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The Tinkerbell Griftopia

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#11

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

casi18 wrote: post #4

> "Information doesn't want to be free anymore" “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive....That tension will not go away” - Stuart Brand Think about the whole quote and NFTs will make more sense to you. NFT != DRM go wild, right click and torrent. i'll send you my nft images myself if you want them. the signatures and the economic security of that signature taking place is valuable. ther…

> the signatures and the economic security of that signature taking place is valuable

Except, it isn't. What is the point in having a certificate of ownership of a resource so un-scare that it is practically free?

We have achieved post-scarcity of information, and people are desperately trying to cram scarcity-based economics back into it because that's all our society knows how to deal with. We should instead be working to remake society around the new reality, in my opinion.

> but in the words of satoshi “If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry.”

Yeah, that's what scam artists say. Tell everybody you have a miracle, instill some FOMO, and when people poke at the holes tell them you don't have time to explain it to them or it is too complicated, but trust me it's great.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#13

Post by trevyn »

I think he missed the part where the crypto infrastructure is aggressively based on open-source, abundance, post-scarcity, universal access, and equality.

The current "assets" that are traded are indeed meaningless, as is most of what people buy with money beyond food and basic shelter. This is what initial post-scarcity looks like: people being ridiculous with assets because they realize that assets themselves are ridiculous, because post-scarcity.

We're in a transition period, a lot of old structures don't work anymore. We're just starting to rebuild critical functions using new ways of thinking. One of my favorite examples: https://cryptoforthehomeless.org/

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#14

Post by convexfunction »

Very weird to frame crypto as contrasting with "an open source culture that, at least aspirationally, built software around ideas of abundance, post-scarcity, universal access, and equality". Were the "older grizzled engineers" all literal communists or what?

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#16

Post by colesantiago »

Devil's Advocate: Do cryptocurrencies have _any_ legitimate use case?

I can see that some newer and non-mineable coins, Solana, Avalanche, Hedera, XRP, XLM, etc don't have mining issues that the big coins (BTC, ETH, Chia, etc) have.

Is what I am seeing from critics that there has been absolutely no progress whatsoever in this space?

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#17

Post by casi18 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #11
casi18 wrote: post #4

> "Information doesn't want to be free anymore" “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive....That tension will not go away” - Stuart Brand Think about the whole quote and NFTs will make more sense to you. NFT != DRM go wild, right click and torrent. i'll send you my nft images myself if you want them. the signatures and the economic security of that signature taking place is valuable. ther…

> the signatures and the economic security of that signature taking place is valuable Except, it isn't. What is the point in having a certificate of ownership of a resource so un-scare that it is practically free? We have achieved post-scarcity of information, and people are desperately trying to cram scarcity-based economics back into it because that's all our society knows how to deal with. We should instead be wor…

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!

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#18

Post by vehemenz »

reedf1 wrote: post #10

It's hard to take takes like this seriously when they get the basic premise wrong. It's flowery and cute but its a lot of writing with very little substance.

How did they get the premise wrong? What premise? If you're going to try undercutting a 1,000 word essay, you'll need to work to get there.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#19

Post by lostcolony »

casi18 wrote: post #4

> "Information doesn't want to be free anymore" “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive....That tension will not go away” - Stuart Brand Think about the whole quote and NFTs will make more sense to you. NFT != DRM go wild, right click and torrent. i'll send you my nft images myself if you want them. the signatures and the economic security of that signature taking place is valuable. ther…

If NFTs get the economics right, then there is literally no need for any sort of IP law when it comes to digital assets. After all, the profitable thing is proof of ownership, not the good.

And yet, no one is paying (to grab a software company out of a hat) Oracle for the Oracle "name". They're paying for the software. The closest we have is paying for "proof of authenticity", because that belied a level of quality, but if we can trivially make a perfect copy, even that loses all merit.

Re: The Tinkerbell Griftopia

#20

Post by pphysch »

It is worth ruminating on how this 21st century Tinkerbell Griftopia started.

Most of the proponents would have grown up roughly within the period 1991-2008. After the Cold War, before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The zenith of neoliberalism. The globalized USD seemed invincible, a worldwide Tinkerbell.

Then the GFC happened. The USD-based system was not infallible after all.

But it is hard to overcome our conditioning. Rather than evolve beyond the financial Tinkerbell mindset, increasing numbers of disillusioned have looked for a new Tinkerbell to believe in. Just listen to one of their slogans: "Fix the money, fix the world". Bitcoin happened to pop up also in 2008. The stage was set for a Tinkerbell revolution.

My prediction is that the money will never be "fixed", and the global economy will continue to migrate away from the free-market financial Tinkerbell model of the last 75 years and towards computer-driven allocation and trading systems between sovereign governments and global corporations. For example, Ford Motor just inked a (non-binding) partnership with Global Foundries for car chips. Expect to see a lot more of these bilateral economic partnerships and less free-market chaos over the coming decades.

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