Yet, here we are - wasting resources to post trivialities online. Their consumption is generating value, yet our comments are just yelling into the wind.
A centralised service like HN on the other hand could be designed to scale linearly with the amount of hardware resources.
Edit: Now that I think about it I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes a cryptocurrency based around "digging holes" keynesian style. I've even found a name for it: captchacoin.
Hell, I don't even expect you to agree with me. I'm just posting to speak my point of view and amuse myself. This conversation is pretty much the most wasteful thing we are going to do today.
Real life is less utilitarian than many people wish. Even if our conversation is more efficient, it generates not one bit of value - at least financially. It does amuse me, but I'm not really sure that's very valuable.
That's valuable. It lowers the demand for jetskis and cocaine, at a fraction of the price. Also, there's not much point in life if being entertained isn't valuable.
You are free to design a better alternative. If you do it, you will be rich.
It has no value to the wider economy or world but to us, and even though it has value to my friends it's a terrible, wasteful and unethical way to generate value. I am not generating value, just wasting trees.
You just can't create money or value out of nothing. Its linked to utility, markets, labour and the wider economy and belies the fundamental confusion in the crypto world about money. But intoxicated by the prospect, like alchemists and other charlatans before them the crypto community continue to fantasize about gaining something from nothing.
That wood builds your house, provides heat, provides jobs, makes dowels, and makes paper - depending on what is harvested. And, it will be able to do so in perpetuity. The process is called TSI and is even able to increase habitats for the animals - they are delicious.
I'm not sure we can have a productive conversation.
This is what current crypto currencies are doing. How long before people notice you are wasting wood for no purpose and put a stop to your activities?
Externalities* apply here. Global warming is one of them. Increased vulnerability to desertification is another effect.
Otherwise, we could just fill the Sahara with trees in a decade. It is not going to happen.