Some thoughts on Token Values (Open for Suggestions)

Something strikes me watching Token Economics series: one part of a video mentioned about "giving tokens to people for their contributions, like a park token to park keepers/cleaners, friendship token to your friends, etc". But how do we define the values related to monetary value?

(Perhaps) Non-monetary Value Token

Some tokens are especially difficult to convert to monetary value. To show your love to your friends, most likely you create your own friendship tokens and distribute them to your friends. These tokens have no monetary value (though they have your love) and most probably cannot be traded with others than the person distributing the token. Say Alice distribute token to Bob, so Bob hold ALICE token. Charlie would like to keep some ALICE token, so they could establish a trade scenario based on "barter trade" values (i.e. the monetary values are intrinsic, agreed upon by both party, but not globally). Now Charlie hold some ALICE token, but that doesn't mean Alice have a strong friendship for Charlie. Just because he hold the token doesn't mean he had strong relationship with Alice. The tokens might be misleading if Charlie decide to show off to his friends that he hold ALICE tokens and people start to imagine Alice and Charlie's relationship when there exists none. And what will Alice think of Bob when she finds out Bob trading ALICE token with Charlie without her consent? And even if Bob asks Alice whether they could trade ALICE tokens, what will go on inside Alice's mind? "Our friendship can be traded for stuffs! WTH!"

Now think of Bob has an emergency, and he need some money. He could lend some money from Alice, in exchange Alice buyback some of ALICE tokens. In this situation, assuming if Alice is willing to lend him the money with ALICE token, does that mean that act damages their friendship? Perhaps so, or perhaps not. Even so, if Bob returns the money, will he and Alice get back to the equivalent-deep relationships? We don't know. (And there are lots of things that could happen in between the lending period that confiscate ALICE token value between them, including a friendship breakup.) Now, let's say Bob is buying some money from Alice using ALICE token (so Alice will never get paid back, since he's not lending it), how much will ALICE token now worth, if Alice feels betrayed by Bob? And finally, Alice might lend money to Bob without requiring a buyback of ALICE token, just like how you lend money to your friend or buy him/her a drink or something, so what's the use of ALICE token?

Really, the only situation one thought of is shown mostly in some Chinese (some genre that one never seen in English, called 玄幻) novels. When a super strong guy (super strong as in he/she has the energy and capability of perhaps equivalent to destroying a planet, or destroy milky way, or even stronger) get beaten up by his/her enemy and suddenly get saved by the main character, he/she will award the main character with a "token" which, in the future, when the main character is in danger, can use it to ask for his/her help once, after which the token will be bought back. Of course this is fantasy story; in real life, these tokens might be useful in similar situations, plus worthy of keeping as a token of appreciation plus whatever you exchange with your friends to strengthen your friendships, but not really related to monetary value (exchanging for physical goods, for example).

Monetary Work-value token?

In the video, another situation described is the park keepers situation. People buy some PARK tokens and award to park keepers for the hard work. And the park keepers want some monetary value token: of course, they want to get paid to feed themselves, to pay rent, to earn money. Who will decide how much monetary value the tokens contain?

After all, PARK tokens are useful only within the park. You can't use it to exchange for other goods, most probably. When exchanging for goods, most probably a monetary token (let's just use ETH here to make the example concrete) is required. Park visitors can buy PARK with ETH, but park keepers, how do they exchange from ETH to PARK? Who distributes the PARK tokens? And in the case a blockchain contract distribute it, how does it decide how much ETH can the park keepers earn?

It depends on the park visitors! Park visitors decide how much they're willing to tip a park keeper by buying how much of PARK tokens with ETH. The ETH are stored within the contract, and park keepers can get ETH by exchanging it with the contract. Much like you buying some tokens when visiting the casino and return back the casino tokens which they return back your money.

And this does have a flaw: if everyone take park visits for granted, not willing to award park keepers with PARK tokens, how will they earn? Ultimately, blockchain technology can only ease exchanges, not force people to make exchanges. In todays' world where people take EVERYTHing for granted (well, maybe not everyone, and maybe not everything, but you get it, many people and many things), it's difficult to change people's behavior to award others for their work. After all, the "greed gene" (if it exists) that carves deep into our bloodline hasn't disappear from evolution; and so, park keepers cannot earn much.

Conclusion

Blockchain technology aims to award value to lots of things that aren't included in monetary value, which are good. There are still lots of flaw though, like what tokens required integration with monetary value, and what nots, and how much value to assign to them which depends on what factors? Until these are clear, things have to decide and agree on consensus for their exchange with monetary values.

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