7 ms·

Aka "people should spend money on what I want them to instead of what they want to, because I'm morally superior to them"

amelius 6y ago
Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money. Not sure how to feel morally neutral about it.
- fortran77 6y ago
  How many poor people were harmed because of NFTs? In fact, it seemed to transfer a great deal of wealth to an artist who was formerly of modest means.
  - afterburner 6y ago
    Seems mostly to transfer wealth to already famous or rich people. The rich buying stuff from each other. Perhaps even laundering money as they do so.
    - fortran77 6y ago
      I will concur that the art market in general seems like a way to store, hide, and transfer wealth.
  - dorkwood 6y ago
    It can costs upwards of 200 dollars to mint an NFT, and it's quite common to see artists who have minted several NFTs but not sold anything yet. I'd say the likelihood that poor people are being harmed is quite high.
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      Those are temporary growing pains as demand for Ethereum block space exceeds supply, and will be solved with the ImmutableX NFT-focused zkRollup, which will increase Ethereum's maximum throughput from 15 NFT transactions per second to 8,000: https://www.immutable.com/ https://www.immutable.com/
      - dorkwood 6y ago
        How temporary? I can't find a timeline on their website.
        CryptoPunk 6y ago
        They say this month: https://www.immutable.com/blog/design-architecture https://www.immutable.com/blog/design-architecture
        dorkwood 6y ago
        Oh, it seems like it's only for their card-trading game? So they're essentially saving themselves money on gas fees? I'm more interested in the fees affecting individual artists. > We’re sprinting towards March 2021. Immutable X alpha release is still expected in March 2021 for Gods Unchained, and coming to other partner games and marketplaces soon after.
        CryptoPunk 6y ago
        Their alpha release only works with one card game, yes. Their platform is going to be open for every one eventually, though I don't know when that is expected to happen.
    - fortran77 6y ago
      So you are saying there are "poor people" who are harming themselves (going without food, shelter, medical treatment) because they spent money on minting NFTs? If that's true, I will be more than happy to retract my statement. But I think I have little to worry about.
      - dorkwood 6y ago
        Sounds like I won't be able to produce any evidence that will satisfy your criteria. I personally consider "tricking people into thinking they'll make lots of money if they spend hundreds of dollars minting NFTs" to be a harmful activity.
  - Jolter 6y ago
    You think the NFT money goes to the artist? What are you basing that belief on?
    - fortran77 6y ago
      Profiles of "Beeple". For example: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beeple-mike-winkelmann-nft-interview/ https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beepl...
- mikewarot 6y ago
  >Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money. If the money goes to some random person who has managed to with the largess of the rich person lottery, instead of down the drain... it's different.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  If someone destroys their own money, that is a pure gift to the rest of society. If that doesn't make sense to you, you have not understood what money is!
  - amelius 6y ago
    A gift in the form of an insult. There are more productive ways to deal with wealth inequality.
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      Maybe you get your feelings of rage and envy get in the way of clear thinking. In my experience, that doesn't serve one well.
      - amelius 6y ago
        You can't be emotionless about money. If this were false, then rich people could make you do anything they want, which I hope for you is not the case.
        CryptoPunk 6y ago
        Not letting envy/rage override logic != emotionless.
- DenisM 6y ago
  When someone wipes their ass with money they remove the bill from circulation making the rest of the money worth a little bit more.
anoncake 6y ago
No, it's a sign that some people have way more money than they need. Which is a waste as long as other people have to worry about getting food on the table.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Wealth is not zero sum. People having more than they need doesn't harm others, and redistributing their 'excess' wealth will undermine the private property rights that incentivize and sustain effective investment. Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    There is no evidence for that. Markets don't randomly stop working because you tax people – they would be quite useless tools if they were that fragile. > Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system. If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book.
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      There is plenty of evidence for that, that economists have documented for nearly a century. For example, there is a very strong negative correlation between government spending, as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth: https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/uploads/335309_OptimalSizeOfGovernment.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/upl... And no markets will not "stop working". They'll work less effectively. >>If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book. Every one's understanding of nation/global scale systems is overly simplistic, which is why it's impossible to predict what the market will do. In the absence of near-perfect knowedge, it's better to not interfere with spontaneously emergent bottom-up phenomena, like prices, or the market, via far-reaching cookie cutter rules. EDIT: With respect to below, I can't respond with a new comment due to comment rate-limiting, so I'll respond here: It's not an opinion. They show the data, from 81 countries, over a span of decades, and show a pervasive correlation. The evidence speaks for itself. This liberal think tank was instituted in a country that experienced 50 years of central economic planning, based on economically illiterate left-wing conspiracy-theories/economic-fallacies, so maybe they have legitimate cause to promote markets. But go ahead and look down on them with your snarky derision. >>Not really? There are other countries than the US which have had a significantly larger government (as well as higher taxes), or so called mixed-economies, that did just fine or even great? Which countries? The data shows a strong negative correlation between government size and economic growth, within a dataset of 81 countries. Look at Europe: the rise of social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP since the mid 1960s corresponded with stagnation in productivity and wage growth, just like occurred in the US. >>As a side point, there's a discussion to be had regarding economic growth and GDP. Per capita GDP growth, i.e. rising productivity, is the primary cause of improvements in quality of life. If ever you've lived in a country with low per capita GDP, and seen how ordinary people have to struggle so much more to afford to meet basic needs, you'd see why. It's absolutely not the only factor impacting quality of life, it's true. GDP statistics are also not a perfect measure of productivity. But it's a very very good measure, of a very important contributor to quality of life, and if a particular way of organizing an economy is associated with this measure increasing at a slower rate, that is extremely important. Economic growth rates, over longer periods of time, have a massive impact, because they have an exponential effect. A country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 4% will see double the income growth of a country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 2%, after only 35 years. EDIT 2: >>Which countries would you pick yourself as counter-evidence? Norway, but it discovered oil in the 1970s, and was one of the top oil exporters in the world for decades with a population of only 4.5 million. But anecdotes are not as important as large datasets, and large datasets show a strong correlation between small government (relative to GDP) and high economic growth rates. >>feigned care of the poor It's always good to assume that the person you're interacting with might be debating in good faith, and know things you don't. But I agree with the rest of that statement: it's anecdotal, just like the counter-examples you're searching for. >>A GDP growth of 2-3% per year is also deeply unsustainable, doubling the economy every few decades can't continue. It is sustainable for many many decades to come given returns from rising efficiency, and harvesting resources outside of earth, which are several orders of magnitude more plentiful than resources available on Earth. Your pessimistic outlook reminds me of this: "It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object: in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution" -John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848, said at a time when the per capita GDP of the UK was the same as Kenya's today, i.e. 20X less.

