The 90° Value-System

You know what I’m sick of? I’ll tell you what I’m sick of, I’m sick of other fucking people’s opinions, that’s what I’m sick of.

Idiots.

I’m particularly sick of people saying “oooh… the internet is all about getting other people to work for free. That super-nerd who owns facebook makes his money by getting half a billion people to work for nothing”.

Even people like Douglas Rushkoff (who is a god etc) says… this sort of thing, and he of all people should know what a lot of fucking cobblers this is, having written a book about what cobblers fiat-currency is. It’s like saying “oooh the people running Glastonbury or Iron Man or whatever are making money out of the work of tens of thousands of people who turn up and make it all happen”.

Bullshit. People aren’t working for nothing… they’re not working at all, they’re playing. And they’re playing for something. They don’t get nothing out of it. Sure they don’t get $$$ out of it, but they don’t get nothing.

There is a value-system that’s operating at ninety degrees to the (fiat) money system – and it’s to do with reputational capital. It’s to do with the higher levels on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Bouncing off each other for fun. It makes us feel good. This is the reason most musicians become musicians… most artists become artists… it’s not for money, it’s to do with the 90° value-system. This is why people seed torrent files. This is why people write blogs, why they tweet, why they put photos and videos up on flickr and youtube. It’s why people write open-source software. It’s why the make scones for their neighbours.

We’re bouncing off each other for fun. It feels good. See this page? Everything that went into it from the Linux to Apache to MySQL to PHP… HTML, CSS, JS, WordPress and me…. it’s all driven by the 90° value-system. We do it to establish ourselves as nodes on the network. To Be.

The reason I’ve written this sentence is the same reason that I feed the ducks.

Which is the same reason I photoed the ducks, trimmed the photo, uploaded it here and wrote about it. It feels good…

…so fuck “monetization”, and fuck everyone who thinks it’s the only thing that matters…

…because these people are fascistifying the world. The Paranoia-Economy. The Game-Theory Economy. I had a minor tiff with someone (an entertainment industry lawyer) on twitter yesterday (about “piracy” (fake concept)), and he said “How can the investor recoup and still give away the film for free? That’s the issue.”

You know what? It’s not the issue. Fuck investors. Investors aren’t the only people that matter… in fact as they seem to think they’ve got a god given right to make more and more money just because they’re already rich, they actually matter the least.

This idea that “if you are rich you have the god-given right to extract value forever”, is a crock of shit. It’s immoral and illogical and it’s fucking up the world.

The creators of Web 2.0 systems have created memetic ecosystems in which the rest of us can play, and (some of them) have made themselves cancerously rich doing it. But at least they’ve made something. At least they’ve created some value, rather than simply getting other people to sell the future so they can afford the present.

Apart from natural disasters, the biggest problems the world faces at the moment ALL rise out of the collusion between corporations and democratic states. They arise out of the primacy given to the fiat-currency value-system – money first. Investors first. Corporations first. If anything, the 90° value-system is the salve to this… it’s the source of all of our hopes. If solutions are going to come from anywhere, this is where they’re going to come from 90° value-system. From us, doing stuff. For each other. To give ourselves significance.

Don’t knock it.

Here’s some art, made for free. Enjoy.

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