I think you can also see aspects of this + the way it interacts with the human tendency toward altruism in the success of One Red Paperclip and later imitators, who repeatedly made progressively larger positive-value trades until the combined effect is that they'd traded something of effectively no worth (a single paperclip) for something of substantial worth (a house, car, etc.): people will intentionally and knowingly make negative-value trades for someone with charisma or to be part of a good story!

![[text ID: I sell trash and trash accessories end ID] Text is next to an amazing anthropomorphic raccoon trash merchant. He wears a blue hat and a blue hoodie. Art by Tornatics on Twitter. [text ID: I sell trash and trash accessories end ID] Text is next to an amazing anthropomorphic raccoon trash merchant. He wears a blue hat and a blue hoodie. Art by Tornatics on Twitter.](https://staging.cohostcdn.org/attachment/b5ff0a3e-4238-4bab-b637-22f1b67d111e/Remmy%20Trash%20Sticker%20Animated%20Tornatics.gif)