Alien Jewellery Store analogy

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The Alien Jewellery Store analogy is an argument used to explain Grassland's three postulates by way of a metaphor.

It goes as follows. You have two "people". Bob and Alien. Bob is a human and Alien is an alien newly arrived to earth.

Bob owns a jewellery store. He purchases gemstones, gold and other precious minerals from a distributor and sells them at a markup. Alien has opened a jewelry store right next to Bob's. To Bob's bemusement, Alien values receipts and not jewelry. Receipts are rare and very valuable on the alien's planet. Where they're called a "proof-of-work". On Alien's planet, gold, diamonds and other earth-precious minerals are so ubiquitous they're hardly worth anything. They consider them to be a relatively useless byproduct of their precious receipt industry.

So in order to acquire as many receipts as possible the alien gives away jewelry for free to anyone and everyone who asks it. And to compound Bob's frustration, Alien gets richer and richer and larger and larger the more jewelry it gives away. And it has an unlimited capacity.

But the worst part of this for Bob's business model is that Alien is alien in every way. It has millions of eyes. And uses these eyes to see around and even through solid objects like Bob. But paradoxically, Bob can't see it. It can be in a seemingly infinite number of places at once. But Bob can't touch it. It doesn't eat or sleep. It seemingly evolved for the sole purpose of finding new entities with whom it can exchange "worthless" minerals for its precious receipts.

Since humans have an unlimited capacity for precious minerals it can serve their interests without limits. The only solution for Bob is to either give up or adjust his business model to suit it.