News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Genshin Impact made more money in its first year than any... by sudosysgen on Thursday November 04, 2021 @06:00PM (#29113022)
I disagree. One of the largest industries right now is creating demand. People being content with what they have is an economic problem. A significant amount of consumption is simply socio-economic signaling and zero-sum games that have little correlation to the finite nature of resources.

There is little the average person truly wants that we cannot provide.

Re:Genshin Impact made more money in its first year than any... by MichaelZuo on Thursday November 04, 2021 @09:08PM (#29114358)
What if more than half the people want to be above average? By definition it’s impossible to fulfill that, now or a billion years in the future. Let alone all the other intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and materialistic desires that will inevitably grow.

You are assuming people have fixed minds, and wants never expand to fill the available resources.

Re:Genshin Impact made more money in its first year than any... by sudosysgen on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:31PM (#29114855)
I talked about that. People who want to be above average aren't looking for resources, they're looking for social signifiers. There is zero reason these signifiers have to actually use a lot of resources. It's easy to set it up that way, but it doesn't have to.

I never assumed people have fixed minds. People have complex and ambitious minds. But largely these ambitions are social, and not material. Even "materialistic" desires are rarely about the actual material, they are almost always about the social significance of the material.

Re:Genshin Impact made more money in its first year than any... by MichaelZuo on Friday November 05, 2021 @07:58AM (#29117984)
‘ It's easy to set it up that way, but it doesn't have to.’

Regardless of how perfect the ‘setup’ the remaining materialistic desires will continue to expand as population and technological capacity grows. There is no known force that can completely extirpate such desires. Since there is no upper limit, all available mass-energy will inevitably be utilized given enough time. You are arguing that such a progression can be delayed, I agree. Perhaps a delay is possible up to millions of years but that’s just shifting the timeframe.

For example, I’m fairly certain I’ve encountered someone that genuinely wants an actual Star Trek like spaceship for their personal use, with a minimal social signalling component.

Even if there’s only 10000 such folks on Earth, that already represents vastly more industrial output than real policy makers can even dream of realizing. Let along the current and future desires of everyone else.