The vital economic lesson from Dabloons

The aged attempting to be achingly hip never does come across well but still:

According to the website “Know Your Meme”, the dabloon trend’s origins can be traced back to two images, shared by the Instagram account catz.jpeg, of cat’s paws, with the simple caption “four dabloons” beneath.

This brand of nonsensical humour seemed to strike a chord with the account’s hundred thousand followers, and was shared consistently over the following months.

By October 2022 the phrase, “But it will cost you 4 dabloons” became a popular punchline on TikTok and by late November this had become a full-on craze, with thousands of accounts posting dabloon content and videos using the hashtag “#dabloons” collectively gaining nearly 500m views, as of 25 November.

And thus the dabloon economy began.

Trivial, possibly twee and almost certainly transient. And yet:

“I think the reason we all love this is that we all secretly miss being 5 and playing with our friends,” avid UK dabloon collector Beth Woodward says.

“I miss being a kidnapped princess or a witch making potions. Being a part of this trend means I can do that again. I can be a silly little cat buying silly little items and just having a great time.”

The aim of our having an economy, a civilisation at all - hell, that coming down out of the trees bit - is simply that more people can have a great time more of the time. That’s it. There is no other.

The definition of great time is to be made by those having it. That’s also it.

This does mean that certain economic theories are simply wrong. The Labour Theory of Value for example. The value of dabloons is the enjoyment that comes from the existence of dabloons, not the zero labour that goes into their creation. Nor, equally so, the labour that historically has gone into the creation of the system - the internet, the Web - upon which dabloons are created. That labour was there, already built in, before dabloons were created and will still be there, inherent, after they fade away.

It’s also true that no central planner would invent dabloons, none did, therefore central planning is not the optimal manner of creating good times.

Finally, dabloons have no value other than that good time created. Which means that all mitherings about exchange value, use value, real values and deeper and objective values are just wrong. The value is that transient human joy and that’s it. As with any- and every- thing else. The value of a house is, at root, the night’s shelter from the rain, of a raincoat the afternoon’s similar shelter, of a steak that replete stomach for a time, there just is no other value to anything than what we humans, at that time, place upon the thing.

As the man said, the important economic question is “Everybody having a good time?”