Money¶

Work itself should generate "money", not an exchange for actions. Expecting prices to follow an equivalent work done on generational gains is a fallacy.

For a while, observing the many marvels of late-stage capitalism gave me patterns to ponder and ideas to extrapolate using reductio ad absurdum or thought experiments.

Value¶

A thing that bothers me is how weak-linked and contextual prices are.

Computers (occupation) were paid wages for doing math manually. Electronic calculators replaced most execution with knowledge application. Modern CPUs, with a one-off code development, perform lifelong-equivalent work in a single second (virtually free).

Shouldn't we pay the instrument for the implicit work a person would do?

And another one on renewables:

Electricity generation usually requires operation, maintenance, and one-way raw materials conversion, that involves many production chains and people. Solar panels also generates electricity, at virtually no operation, maintenance, and a one-off design, production cost.

Shouldn't we pay the solar panel for the generation work it replaces elsewhere?

On these examples, one would say they have "saved" money via an alternative or more efficient way for the same work. While not free, reduced costs still reflect required resources to achieve results, perhaps extensively trivialized with exponential improvements per unit money.

Notice: the action of crunching numbers, generating electricity must not have an intrinsic value for it to make sense. Imagine the chaos a day solar panels worldwide decide to buy all groceries!

Hence, money reflects the human effort a work takes (skills, labor, time).

This conclusion makes me uncannily optimistic in the system:

• Some market values severely underrepresent the implicit actions for results. Zero chance a king from 1500 could pay for a billion digits of π, it is a wealth distribution mechanic.
• Correlates to the Attention Economy where mass-content is mostly irrelevant (no effort )

However, it doesn't take into account how important, urgent a thing is, or personal sentiments, objective and absolute worth, transitional periods where work is trivialized, inflation origins.

Surplus¶

Current war on Open Models isn't new. Getting a temper at the ever-growing efficiency in doing work, expecting prices to follow actions made is a little delusional.

Again, why shouldn't a modern CPU cost quintillions of dollars?

Fundamentally, there isn't an universal way to assign prices to actions, only efforts: which makes sense, as everyone's time and attention are limited, the ultimate currency.

Transitional periods can be somewhat paradoxical, e.g. for a new product that is double $item:

• Speed: Fair to cost 2x more in work done or time-saved mindsets. Until compared to many generations ago, it should've been prohibitely expensive by now.
• Efficient: Should cost 2x less, as it takes half resources to make/run, but why should one undercut right away rather than squeezing it for a while?

When evolution and maximizing sales moves too fast, turbulence or a bubble takes place. Shall it be called generational improvements, only time stabilizes lower prices for more actions.

Notice: If it weren't for cheaper models (provider or self-hosted) pushing hard on price per token, or newer hardware being more 'worth it', a CPU or Ai would cost billions today. Should also apply to the dot-com bubble, which I was still a living plant at the time, sorry.

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