amelius 6y ago

Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money. Not sure how to feel morally neutral about it.

fortran77 6y ago
How many poor people were harmed because of NFTs? In fact, it seemed to transfer a great deal of wealth to an artist who was formerly of modest means.
- afterburner 6y ago
  Seems mostly to transfer wealth to already famous or rich people. The rich buying stuff from each other. Perhaps even laundering money as they do so.
  - fortran77 6y ago
    I will concur that the art market in general seems like a way to store, hide, and transfer wealth.
- dorkwood 6y ago
  It can costs upwards of 200 dollars to mint an NFT, and it's quite common to see artists who have minted several NFTs but not sold anything yet. I'd say the likelihood that poor people are being harmed is quite high.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Those are temporary growing pains as demand for Ethereum block space exceeds supply, and will be solved with the ImmutableX NFT-focused zkRollup, which will increase Ethereum's maximum throughput from 15 NFT transactions per second to 8,000: https://www.immutable.com/ https://www.immutable.com/
    - dorkwood 6y ago
      How temporary? I can't find a timeline on their website.
      - CryptoPunk 6y ago
        They say this month: https://www.immutable.com/blog/design-architecture https://www.immutable.com/blog/design-architecture
        dorkwood 6y ago
        Oh, it seems like it's only for their card-trading game? So they're essentially saving themselves money on gas fees? I'm more interested in the fees affecting individual artists. > We’re sprinting towards March 2021. Immutable X alpha release is still expected in March 2021 for Gods Unchained, and coming to other partner games and marketplaces soon after.
        CryptoPunk 6y ago
        Their alpha release only works with one card game, yes. Their platform is going to be open for every one eventually, though I don't know when that is expected to happen.
  - fortran77 6y ago
    So you are saying there are "poor people" who are harming themselves (going without food, shelter, medical treatment) because they spent money on minting NFTs? If that's true, I will be more than happy to retract my statement. But I think I have little to worry about.
    - dorkwood 6y ago
      Sounds like I won't be able to produce any evidence that will satisfy your criteria. I personally consider "tricking people into thinking they'll make lots of money if they spend hundreds of dollars minting NFTs" to be a harmful activity.
- Jolter 6y ago
  You think the NFT money goes to the artist? What are you basing that belief on?
  - fortran77 6y ago
    Profiles of "Beeple". For example: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beeple-mike-winkelmann-nft-interview/ https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beepl...
mikewarot 6y ago
>Buying NFTs is the public equivalent of wiping your -ss with money. If the money goes to some random person who has managed to with the largess of the rich person lottery, instead of down the drain... it's different.
BurningFrog 6y ago
If someone destroys their own money, that is a pure gift to the rest of society. If that doesn't make sense to you, you have not understood what money is!
- amelius 6y ago
  A gift in the form of an insult. There are more productive ways to deal with wealth inequality.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    Maybe you get your feelings of rage and envy get in the way of clear thinking. In my experience, that doesn't serve one well.
    - amelius 6y ago
      You can't be emotionless about money. If this were false, then rich people could make you do anything they want, which I hope for you is not the case.
      - CryptoPunk 6y ago
        Not letting envy/rage override logic != emotionless.
DenisM 6y ago
When someone wipes their ass with money they remove the bill from circulation making the rest of the money worth a little bit more.

