Interaction Is Greater Than Resources
"How can a country with no oil, gold, or coltan, be richer than a country with all three plus bigger chunks of fertile land, forests?"
I had this conversation with an OG History teacher at the high school where I teach.
He was teaching me.
I was the student.
The first country is called Japan.
The second country is called DR Congo.
2 words - Human Interaction.
The interactions of human beings in Japan create more material wealth for them than those of the people in Congo.
Interactions also produce richer cultural wealth.
Interaction is why Silicon Valley has created start-ups worth trillions of dollars, and yet sand, the raw material for silicon, is dirt cheap.
Good Interaction = a higher quality of living. Whether you're holding a cup of sand, gold, water, or nothing at all.
The word interaction is a compound word made from inter and action.
A shared action between humans, our interactions in this globalist era, are what make the miracles of industrial production possible - packed water, fast food, high-tech phones, cars, comfortable housing, and transportation.
They also make our lives miserable - with wars, moral decay, ubiquitous unfairness, and injustice.
Before and After the Internet
Before the internet, the way we interacted with each other to manage our vast material resources globally, was relayed through the slow P2P relays of post office mail, and the fast but highly hierarchical relays of telephone and TV networks.
The beauty of slow P2P implied meticulous care over what we said. No matter how big or small our networks, people spoke to those they chose to speak to with some heart.
The same went for the fast hierarchies of the telephone. Our grandparents loved dialing up their buddies, and bosses loved lording the telephone over their employees.
The trouble of course is that a lot of facts can be kept away from you. And you wouldn’t be the wiser.
The pre-internet era was a good time to keep oppression secret in remote parts of the world. Hence, empires, kings, and dictatorships with a 1984-novel-like bent.
The less documentation there is for oppression, the worse.
Documentation = Interaction for self-evaluation and group evaluation.
It is now hard to get away with evil plans that oppress people.
Countless social-media-fuelled uprisings around the world are testament to this.
The Bitcoin blockchain, a ledger documenting currency flows from one person to another, was the first digital currency outside the locus of control of any nation-state. It is so good it actually incentivizes more openness, not secrecy.
Well, after the internet was born, we got busy messing with the economy.
Our scammy interactions, a.k.a Ponzi schemes, tore at our dreams like bears.
But what came out of the ashes was true digital interaction - Google search, social media with the rise of Facebook, then Bitcoin after the financial crisis of 2008.
Digital vs In-person Interaction
"AI makes kids lazy."
"Social media is eating away your time for quality interactions."
"Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, rat poison..."
I understand; digital interactions are strange for meat, blood, and bone creatures like us.
They are a quasi-reality. Especially AI prompts today.
But we forget just how overwhelming reality can be to us. Especially when we lack a clear understanding of how to navigate the complexity that is in-person interaction in a world as complicated as ours.
For example, it is perhaps true that young people spend way more time online than their parents. Or grandparents, who spent close to none.
But:
- Our grandparents were fewer than we are; we are more. Way more.
- Our grandparents didn't see this much inflation in basic needs like shelter, quality food, and a good climate. We see it and feel it.
Bottom line: Our grandparents didn't feel pushed to reckless racketeering behavior.
What if there was no physically harmful internet into which to channel our adrenaline, what would we do?
That's right. Live out a real Mad Max fantasy.
Fear not the quasi-harmless rug pull of your crypto dollars. With better developer tools, hackers and scammers will leave a trail easy to follow by law enforcement. Fear the robbery at gunpoint if the rug pull option is nowhere in sight.
Fear degeneracy into chaos if there is no dopamine-charged TikTok to keep leashed the dogs of the anarchic gods.
* * *I do not condone digital interactions that impede real human interactions.
But digital interaction is our ultimate simulation.
We gotta improve these otherwise our in-person interactions will suffer. Not improve.
The digital realm is like a cool open-world school. The testing bed for all future corporations, big and small.
The placenta in which a start-up can live for months, years, and decades on minimum resources, but unharmed.
Moreover, with all signs of life still intact.
Try launching your start-up on the cold hard ground irl. For most, 2 months tops, and it will be aborted by Mother Earth.
Just Interact
You’re probably wondering:
"How do I optimize my digital and online interactions?"
