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United States fact of the day
In today’s America, there are more World of Warcraft players than farmers.
Hat tip to Paul Krugman.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 21, 2007 at 08:16 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
That is beautiful.
Posted by: Sachin at Oct 21, 2007 9:25:19 AM
Well, except for a bunch of those Chinese WoW players are gold farmers...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_(gaming)
Posted by: Xmas at Oct 21, 2007 9:43:21 AM
Beat me to it, Xmas
Posted by: aretae at Oct 21, 2007 11:17:17 AM
He compares US farmers to US WOW players. Why does it matter what the chinese do?
Posted by: Erik at Oct 21, 2007 11:45:30 AM
Erik, I think the point is that instead of real farming, now we have cyber farming...
and we've outsourced even that to the Chinese...
Posted by: Jody at Oct 21, 2007 11:56:18 AM
WoW is just another form of leisure, like watching TV or playing console games. If the quote was
"In today's America, there are more people who watch TV than farmers"
it would be far less sensational. Furthermore, the set of farmers and the set of WoW players are not mutually exclusive.
Posted by: Matt at Oct 21, 2007 12:00:20 PM
I think it's really interesting how convoluted this statistic is. If you actually track back, you see that Tyler gets it from Paul Krugman, who gets it from Nicholas Beaudrot, who gets it from John Rogers, who originally posted the stat in March 2006.
Posted by: at Oct 21, 2007 12:08:43 PM
It's not just the U.S.
Posted by: KipEsquire at Oct 21, 2007 12:34:11 PM
We need more of them because each one produces for fewer others.
Posted by: triticale at Oct 21, 2007 1:07:09 PM
Well, of course - WoW is fun, and farming is really, really, unpleasant. People aren't as stupid as they look.
It might even make as much money..... Does gold or real farming pay better? Gold farming's probably a more reliable income, anyway.
Posted by: Jon Kay at Oct 21, 2007 1:48:03 PM
Why does this relationship matter? I think a more telling pair of numbers would be WoW players vs. Future Farmers of America participants (or 4H clubbers).
Posted by: Eric at Oct 21, 2007 1:59:59 PM
Well that certainly proves that...well, it doesn't actually prove anything. But it certainly indicates certain trends such as...OK, it doesn't indicate a damned thing. It is however a nice example of...hell I give up.
It is just two random facts slapped together with a dose of "and clever people will understand what this means!" Classic Krugman, in other words.
Posted by: LarryC at Oct 21, 2007 2:02:08 PM
It just means that there aren't that many farmers around anymore. And compare to the time when there were a lot of farmers around we're consuming more leisure and better leisure at that. This is supposed to be a good thing. Even from Krugman.
Posted by: notsneaky at Oct 21, 2007 4:54:21 PM
So when WOW begins to decline are we going to subsidise them too?
Posted by: Apostate at Oct 21, 2007 6:10:32 PM
What Krugman means is perfectly clear -- the title of his blog post is "The real America." He references Bush going to his ranch in Crawford to be with "real Americans."
Posted by: LN at Oct 21, 2007 6:53:30 PM
How many farmers play WoW?
Posted by: Kooter at Oct 22, 2007 10:47:11 AM
How many farmers play WoW?
Posted by: Kooter at Oct 22, 2007 10:47:29 AM
It might be meaningful to say "More people play WoW than watch NBC" or "than play softball" or "than go to baseball games", but it's not obvious that comparing an amusement with an occupation means anything.
Posted by: Cdeboe at Oct 22, 2007 11:15:08 AM
Krugmann is snarking at the fact that whenever the media wants a soundbite from an "average American", they make a beeline for a farmer, even though farmers aren't anything near representative in today's urban society.
Posted by: Jannia at Oct 22, 2007 4:12:43 PM
So, how many subsidies to WoW players get to ensure their vote?
Posted by: Donut at Oct 22, 2007 4:30:49 PM
whenever the media wants a soundbite from an "average American", they make a beeline for a farmer, even though farmers aren't anything near representative in today's urban society.
There are some honest journalists, but generally the media counts as entertainment. Who they pick to interview on news shows is of about the same importance as who they put on other "reality" shows. Frankly, I'd rather have Warcraft.
(My grad degree was in mass media communications, one of my wife's degrees was the same, and we were both involved in news production for a couple of years. Thank god that's over.)
Posted by: Cdeboe at Oct 23, 2007 5:21:24 PM
Posted by: 网站优化 at Oct 23, 2007 9:25:12 PM
1000 Gold in WoW is sold for about $80US online by WoW Farmers (IGN.com). I play a ton of WoW, and it would take me a 2 or 3 days to make 1000G, possibly a week if things are moving slowly. So real farmers make more than WoW farmers but....
I could get several WoW accounts and a program to play WoW for me (yes they currently exist) and now I bet I can compete with a real Farmer. Now I can make around $160 a day with 3 or 4 computers in a small room over a single internet connection.
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