But I get it now. I see a certain type of guy in an AWS fleece and instantly judge him, round him off to some kind of bully. Harsh, unsmiling, tweaking on stims, telling you to cry harder. Or maybe he’ll open up tell you his theory of how we need eugenic breeding facilities on the moon, or which countries we need to “glass.” It’s gotten so ugly.

I know this seems mean, too. Coming out of nowhere. Strawmanning or whatever you call it. Literally inventing a guy to get mad at. I’m aware of the irony. I don’t know. I guess it’s another kind of mourning, and I don’t know how to express it. I thought tech people were supposed to be like Woz.

Edit: plausibly there’s no human in loop here at all, in which case fair play, I guess.

What if economists don't really intend to make a factual historical claim? What if it's more like the principle of virtual work, if you take the analogy? What if it's saying, look, here are two possible configurations of the world: one with barter and one with monetary exchange. One of these configurations is "more stable" than the other. That's a reasonable explanation for "why" we use money, if you read "why" in a non-causal way.

Or maybe economists are straightforwardly careless historians. I don't know!

There’s a pirates-and-emperors aspect to this: such measures are taken in some societies to disincentivize O(1) violent crimes. Why (really, why? It’s worth thinking about!) are they rarely taken for O(n) crimes?

But also, obviously, they’re being a gadfly for funsies.