18-09-05 Sources of Value

Category: Idea Lists (Upon Request)

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I’ve been playing fast and loose with this quick model of the major drivers of ‘feels like value’.

1. Scarcity as a driver of value
   1. Diminishing marginal returns
   2. Replaceability => valueless
   3. Abundance as a destroyer of value
      1. Invalidates Specialness Narratives
2. Mimetic Desire
   1. You want what others want
      1. In having it, you become the one with the desired thing
   2. Competition as unbounded optimization
      1. Capitalism as having harnessed this mechanism
   3. Social Proof
3. Sacrifice
   1. In paying a cost for something, you immediately rationalize that it must be worth that cost
   2. Sunk Costs
   3. Hazing
   4. Investment
      1. Getting them to invest, noticing when you’re investing, etc.
4. Usefulness / Utility
   1. Some value is real (lol, I know, right?)
   2. Difference between counterfactual value and regular value
      1. The way that counterfactual value can lack ‘feels like value’
      2. Most systems don’t issue reward according to counterfactual value

Source: Original Google Doc