> The distributed work is valued not because of the material (a piece of paper) or its contents (a rendered image), because it was distributed and signed by the artist's hand. Anybody could photocopy that print to produce the same rendered contents, or even print their own copy if they have access to a high resolution file and inkjet printer, but the copy would be worth no value, because it did not come from the artist's hand.
But that would require a distribution of NFT in excess of 1.
People are not minting 50 or 500 NFTs which are all the same as in your example.
People are minting 1 NFT and selling it . At that point one person (the buyer) has the original and the rest of people on the internet just screenshots it to have a 1:1 identical piece of art, which are all just the same as the original.
Plus your example also forgets one important element: the scarcity of the time and the social relationships of the artist. The 50 printed and signed editions are considered worthy because the artist had to subtract time from whatever other activity they had planned in order to sign the copies.
Once you make the process of "signing NFTs" automatized (like for example making a transaction on the blockchain via smart contract) the whole magic and scarcity of it disappears.
Maybe you could secure the scarcity by making it expensive for the artist to mint the NFT, but then they'd be the ones protesting and not adopting the tech.