People need to be paid to do the work, so they can eat and pay rent. We dont actually live in a post scarcity star trek world. So we find a way that people can be paid yet the information and content can remain free to everyone. It seems like lots of people like this. For some reason some people really really hate that other people are willing to pay to make content freely available to them. The people buying NFTs are footing the bill for you to have that free information. Sure thats a social/cultural status game with a side of speculation, but in turn we have art that is permeating culture rapidly.As he is quoting a distortion of Stuart Brand, maybe we should see what he would think? well here he is at the ethereum devcon in 2018 talking about this stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLGZdLpHl1w
Open minded, interested, exploring, doing what he has done for decades and has been admired by people for, being a hacker!
AnIdiotOnTheNet|4 years ago
Yes, this is the part about reshaping society I was talking about. Artists do contribute value to the world and need a way to be supported, but the way we support them should not be to burn the gift of post-scarcity.
> We dont actually live in a post scarcity star trek world.
When it comes to information we really, really do. I have every single game ever made for every console generation from 1978 through 2002. This cost me next to nothing, because we live in the information age.
> So we find a way that people can be paid yet the information and content can remain free to everyone
We already have several mechanisms for that. I don't see how NFTs bring anything new to the table other than providing speculation-based scams to flourish, which doesn't really benefit the artists in any way.
> Sure thats a social/cultural status game with a side of speculation, but in turn we have art that is permeating culture rapidly.
I wasn't aware that there was a problem with this. Indeed, the non-scarcity of information has allowed art and culture to proliferate at ludicrous speed. We've seen someone's fanfiction become a big budget film series (with some IP changes), someone's basement-developed game became so big a company bought him out for billions of dollars, and a korean TV series become a smash hit in the west.
I'm open to having my opinion changed, but I don't see any problems things like NFTs actually solve better than any existing system other than being great for scams.
casi18|4 years ago
I think you are confusing the cost of production of these things, and the cost to you personally. There is a cost (material) and scarcity(human time) involved in making things. I think we have got away as a society with not paying artists and musicians and demanding their content be free and "post-scarcity". That really isnt helpful to people trying to live in this world. See Gillian Welch sadly singing "Everything is free now... They figured it out, I'm gonna do it anyway even if it doesn't pay".
> which doesn't really benefit the artists in any way.
the default on most marketplaces is a 10% resale royalty paid to the artist. compare this to existing aucition houses where we get 0. or second hand record shops where we get 0%. or spotify or youtube where the ceos are billionaires and we get fractions of pennies for streams AND have our work surrounded by adverts.
when i look at https://foundation.app/collection/clsfd I see an artist i really admire finally getting paid some money for her years of work and experimentation. and retaining control in that system. The work isnt tied and locked in to this particular website like posting on instagram, the provenance is clear and royalties fair (decided by the artist).
I think people need a reminder of Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is shit. Don't get blinded by the noise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
lostcolony|4 years ago
Where? All I see is people paying for works after the fact, that no one would pay for -except- buying into the idea of an NFT.
Where are the NFTs being sold for desirable creative works -prior- to their creation and distribution? Show me a movie being shot, by names good enough that they could otherwise sell tickets, that will release freely to everyone that was funded by selling an NFT to it, say.
casi18|4 years ago
Here is a crowdfund for a musician who is releasing records on catalog: https://haleek.mirror.xyz/crowdfunds/0x8B38a9cbabC067ddEA968...
Also as he was mentioned before, here is the crowdfund for the documentary about Stuart Brand too that played with these ideas of free/expensive/public/private https://weareasgods.mirror.xyz/crowdfunds/0x69DdE2e4d81720AE...
gowld|4 years ago
lostcolony|4 years ago
That said, -they were already creating art-. They're now getting better funded, which is great, but they also have geared their art toward that funding (see Bitcoin Angel as an example), which is, I would contend, a form of selling out (but is probably not much worse than patronage), and the source of that funding is horrific for the environment and requires a collective speculative delusion, but I've yet to see any art come about because of NFTs. To be fair there, though, I don't think art for the purpose of making money is a thing; artists create because of a desire to create, and hopefully it gets suitably appreciated to make money.
casi18|4 years ago
Most people I know making art are funded by Arts Councils and government programs. Then there is the private markets, which look similar to the NFT speculation games (go watch a sotherbys auction some time, its eye opening) but with no royalties going to the artists. NFTs at a minimum have that 1 up on auction houses.
Then there is larger grants from foundations and charities, which would fund a project without expectation of ownership on any items. Philanthropists.
Then there is the smaller graphic/illustration commission artists who use paypal and patreon, interestingly they also seem to be the ones kicking up the most fuss about nfts, im not sure why though.
And it is just plainly wrong that artists arent using NFTs, and that it is just people playing status games. Its been quite widely accepted and adopted, particularly amongst those who already deal with selling their works so dont have that hesitation and fear of asking to be paid. Sure there is abuse and scams, those are the 90% of shit. most pop music is produced by organisations making bland acceptable rhythms with a pretty teen face dancing around to make a company a bunch of money, kinda sounds scammy too. But that doesnt mean theres also good stuff going on. Its up to you if you want to engage with it, but flat out denying it is happening wont make you an expert either.
NoGravitas|4 years ago
We don't have matter replicators, or fusion reactors, but we've had sufficient technology to reliably give every living human a comfortable and safe existence since the early 1960s at the latest (see Murray Bookchin's "Post-Scarcity Anarchism" (1968)). Tellingly, we (collectively) choose not to. Instead, we're getting Gibson's Jackpot.
splistud|4 years ago