Well-known NFT collector: On the social optimum of NFTs for art
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Well-known NFT collector: On the social optimum of NFTs for art
NFT provides a highly superior model for simultaneously maximizing both private and public interests.
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Original title: NFTs are the most socially optimal art platform
Author: Punk6529
Compilation: TechFlow
NFTs are the most socially optimal art platform we have discovered so far. Art serves a variety of private and public functions.
NFTs have already solved how to serve these functions simultaneously—and there’s even more beyond that.
Let’s start with the private functions of art.
For artists, art allows them to express a certain perspective—one they believe should exist in the world.
This is the creative/artistic/expressive aspect of art.
Artists, like everyone else, need money to live, so the evolved economic models are roughly:
a) Private patronage/commissions
b) Public patronage/commissions
c) Purchasing major works (private or public)
There’s usually a trade-off between models a/b and model c.
When funded in advance by private or public entities, there's inevitably concern over whether the funder will accept the artwork.
The Soviet Union had extensive state-funded art, but it had to be guaranteed "compliant."
Private or corporate patrons impose similar constraints.
Very few private or public patrons are enlightened enough to fund art that criticizes them or their interests.
Model c) has the opposite trade-off. Artists can create freely as they wish, but...
There's a risk the market may not appreciate their art—either at the time of creation or in the future.
This is where the cliché of the “misunderstood genius artist” comes from.
Many artists (like Van Gogh, famously) were unappreciated in their own time—“ahead” of the market.
Buyers/collectors also gain private benefits. Broadly speaking, these include:
a) Cultural capital (“coolness” as an art collector)
b) Access (to other cool people)
c) Price appreciation/investment
d) Sense of ownership
e) Identity
Art also provides public benefits that belong neither to the artist nor to collectors.
I didn’t paint Guernica, nor do I own it, yet Guernica enriches and improves my life.
This, broadly speaking, is why public and private museums exist.
In terms of social value, public benefits often vastly exceed private ones.
No matter how much private benefit Picasso or the Reina Sofia Museum derive from Guernica, the total public benefit to “everyone else on Earth” is likely far greater.
In traditional art, collectors’ private benefits and the public’s collective benefit are mutually exclusive because physical artworks can only be in one place at a time.
Narrowly speaking, you buy art for yourself and hang it on your wall…
Because you want to see it, enjoy it, feel its ownership and unique identity—which is perfectly fine—but only about 50 people who visit your home regularly can see it.
Thus, a common pattern among collectors is they keep buying and buying.
Then they grow old—or pass away—and two things often happen:
a) They donate to a museum, converting this model into public benefit
b) Their heirs sell the works because the identity aspect is weak or nonexistent for them, and they prefer cash.
NFTs offer a vastly superior model for maximizing both private and public benefits at once.
First and most obviously, NFTs separate ownership and identity from display.
For example, everyone on NFT Twitter knows I own summer.jpg.
I retain the private benefits of ownership and identity—as an early appreciator who recognized its genius—as well as price appreciation. Yet, at the same time, every other person with internet access can view and enjoy it under the exact same conditions as me.
Summer.jpg isn't locked in my living room, waiting for me to age and/or die before donating it decades later to a museum for others to finally see.
This is a massive win for me. It's also great for @X_COPYART—his work remains visible to the world.
Sometimes people outside the NFT space get upset, perhaps right-clicking to save.
“But if everyone can see it, why pay so much?”
I find this hilarious. I don’t want to hide summer.jpg like Gollum hiding his precious.
Buying art to hide it from others (or worse, storing it tax-free in a Swiss freeport warehouse) is the pettiest, meanest form of art collecting.
The greatest collectors and patrons of the past paid for and built entire museums for the public good.
In this case, NFTs provide the best of both worlds.
a) Token ownership provides clear proof of ownership
b) At the same time, full global public access and distribution are enabled—without paying for museum concrete, steel, electricity, or security guards
That’s the foundational innovation—and over time, we’ll see three additional innovations:
The first is composability: Specifically, NFTs can be activated within any programmable environment.
We’re in day one, minute one of realizing programmable NFT potential.
The difference in scope between a computer-activated NFT and a painting carefully hung on a wall or a print is enormous.
The second is rights management. It’s still primitive today, but we’ll soon develop machine-readable standards for NFT rights—commercial, non-commercial, public domain, etc.
This further enhances NFT composability and promotes its growth.
The third is secondary royalties.
This enables art ahead of its time to find its initial market price (low), but as worldviews shift and markets grow around the artist, the artist benefits from price appreciation.
Overall, it’s a fairer model.
In short, NFTs allow:
1) Better private benefits for artists
2) Better private benefits for collectors
3) Better public benefits for everyone else
*All achieved simultaneously.*
This is a strong Pareto improvement—everyone gains, and no one loses.
Original link:
https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1493973723547934726
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