>
> Doug's original post signaled unease at the thought of people settling
> for virtual pay in exchange for labour, the former to be used
> significantly to fund online gaming-related purchases. Several other
> posters signaled sympathy with that unease - a sympathy which I also
> shared.
>
> As if in response, you quoted a (famous, obvious, easily abused)
> passage from Marx, ostensibly challenging the legitimacy of the
> implicit (political, ethical, aesthetic) value-judgment in play. But
> the passage you quoted is merely laying out premises for the lengthy
> analysis of capital that follows: it pretty clearly *isn't* intended
> as the conclusion of a developed argument about the possibility of
> passing (political, ethical, aesthetic) value judgment of any sort
> whatsoever on this or that instance of (economic) use-value.
>
> None of which is to suggest that justifications for (political,
> ethical, aesthetic) value judgements are simple, straightforward, or
> unproblematic. But your invocation of the intro passage from Marx as
> implicitly justifying your rejection of the originally implied
> judgment was bizarrely insensitive to context - essentially analogous,
> as a dialogic gesture, to a kind of evangelical scriptural quotation.
>