[HN Gopher] The Most Important Scarce Resource Is Legitimacy
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The Most Important Scarce Resource Is Legitimacy
Author : ve55
Score : 29 points
Date : 2021-03-23 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vitalik.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (vitalik.ca)
| akyu wrote:
| It seems that nearly every "public good" in the Ethereum
| ecosystem got gobbled up by VCs and pivoted to for-profit
| endeavors. I don't mind VCs and I don't mind people seeking
| profit, but this moral high ground that Ethereum has been trying
| to build for itself is delusional. In practice it is just a
| marketing gimmick.
|
| An astute observer may have noticed that Vitalik has a habit of
| coming up with definitions that only himself and the Ethereum
| foundation can meet the standards of.
|
| The reality is everyone is just trying to make money. I think we
| are better off coming to terms with that instead of living in a
| collective fantasy.
| capableweb wrote:
| > The reality is everyone is just trying to make money. I think
| we are better off coming to terms with that instead of living
| in a collective fantasy.
|
| The reality is that not everyone does the same thing for the
| same reasons. No, not everyone working in the Ethereum
| ecosystem does so just to make quick money, just like not
| everyone is working in the military just to kill people, some
| try to help make the world better.
| [deleted]
| akyu wrote:
| Don't worry, what I'm telling you is actually good for your
| bags. You should be happy about this.
| pjscott wrote:
| Public goods are by definition non-rivalrous and non-
| excludable. How can they be gobbled?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
|
| (I'm not being pedantic here. The concept of a public good, in
| this technical sense, is a very important concept to have --
| and it's specifically the kind of "public goods" the article
| was talking about, along with ideas for improving their
| tendency to be under-supplied. Goods that can be gobbled up by
| someone tend to be produced at closer to the optimum amount,
| since there's a less diffuse private incentive for their
| production.)
| tshaddox wrote:
| Presumably the parent commenter is talking about providers
| (or potential providers) of public goods being gobbled up,
| leading to the classic economic problem that public goods
| tend to be under-produced.
| akyu wrote:
| Yea partially that, and also the fact that multiple
| projects used "public goods" language to bootstrap
| themselves and then pivoted into VC funded for profits.
| akyu wrote:
| Ok show me examples.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Why is it that Elon Musk can sell an NFT of Elon Musk's tweet,
| but Jeff Bezos would have a much harder time doing the same? Elon
| and Jeff have the same level of ability to screenshot Elon's
| tweet and stick it into an NFT dapp, so what's the difference? To
| anyone who has even a basic intuitive understanding of human
| social psychology (or the fake art scene), the answer is obvious:
| Elon selling Elon's tweet is the real thing, and Jeff doing the
| same is not. Once again, millions of dollars of value are being
| controlled and allocated, not by individuals or cryptographic
| keys, but by social conceptions of legitimacy._
|
| It seems like Vitalik has stumbled into another restatement of
| the famous essay _" What Colour are your bits?"_[1] ... which is
| basically a poetic way of saying _" What _Provenance_ are your
| bits?"_
|
| Provenance matters.
|
| (But I'm not claiming that NFTs will have enduring value. I can't
| tell if they will be a fad or not.)
|
| [1]
| https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23#:~:text=Having%20identica....
| capableweb wrote:
| A curious observation about NFTs that many on HN seems to have
| missed in other threads:
|
| > Why is it that Elon Musk can sell an NFT of Elon Musk's tweet,
| but Jeff Bezos would have a much harder time doing the same? Elon
| and Jeff have the same level of ability to screenshot Elon's
| tweet and stick it into an NFT dapp, so what's the difference? To
| anyone who has even a basic intuitive understanding of human
| social psychology (or the fake art scene), the answer is obvious:
| Elon selling Elon's tweet is the real thing, and Jeff doing the
| same is not. Once again, millions of dollars of value are being
| controlled and allocated, not by individuals or cryptographic
| keys, but by social conceptions of legitimacy.
| sporkologist wrote:
| Do NFT's really only have value upon their first sale? Wouldn't
| that be basically a donation to Elon with no expectation of
| value on the secondary market?
| Swizec wrote:
| Otherwise known as the reason large art sales exist: Money
| laundering et al.
|
| It is _very_ convenient when you get to call your money
| transfer "A Sale". If the thing you're buying has a publicly
| verifiable (albeit dubious/preposterous) market value, you
| aren't even committing fraud!
| Jarwain wrote:
| Resale of an NFT is different; since you can look up previous
| owners of the NFT there's a way to validate "yes this NFT is
| the one originally sold by Elon".
|
| The NFT has value Because it was the one Elon sold and
| signified as legit, versus the NFT some random person sold
| kybernetikos wrote:
| To me it seems that NFTs could include some part of the bundle
| of IP rights that typically go along with an artistic work.
|
| For example, the artist could create a license that allows only
| the current owner of the NFT to make a physical copy, or a
| right to be credited whenever a physical copy is exhibited or
| something like that.
|
| I suppose I'm thinking in terms of what an ultra rich person
| gets from owning a famous artwork, if they then lend it to a
| public gallery and allow everyone to see it - I presume it's
| the right to have a little card next to it that says 'on loan
| from the collection of X'. I think NFTs could provide something
| of the same experience for 'owners' of digital assets.
| Jarwain wrote:
| I think if Jeff Bezos decided to sell an NFT of Elon's first
| tweet, there would be more value there compared to if some
| random person sold an NFT representing the same thing
| capableweb wrote:
| Correct, but maybe you're missing the point if that's your
| first thought. It now becomes "The NFT that Jeff Bezos made
| of Elon's first tweet", not the "Elon Musk NFT of Elon Musk",
| both obviously much more "interesting" (for human reasons? I
| don't know, don't care) than the "John Smith NFT of Elon
| Musk"
| maxerickson wrote:
| If Elon can sell his own tweet NFTs better than anybody else
| can, that's a pretty good argument that they are gonna be a
| novelty and not some new form of art exchange.
|
| Because what are the buyers of the Elon-tweet NFTs gonna do
| when they decide they want something else for their 'value'?
| They are gonna try and sell the Elon-tweet NFT and find out
| that they lack legitimacy!
| wmf wrote:
| You're misunderstanding the argument. Elon can _create_ the
| NFT due to his legitimacy, but subsequent trading of those
| NFTs doesn 't require legitimacy because ownership is tracked
| on the blockchain.
| maxerickson wrote:
| No, I'm mocking the whole idea, I understand the difference
| between origination and selling.
|
| I do legitimately think that novelty is a big factor, and
| buying an Elon-tweet NFT from some random guy is gonna have
| way less novelty value than buying it from Elon.
| wmf wrote:
| I agree. Overpaying for NFTs is like performance art; the
| value isn't in owning the NFT itself.
| zuhayeer wrote:
| Legitimacy sounds very much like consensus
| vbuterin wrote:
| It is.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Even though he promotes NFTs as a way for artists to capture
| value...he also proposes that there is a charity component? Um,
| what?
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