My head is going to explode the way things are going, I swear to God.” Mass extinction, hunger, wrecking kids’ lives, these are bigger worries. I’m just saying the boredom of bad TV is not the biggest of our worries. “Well, but this is the least of their problems! I mean actually you can usually find something interesting.” “Right, so they can watch something interesting as they sit there broke.” We’ve been paying a fraction of what things really cost to make, but meanwhile the planet, and the workers who made the stuff, take the unpaid costs right in the teeth.” “Chewing on my head! But now we’re chewed up. “They’ve squeezed us till we’re bleeding from the eyes. “I always see the Disney dog when you say that.” That’s why we’re all broke except the plutocrats.” So they shove some of their production costs off their books.” They’re under huge pressure to sell as low as they can, because every buyer buys the cheapest version of whatever it is. They’ve just ignored some of their costs. But the ones that don’t haven’t actually sold their thing for more than it cost to make. “Yes, and lots of businesses do go bankrupt. “That sounds like the road to bankruptcy.” “Things are sold for less than it costs to make them.” “Exactly! It’s not just that there are market failures. We’re in a mass extinction event, sea level rise, climate change, food panics, everything you’re not reading in the news.” “The prices are always too low, and so the world is fucked. It’s crowdsourced, it’s democratic, it’s capitalism, it’s the market.” Sellers offer stuff, buyers buy it, and in the flux of supply and demand the price gets determined. We live by buying things with money, in a market that sets all the prices.” We live in a world where people pretend money can buy you anything, so money becomes the point, so we all work for money. Something a coder would say, may I point out.” “I thought you said the real value was code. That’s the real value, food in your belly. “Right, and now people are even worried about food.” It’s like what you said, life means death.” And without our code, there’s no computers, no finance, no banks, no money, no exchange value, no value.” “Which by the way it’s your turn to clean the toilet.”

Viruses, bacteria, all the way up to us.” All life wants things and goes after them. Value resides in life, and life is coded, like with DNA.” Whoever writes the code creates the value.”

2140 kim stanley robinson