind.

[Malaikat Maut]

I agree with the subjective and relative nature of value. I'll never forget a lesson my father taught me when I was young. I had started collecting things like comic books and cards, and, when I thought I had something rare, I would look up its "value" in a price catalog. My dad told me, "things are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them". It seems like a simple concept but when you consider the imaginary "value" of money and how things like inflation truly work then it seems few people actually grasp it.

Money isn't the only thing though, as I believe Mur hints at. There are many things that I call socially necessary illusions. Mere concepts that if the public or majority were to deny the whole of society may crumble or cease to exist the way it does now. Freedom is another such construct...

I would, however, disagree with the thought that nothing has intrinsic value. In other words, I feel that not all things are valued in relation to something external to themselves. Though it's a discussion for another thread, I believe that human life possesses intrinsic value.

At the very least it seems that humanity would stand in contradiction to Mur's thoughts on value not being linked to utility. We certainly don't value ourselves or our kind because we are rare, but rather because we are unique and "special". Our "usability" our cognition make us more valuable than other mammals.

[Muratus del Mur]

careful with the words i said nothing has actual value, not that nothing has importance
by value i mean monetary value
a lot of things have importance, by their nature (like life) or by their usability (a glass of water in the desert, or a tool, have importance beyond monetary value)

but i stick to my initial affirmation, nothing has its own monetary value. a diamond could be priceless in a place, for free in an other. Importance or usability however, carries its "worth" with it regardless of assigned monetary value

[Rasiel]

This got me thinking about quite a lot of things, like how we attach one thing to others and this lead me to a question but isn't a lot of things in life simple illusions that we or someone else creates?

I hope this isn't off topic if it is i apologize.

Edited December 1, 2010 by Rasiel

[Jubaris]

good work exposing my master scheme, Mur.

What will I do now when people realize my 10 golds and 138 silvers ain't worth a thing!


I have a question tho, since I thought about money as an illusion long before, how would the most "true" system (so, not capitalism! ) work, one not based on illusions (where people don't receive false values)? Should people get back to the basic trading of a practical item-for-an-item? Should people work for the good of the whole community like in Communism, but where's the individual personal free time there?

Or maybe we should all just stick to our own lives, hunt/make crops for ourselves, not looking to get those from others...

[Malaikat Maut]

[quote name='Rhaegar Targaryen' timestamp='1291234980' post='74029']
I have a question tho, since I thought about money as an illusion long before, how would the most "true" system (so, not capitalism! )
[/quote]
Capitalism and communism would both work in that regard, only communism becomes infeasible on a large scale. You have to recall that the "invisible hand" of supply and demand which governs capitalistic systems was not originally (or exclusively) meant to apply to an exchange of currency or wealth. It works with the exchange of labor or exported/imported goods - any two things that are deemed of equal value can be exchanged.

It wasn't until the concepts of centralized banking and "soft currency" became popular that the illusion of money was created. It had nothing to do with capitalism - quite the opposite actually. Of course, if you think about it in the context of this thread, even hard currencies - those backed by a gold standard - still assume a stable value for gold.

In any case, the concepts of capitalism and communism in their truest sense would both satisfy to dispel the illusion.

[Muratus del Mur]

Rhaeger... my answer is
"Slavery gets shit done"

but that lacks freedom
if you add freedom it will be a form of politics i dont recognize to be used. It happens with small groups where people actually work together and achieve a lot more than if they traded their eyes out for a little more aparent profit.

Either its done by force and that is called slavery or its done by own will if a purpose provided. I achieved that once in md, still do at some levels (council for example) but what is notable is my mistake back then. I put a price on their head, valued them in monetary terms by offering something as a reward. This was fundamentally wrong. Either is it no monetary illusion either is capitalism, pretending its mixed is a big lie i myself ommit to see at that time.

I dont see the world to move to that form of government, ...idk..maybe just after a world cataclism, but otherwise we are too well used to value our life in money and buy our way to freedom...instead of simply getting it..freedom should be free, yet it is now the most expensive thing man put a price on.
Think again why things are expensive...rarity...what means that related to what i just said above? we are slaves.


the part that intrigues me and makes me admire its beauty is when you combine slavery with freedom.. its called millitary. The slaves are bound to be slave yet they do it for a couse they want to do ot for. I am not talking about modern army, but about a more basic form of fighting organization, where army concept originates.. the wolf pack


excuse my english at 6 am, its either poetic or its crap .. only regular is it not

[Totenkopf]

[quote name='Rhaegar Targaryen' timestamp='1291234980' post='74029']
good work exposing my master scheme, Mur.

What will I do now when people realize my 10 golds and 138 silvers ain't worth a thing!


I have a question tho, since I thought about money as an illusion long before, how would the most "true" system (so, not capitalism! ) work, one not based on illusions (where people don't receive false values)? Should people get back to the basic trading of a practical item-for-an-item? Should people work for the good of the whole community like in Communism, but where's the individual personal free time there?

Or maybe we should all just stick to our own lives, hunt/make crops for ourselves, not looking to get those from others...
[/quote]

Money's not an illusion, property's an illusion! it's also theft, freedom and impossible!

one may argue that today's "fiat" currency may be an illusion, but hey, if not gold, it's still being backed by governments and you can easily turn it to gold (or your token physical item of choice) and "take your business elsewhere" if you feel paranoid about The Man pawning his Big Brother Monitor TM for booze-money

regarding your question, I don't have THE ANSWER, but I'd suggest looking up laissez-faire capitalism / anarcho-capitalism and judging for yourself whether taking the red pill or the blue one makes that much of a difference, or, in the immortal words of "Bob" (Dobbs, not the tree ), "pull the wool over your own eyes!"

PS - there are fewer ideological rants funnier than hearing "hardcore" anarchists bitch about being associated with capitalism or even communism ("that state-imposed capitalism" i believe they call it )