SHAMELESS

This weekend, America Public Media’s Weekend America ran a story on an economic microcosm found online, specifically, within the fantasy game EverQuest. In it, players enact with each other in a virtual world, develop skills, and charger other players electronic “gold pieces” for their services. Co-host Barbara Bogaev interviewed economist (and player) Ed Castronova, author of Synthetic Worlds, The Business and Culture of Online Games. Castronova said that no one really liked these kind of online games as much as they do now when everything in it was free; it wasn’t until a real economy was introduced that these games took off. Some of his findings: people like to work for value; they feel better about themselves when they do. Also, players do not mind when other players make more money than they do, as long as they all started with a level playing field, which they do – every new player starts with no money at all. In fact, players tended to respect other players who had accumulated a great deal of wealth and reputation. Castronova thinks this taps into the societal consciousness.

Well, Bogaev was beside herself listening to what pretty much amounted to an anabashed endorsement of capitalism which would make Adam Smith beam. Taken to its logical conclusion, Castronova is saying that people naturally prefer working, being challenged, for a living than just having it handed to them, that capitalism seems to be engrained into human nature, and people are happier under it.

Imagine that -- people care more about equality of opportunity than they do equality of result, and to make matters worse, they actually respect people who achieve!

Holy cow, all the ways Bogaev tried to get Castronova to take it back, or at least to temper it, so much did it fly in the face of dearly-held Leftist economic theories! Castronova even went so far to say that had people been able to test Communism online, millions of lives might have been saved. It was radio, but you could almost see the apoplexy this cheerful man was putting Bogaev through.

Listen for yourself here. (Link from Weekend America's website.)