When money has no price
Earlier today my mom was complaining that the citizens where she lives were asocial bums, “smooching off the system” by claiming government benefits fraudulently. I was pushing back against her complaints, reminding her that this was a minority and that the remaining majority of citizens were not voting for a city council willing to enforce the law.
She seemed distraught that folk don’t behave the way she wants “on their own” without incentives or enforcement. As if moral values were supposed to be sufficient to maintain social cohesion?
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It got me thinking though. What if there were no moral values nor legal constraints, for example through lack of enforcement?
How would one go about optimizing their life and their livelihood, if there was no moral or legal price to earn it?
Or, perhaps less flippantly, what are the other options available “out there” at an equivalent moral or legal price?
After thinking about it a bit more, I figured that there are at least 5 parameters one can optimize for, besides moral and legal alignment:
- the complexity. This limits access to levels of intelligence or grit.
- the income potential — how much return on time and capital investment one can expect.
- the monetary risk — how much chance there is to lose more than what is earned.
- the bodily risk — how much chance there is to become harmed or die prematurely.
- the social debasement risk — how much the endeavour requires one to numb altruistic tendencies in oneself and others, and thus contribute to overall social de-structuring.
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This framework enables me to think productively about cryptocurrencies.
- mining new bitcoin and other PoW cryptocurrencies.
- complexity: low
- income potential: low to medium
- monetary risk: low
- bodily risk: low
- social debasement risk: medium-high (no regard for climate costs)
- trading cryptocurrencies in private.
- complexity: medium to high
- income potential: high
- monetary risk: high
- bodily risk: low
- social debasement risk: low
- hyping cryptocurrencies to uneducated folk to stimulate pump-and-dump schemes
- complexity: low to medium
- income potential: high
- monetary risk: low to medium
- bodily risk: low
- social debasement risk: high (generally erodes trust and hope for the future)
Let’s try to organize this into a table:
| Endeavour | Complexity | Income potential | Monetary risk | Bodily risk | Social debasement risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mining bitcoin | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Trading cryptocurrencies privately | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Hyping cryptocurrencies to benefit from a pump-an-dump scheme | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
(The column headers on the table’s first row can be clicked to re-order the data.)
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We can apply this independently to traditionally frowned upon behaviors too:
| Endeavour | Complexity | Income potential | Monetary risk | Bodily risk | Social debasement risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claiming government benefits fraudulently | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Claiming insurance benefits fraudulently | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Bartering to avoid taxes | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Tax fraud by intentional misdeclaring or misexpensing | 3 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 |
(Again, the column headers on the table’s first row can be clicked to re-order the data.)
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Magic happens when we mix data from multiple sources together. Then, things that were previously incomparable become comparable: click any of the column headers to make equal values appear side-by-side.
| Endeavour | Complexity | Income potential | Monetary risk | Bodily risk | Social debasement risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mining bitcoin | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Trading cryptocurrencies privately | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Hyping cryptocurrencies to benefit from a pump-an-dump scheme | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| Claiming government benefits fraudulently | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Claiming insurance benefits fraudulently | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Promoting a pyramid scheme or MLM business, as a participant | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Organizing a pyramid scheme to defraud a population already at financial risk | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| Bartering to avoid taxes | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Tax fraud by intentional misdeclaring or misexpensing | 3 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| Self-prostitution | 1 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| Pimping and trading sex slaves | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Working as strongperson for a business operating outside of the law | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| Running a for-profit prison | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Selling drugs for money as “retailer” | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Running a drug cartel | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| Running a hedge fund | 4 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Operating heavy machinery out of warranty and without insurance | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Owning slaves or coercing partners and family into unpaid labor and favors | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Keeping a business successful by colluding with the industry to depress wages | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Working “white collar” for an org that supports authoritarian regimes and killing drones | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Working “white collar” for an org that promotes addictive consumerist behavior | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
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Younger people nowadays feel like “the system” is failing them, and are looking for creative ways to make a living.
I just hope they will optimize for the right parameters.