anoncake 6y ago

No, it's a sign that some people have way more money than they need. Which is a waste as long as other people have to worry about getting food on the table.

CryptoPunk 6y ago
Wealth is not zero sum. People having more than they need doesn't harm others, and redistributing their 'excess' wealth will undermine the private property rights that incentivize and sustain effective investment. Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system.
- anoncake 6y ago
  There is no evidence for that. Markets don't randomly stop working because you tax people – they would be quite useless tools if they were that fragile. > Generally interfering with social processes through top-down cookie cutter measures leads to negative unintended consequences, because the rationale behind said intervention is based on an overly simplistic understanding of a highly complex system. If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    There is plenty of evidence for that, that economists have documented for nearly a century. For example, there is a very strong negative correlation between government spending, as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth: https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/uploads/335309_OptimalSizeOfGovernment.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/upl... And no markets will not "stop working". They'll work less effectively. >>If my understanding of the system seems highly simplistic, it may be because I wrote an HN comment two sentences long as opposed to a book. Every one's understanding of nation/global scale systems is overly simplistic, which is why it's impossible to predict what the market will do. In the absence of near-perfect knowedge, it's better to not interfere with spontaneously emergent bottom-up phenomena, like prices, or the market, via far-reaching cookie cutter rules. EDIT: With respect to below, I can't respond with a new comment due to comment rate-limiting, so I'll respond here: It's not an opinion. They show the data, from 81 countries, over a span of decades, and show a pervasive correlation. The evidence speaks for itself. This liberal think tank was instituted in a country that experienced 50 years of central economic planning, based on economically illiterate left-wing conspiracy-theories/economic-fallacies, so maybe they have legitimate cause to promote markets. But go ahead and look down on them with your snarky derision. >>Not really? There are other countries than the US which have had a significantly larger government (as well as higher taxes), or so called mixed-economies, that did just fine or even great? Which countries? The data shows a strong negative correlation between government size and economic growth, within a dataset of 81 countries. Look at Europe: the rise of social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP since the mid 1960s corresponded with stagnation in productivity and wage growth, just like occurred in the US. >>As a side point, there's a discussion to be had regarding economic growth and GDP. Per capita GDP growth, i.e. rising productivity, is the primary cause of improvements in quality of life. If ever you've lived in a country with low per capita GDP, and seen how ordinary people have to struggle so much more to afford to meet basic needs, you'd see why. It's absolutely not the only factor impacting quality of life, it's true. GDP statistics are also not a perfect measure of productivity. But it's a very very good measure, of a very important contributor to quality of life, and if a particular way of organizing an economy is associated with this measure increasing at a slower rate, that is extremely important. Economic growth rates, over longer periods of time, have a massive impact, because they have an exponential effect. A country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 4% will see double the income growth of a country with a per capita GDP growth rate of 2%, after only 35 years. EDIT 2: >>Which countries would you pick yourself as counter-evidence? Norway, but it discovered oil in the 1970s, and was one of the top oil exporters in the world for decades with a population of only 4.5 million. But anecdotes are not as important as large datasets, and large datasets show a strong correlation between small government (relative to GDP) and high economic growth rates. >>feigned care of the poor It's always good to assume that the person you're interacting with might be debating in good faith, and know things you don't. But I agree with the rest of that statement: it's anecdotal, just like the counter-examples you're searching for. >>A GDP growth of 2-3% per year is also deeply unsustainable, doubling the economy every few decades can't continue. It is sustainable for many many decades to come given returns from rising efficiency, and harvesting resources outside of earth, which are several orders of magnitude more plentiful than resources available on Earth. Your pessimistic outlook reminds me of this: "It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object: in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution" -John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848, said at a time when the per capita GDP of the UK was the same as Kenya's today, i.e. 20X less.