Which brought to mind one of the (few) high points of Harvard Lampoon's send-up of Tolkein, Bored of the Rings. Quoting purely from (1995-vintage) memory, the menu of the "Feast of Orlon" was satirized thusly:
Like all mythical creatures who live in the forest with no visible means of support, the elves dined frugally on nuts, berries, bark and dirt.Needless to write, I condemned myself to English Major Hades--because we Liberal Arts types are just too literate for a monosyllabic "Hell," don'cha'know?--by snorting with laughter. Uproariously.
But that was 1995. When we looked back at gold-hoarding and rolled our eyes. When the idea of an exchange rate between, say, D&D GP ("gold pieces" to the uninitiated) and greenbacks would have been laughable. When the real-estate bubble that had middle class Americans snapping up ticky-tacky twin-dos to flip to similarly beady-eyed middle class Americans was even more laughable. (In retrospect, anyway.)
You can say what you like about the trench-war between eCommerce and bricks-and-mortar, but EverQuest and Diablo and their ilk definitely put "virtual goods" on the map. And to my mind, it wasn't so much that the RIAA/MPAA had to compete with "free," it's that they had to compete with broad-band download rates. Throw into the mix the fact that Apple has more or less conditioned us to value both songs and smartphone/tablet applications at 99 cents a pop. Texting to a specific number, last time I checked, anyway, was an automatic ten clams.
In perspective, one can only wonder at the unintended (or at least unanticipated by the masses) consequences cellphone payments.
This isn't the first time I've scratched my head at paying real money for not-so-real stuff. Or even that I've been appalled at the nasty, brutish underbelly of virtual economies. But it is the first time I've had the mortifying suspicion that we programmer & online gamer types might have--completely inadvertently, I swear!--have lowered the bar for everyone else.
Thus--I suspect--was born the notion of taking mortgages (issued to pretty much anyone with a pulse), spraying the regulatory equivalent of Lysol on them, and passing them off as actual, honest-to-Pete, value-adding "investments." And, because we 'mericans tend to be slow learners (as in, "Oh, but that was Manchuria; Japan would never have the stones to attack U.S. soil..."), we might just see a badly-scripted sequel in the staid fields of betting on your life expectancy.
Considering the number of platinum-parachuted Wall Street suits who happily short-sold your castle, I would think the thought of short-selling your actual...well...life should worry you, no? Because, in the grand scheme of things, insurance companies are only selling an egregiously non-tangible product (a.k.a. "peace of mind"): Am I wrong?
(Note to self: Do not encourage Dennis to splice Soylent Green into the Netflix line-up anytime soon. kthxbi.)
Part of me feels like I should apologize--on behalf of all Geekdom--for how the virtualization of goods might have actually softened up the economy for the Great Recession. But, on further review...eh, naaaaahhh. We're the ones who take our mortgage Algebra straight-up, without the sugar-froth of ARM or interest-only pixie-dust. And, perhaps more significantly, maybe it takes an immersion in economies that are fake-for-real (e.g. Monopoly, WoW, Eve) to appreciate the fine distinction between gold-farming and derivatives-brokering. Just saying.