I'd do it like our ancestors. If you feel the itch to talk to people, talk to them!
If it goes, go away!
IRL?
You could.
Start somewhere, and follow through.
Certainly today, our financial anxieties often merge with our interaction needs. Confusing things.
Say one is lonely, but they also want to hype up their YouTube channel.
So they may make content and speak to a digital audience, where they need a irl heart to heart.
Is that wrong?
Noo.
Even better, they make another YouTube explaining how they figured they actually needed to talk to someone. (Then they log out and go do just that!)
See.
1 interaction deserves another.
You can't get it wrong twice.
Unless you're really not paying any attention to your needs.
Do we work too much?
I don't think so.
Maybe not smarter. Why, if we were we’d have WALL-Ed our troubles by now.
I mean, what better way to keep climate anarchy, fiat money anarchy, or morality anarchy at bay than to spend one's days doing good, cool, futuristic things for the world and calling it work?
Whatever happens, you're going to make the world better if you put interactive goodness out there.
Even if a Mad Max dystopia rains down on us, somehow, your work stuff will shine through. And it will give somebody hope. And balls.
Just interact.
Don't be evil.
Shut it (a little), and carry that burden like Atlas holds up the Earth.
Why?
Stoic something.
Read some Aurelius.
It's good, and it’s cool.
You will be rewarded for it somehow.
Long live interaction dammit.
(BTW: Honest, unwavering interaction in a solidarity economy, is the only way to combat inflation, like Argentina has done under Javier Milei.Cut out the noise and the money-eyed bureaucrats, create and give, motivate, encourage, teach, excite, give company, help, show the way, laugh together,...).
The Future Wants More Interaction
Speaking of just interacting, here is an interesting thing to think about.
Cryptocurrency trade in the Web3 space.
Why, oh why is it only done by individuals with an agenda?
Why not for fun??
I mean, it is good for the P2P exchange of Bitcoin satoshis (sats) for a story, fiat currency, or something else of known value.
But what if we send sats the way people do telephone calls?
Just send sats to a peer.
To do what?
To send back to you.
Huh?
Yeah.
The interaction here is not trade. It is a gamified trade.
A mock trade. With real money.
But fun.
Sounds “purposeless”, without the finality of benefiting from someone else’s work, knowledge, or support.
But it has everything needed to make it a fruitful interaction; 2 people having fun bouncing sats (or ether or ICP), this way and that.
Interactions that are based on pleasure, enjoyment, and genuine curiosity towards another human being now need the aura of monetary value to get to the next level.
Hence, bouncing to and fro real Bitcoin satoshis in a pong game instead of bouncing a game sprite.
Certainly, this will require Bitcoin nodes to run the lightning network or another L2 in the backend.
What it means is that this model is likely why Mr. Beast is so successful. He plays with money!
Or Monetary value.
While entertaining and storytelling.
How exactly? Product reviews of cars in which cars are blown up = playing with money.
A challenge in which real money is blown up = playing with money.
He sometimes makes money by just literally giving people money!
And smiling the whole time. Very important.
Because it is fun to help.
People enjoy that stuff.
Bitcoin as a Pong Ball
Instead of interacting with AI chatbots, we need to incentivize interaction with other flesh and blood humans. This will improve as well our interactions with chatbots and what kind of AI LLMs we model.
The power of playing with money as I suggest above and as Mr. Beast masterfully does, creates a simple bait that invites interaction.
Again, instead of watching a valueless pong ball being bounced to and fro, we can watch a valuable Bitcoin satoshi bouncing around.Moreover, it could be doing valuable transactions all while two people are just having fun.
This is one way to unlock better interactions, using more interactions (just for the sake of it).
In a better world, cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are not something people want to steal, shill, or hide under a mattress as a seed phrase.
That doesn’t help when the climate change comes knocking.
People should want to be part of its cool journey and story. A journey headed for the stars.
But only if it moves there. And only we can make it move. We just have to choose to interact with it more, without a reason why and without explaining anything to anybody.
* * *
To end,
Which do you prefer? Playing pong with an AI, or with a fellow human?
Which one do you think is better for the economy?
Both?
