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The NFT market bubble has popped?

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Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are ostracized or otherwise lose social status within the community. Functional human societies have existed and do exist in the absence of capitalism.

I do not know what definition of capitalism you are using, but I was strictly addressing the ability of society to function without compensation. I am not aware of any functional society exists today without the use of compensation on a notable scale, certainly not notable enough to be able to defend itself.

Considering that functional societies exist, regardless of their size and technological state, without monetary compensation as a primary motivation, I am forced to wonder how much our narrative that we cannot have technological civilization without forcing a class of people into handling unsavory tasks via threat of starvation and death is just part of the self-perpetuating mechanism of our particular societal organization structure.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#152
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather pay someone to take my turn for me. There’s a whole theory of competitive advantage [0] where I’m better doing some things than others. I’d rather do the thing I’m good at and use the money to pay others to do stuff I’m marginally worse off doing. I’ve lived in communities for a few decades and every day it crosses my mind that I want to establish a price for someone to come clean my toilet. [0] https:…

> I would rather pay someone to take my turn for me. Yeah, that's precisely what's wrong in our society that it appears normal to pay for inconveniences to disappear. Except of course for most of us who don't have money so we get paid shitty wages for making other people's inconveniences disappear. If such jobs were the highest paid, that would be less of a problem of course. But the highest paid jobs under capitalis…

> Except of course for most of us who don't have money so we get paid shitty wages for making other people's inconveniences disappear. If such jobs were the highest paid, that would be less of a problem of course. But the highest paid jobs under capitalism are the least useful to society at large because they don't produce anything (CEOs, managers, financial/legal advisors, marketers, etc).

This might be able to be rectified under the current system by giving money to the lowest paid, so that they can go to school and learn a trade which they find has a more acceptable price:undesirability ratio. Ideally, everyone will have the option to not have to do tasks like cleaning toilets, and hence everyone will have to do it themselves or pay a lot to get someone else to do it.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we would not be living in the same world with the same parameters as we are now.

And yet there are functional societies out there today, much as there were in the past, that are not capitalistic societies. Treating people like shit and forcing them to do dirty jobs you don't want to do under threat of starvation is not an inherent property of the human condition.

Which societies operated like that? I am not aware of any, that could operate as a country of decent size today. Note that this supposed country would also need to be able to defend itself, if it has possession of anything valuable (such as water, arable land, weather, etc). And also be able to deal with immigration and outsiders coming in, and kicking out people who would mess up the system.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you launder money with bitcoin? With NFTs it's easy, you can just buy some ugly jpg for 1 m, then sell it to your shell company for 10 m.

I presume the tax man is aware of this kind of schemes

Sure, but in some countries capital gains are tax free.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone that wants to exploit other people leave a place that lets them exploit others? I’ll cut to the chase. My point is your concept of society does not work at scale. You will have people that want to use the system, you will need to use force and adjudicate in the system, and you will need something more than good vibes to serve as incentives.

> Why would someone that wants to exploit other people leave a place that lets them exploit others? Because we'll kick them out. I'm always up for doing things i don't particularly enjoy because there's value in them, but I certainly don't want to live with someone who treats me like a slave. > you will need something more than good vibes to serve as incentives Sure. But you'll probably concede that we live in a worl…

> Because we'll kick them out. I'm always up for doing things i don't particularly enjoy because there's value in them, but I certainly don't want to live with someone who treats me like a slave.

It’s hard enough to get many married couples to live like this, and even harder for small extended families. I would assign something very close to 0% as the probability for viability of this on a country or global level.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know what definition of capitalism you are using, but I was strictly addressing the ability of society to function without compensation. I am not aware of any functional society exists today without the use of compensation on a notable scale, certainly not notable enough to be able to defend itself.

Considering that functional societies exist, regardless of their size and technological state, without monetary compensation as a primary motivation, I am forced to wonder how much our narrative that we cannot have technological civilization without forcing a class of people into handling unsavory tasks via threat of starvation and death is just part of the self-perpetuating mechanism of our particular societal organ…

Which societies today function like this, that could be scaled up to country level tasks and responsibilities? Regardless of size would make it a meaningless claim, as the parameters are greatly different between a tribe of 100 vs 10,000 vs 1,000,000,000.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly the artist retains copyright - the buyer gets the physical goods. Much like DVDs So pollock (or his estate or whatever) owns the copyright to the sold painting and so gets paid when you buy a postcard etc.

This is exactly zero change from regular artwork. If I sell a piece of art, the copyright is still mine. You can sign it away, of course, but otherwise they have to get permission to do anything with the image other than display and store it (and the stuff that goes along with this).

Yes, that's what I hoped i was saying :-)

- what surprised me is that if someone pays 100M for a painting of sunflowers they are just getting pasteboard and oils - if they want to publish a picture of their purchase they get to pay again !

Just did not expect that

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that functional societies exist, regardless of their size and technological state, without monetary compensation as a primary motivation, I am forced to wonder how much our narrative that we cannot have technological civilization without forcing a class of people into handling unsavory tasks via threat of starvation and death is just part of the self-perpetuating mechanism of our particular societal organ…

Which societies today function like this, that could be scaled up to country level tasks and responsibilities? Regardless of size would make it a meaningless claim, as the parameters are greatly different between a tribe of 100 vs 10,000 vs 1,000,000,000.

> Which societies today function like this, that could be scaled up to country level tasks and responsibilities?

None that I'm aware of, though I am not entirely convinced it is impossible for the reasons I stated. I am forced to wonder: what is the virtue of scale like that if it is largely built on the back of human suffering?

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve yet to find a scenario in which a smart contract truly improves upon a traditional, centralized database solution, NFTs included. As long as the system relies on externally originated information for proper functioning, we’re back to the issues of trust the technology was intended to resolve. That is why digital currency actually still seems like the only appropriate application of the blockchain, although it ma…

An actual casino without the need for a central authority can be implemented on smart contracts, and is the only real application of smart contracts that I see that is better than a centralized solution.

As far as I understand it, producing entropy, which is needed for fair distribution of odds in games of chance, is not achievable directly on the blockchain.

Instead, the job of producing non-deterministic inputs is offloaded to an off-chain source, an oracle, which still requires some degree of trust in an external entity.

My information might be out of date, though, and some implementations might have resolved this issue without destroying the integrity of the entire system. And I will concede that gambling seems to be the most popular use of the tech so far.

Re: The NFT market bubble has popped?

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as there is money and private property, i agree with your point. Jobs that nobody wants to do by pleasure should be the highest paid and most respected. However that's not how capitalism works (quite the opposite). Like another commentator pointed out, i'm opposed to financial compensation (and all forms of money) as an organizing principle of society. However as long as money hasn't been abolished your point…

> i'm opposed to financial compensation (and all forms of money) as an organizing principle of society. What does this mean? It is the nature of animals to evaluate and rank each other, least of all for mating purposes. Not using money will not change that, and another proxy will be used. > Specifically about COVID though, I don't know about where you are, but here in France "thank you" for health workers was perceiv…

> It is the nature of animals to evaluate and rank each other

Not at all. Competition is not the norm in the natural world. There's the entire field of ethology to study if you'd like to know more.

If you need a quick intro, "Mutual Aid" by Peter Kropotkin is really dated science-wise (it's almost 120 years old) but is still a pretty good read. If you're into TV stuff, i'd recommend Adam Curtis' series "The trap" and "The century of the self" which explore the topics of how competition and self-interest have increasingly been guiding principles of (at the time) western societies and how we've tried to apply such principles (eg. game theory) to other fields where they in fact do not apply.

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