Letters | Metaverse land grab: as gamblers rush in, governments must tax them
- Readers comment on the trend of buying virtual land, the lack of a Foodpanda hotline, plugging loopholes in contact tracing, and leaving religion out of Christmas celebrations
In the metaverse, land and homes may be traded, but this land cannot produce crops that can fill the bellies of the hungry, nor homes that can solve Hong Kong’s pressing housing problem. To me, the metaverse seems to be not much more than a collection of gambling instruments, “whose rates are either rich or poor as fancy values them”, as Shakespeare might have put it.
I believe that the blockchain system reduces the need for a central banker or channel, thereby making it difficult to control, and to tax transactions.
01:36
‘Merry Christmas’: world’s first SMS sent in 1992 fetches US$121,000 as NFT
For the metaverse to be useful to society in general, governments must find ways to place a small tax on transactions in the metaverse, thereby transferring money from the gamblers to the needy, as does the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
P.K. Lee, Tung Chung
Who to call at Foodpanda for suspicious transactions?
As there appears to be no widely known telephone number for contacting Foodpanda in Hong Kong, I have to rely on the pages of the Post to get a message across to Foodpanda.