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In Praise of Ponzis

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Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#21

Post by jbay808 »

jderick wrote: post #4
latexr wrote: post #2

> The viewers who watched [Gangnam Style] earned nothing, even though many of them contributed and were critical to the video's ultimate success. What if there was a way to incentivize people upfront to contribute to such a success? What if there was a way to let everyone who contributed earn a piece of the rewards? What if we stopped trying to monetise every single action from every single person every single day? P…

You could also punish people who vote for unpopular content. Similar to how captchas work, if you vote in the minority, you could be assumed to be a 'bot'. This would also require some kind of ML to account for your interests, so you would be compared against others with similar interests.

It seems like this suggestion is unpopular, so I'd better not upvote it.

Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#23

Post by 1270018080 »

nathias wrote: post #8

If it is profitable it's not a ponzi, the basic feature of a ponzi is that there is no actual profit and the shareholders just take money from each other, or rather pay with liquidity if the ponzi is ongoing. But there actually is a profit to be made and it is made every day by centralized publishers, I welcome any model that would replace the current one, especially if it makes it better for the user.

Crypto is definitely more of a pyramid scheme than a ponzi scheme. You have to keep recruiting greater fools to be able to financially benefit from it yourself. That's the "profit" you are referring to. There's still quite a bit of overlap though.

Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#24

Post by tchock23 »

Ponzi aside, when you need to pay someone to do something you are communicating that the task is inherently unpleasant. Otherwise why would you need to pay someone to do it?

As a producer I may be able to bribe them with tokens to do something (views, votes, followers, etc.), but I'm not buying authentic engagement.

Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#25

Post by meheleventyone »

nathias wrote: post #18
meheleventyone wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea was to have less middlemen?

No, its that there is no middlemen, but the function that the middlemen were doing gets done and now the profit he was making can go to the users and creators.

Sounds suspiciously like you're moving the middlemen around not removing them if a bunch of other people are being paid to do the same job.

Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#27

Post by brandonmenc »

latexr wrote: post #2

> The viewers who watched [Gangnam Style] earned nothing, even though many of them contributed and were critical to the video's ultimate success. What if there was a way to incentivize people upfront to contribute to such a success? What if there was a way to let everyone who contributed earn a piece of the rewards? What if we stopped trying to monetise every single action from every single person every single day? P…

Hey Artists -

Would you like to make even less money than you already do by splitting your rewards with every single person who looked at the thing you did?

Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#28

Post by latexr »

Joker_vD wrote: post #6
latexr wrote: post #2

> The viewers who watched [Gangnam Style] earned nothing, even though many of them contributed and were critical to the video's ultimate success. What if there was a way to incentivize people upfront to contribute to such a success? What if there was a way to let everyone who contributed earn a piece of the rewards? What if we stopped trying to monetise every single action from every single person every single day? P…

> What if we stopped trying to monetise every single action from every single person every single day? Commoditization of labour (and of pretty much everything else TBH) is one of the founding pillars of the capitalism that survived pretty much unchanged from its inception to the modern days, so you proposition is a non-starter. You see, if you prohibit to monetise something that curbs the free entrepreneurial spirit…

I can’t stop thinking of the Tom Toro cartoon[1]:

“Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112030542/https://i.etsysta...

Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#29

Post by nathias »

1270018080 wrote: post #23
nathias wrote: post #8

If it is profitable it's not a ponzi, the basic feature of a ponzi is that there is no actual profit and the shareholders just take money from each other, or rather pay with liquidity if the ponzi is ongoing. But there actually is a profit to be made and it is made every day by centralized publishers, I welcome any model that would replace the current one, especially if it makes it better for the user.

Crypto is definitely more of a pyramid scheme than a ponzi scheme. You have to keep recruiting greater fools to be able to financially benefit from it yourself. That's the "profit" you are referring to. There's still quite a bit of overlap though.

I'm talking about doing videos like in the articles. And no normal cryptos are far from a pyramid scheme almost everything else in fiat and normal economies would fit better.

Re: In Praise of Ponzis

#30

Post by GDC7 »

> "People love a good story. And people believe that the value of this story will only increase over time."

I mean....maybe. But there has to be a moat to create some sort of limited access to the story.

The New York Yankees are an incredible story, most famous franchise in sports and located in what people refer to as the capital of the world.

Still in order to read the next chapter of the Yankees story you need to have 100$ on the side to go to the Bronx and watch it unfold.

Same thing with NFTs, when you are buying a Yankee hat you are paying royalties to the Yankees organization and every brand would fight tooth and nails to remove from the market chinese knock offs.

NFT people have embraced the concept of knockoffs because they think that the larger the distribution the more popular something would become.

Again...maybe, but human psyche is weird, as a fan I'd become suspicious if the Yankees started allwoing everybody in for free at the Yankee stadium.

If the author doesn't give a damn about protecting their work, then what does it tell you about their own perceived quality of the aforementioned work?

Sorry if there's anybody from Boston reading, the same is true for the Red Sox...kinda.

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