Sitting at a desk, Dustin has a plate of uneaten spaghetti on the table. A plastic container with some cold and soggy fries on his right.
It's 2am and Dustin is still awake. His thought, "Where does money come from?"
Since he was a child, his parents always told him. "People will pay you for the work that you do, so go study, get a degree and find a job"
Now Dustin sits in a college room, he's paired with a significantly wealthier roommate faced with the same question. However the answer they both arrive is quite different from one another.
While Dustin attempted to spend his time in the library cramming for math problems, skills that his major might find valuable. His roommate Daniel is busy on his computer gaming.
Daniel is busy grinding on the internet in a competitive Survival First Person Shooter (FPS). It's a global competition, a dog eat dog world where ranking is calculated by a match making system and the very mathematics Dustin is studying.
Put simply, an ELO style ranking determined what level you are compared to a certain percentage of the world.
Daniel spends his free time applying his skills towards creating content, in this internet age money can be brought through advertisement, side hustles, and user engagement.
The wealthy will always spend their money on entertainment, just as business will always pay for employees. While a soldier pays in physical labor, an entertainer makes his money from the wealthy patrons who are willing to pay for the services he provides.
Money is complicated. How much unpaid labor do Gen Z and Gen Alphas spend creating content. Beautiful 2d art work, fintech and digital content such as NFTs and cosmetics are stored in machines, clouds, and computer networks, the world has seemingly gone digital.
The world may look the same as it did 10 years ago, but underneath it's quite different. Something vastly unrecognizable and strange, indeed.