They gave us a universal currency; we turned it into a casino.
They gave us a town square; we turned it into a fight club.
They gave us a universal oracle; we turned it into a billboard
Money defeated magic.
References
See also
- Scale and Efficiency applies to people, compute and codebase — the same diagnosis from a software engineering angle: scaling human and compute resources without scaling quality
- All Observable Behaviours of an API Will Be Depended On by Someone — Hyrum’s Law is a symptom of the same dynamic: at scale, the unintended uses colonise the intended ones