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Comment by cyber_kinetist | Hacker News Reader

In current capitalist societies, ownership of property is fully secured by the military (police) and judicial (law) power of the state. NFTs provide you with neither of these (not even copyright protection), so yes: there's no one stopping from doing a right-click on your image.

Maybe if everyone was really "believing" that ownership really originates from the Ethereum blockchain (just like beliving that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is a basis for a system of government), then the ownership could be recognized socially without any coertion or violence. But so far the only people really beliving in this system of values are elites and crypto enthusiasts, so if you really are one of those people who want NFTs to be a basis for ownership, you've be better off pandering to the government to enact laws to arrest people for right-clicking.

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The market dictates the value. As a test, create and mint an exact replica of a Bored Ape NFT and try to sell it for the current minimum price of 32 ETH or around $150k.

I know nothing about NFTs but if I was to forge something for a test, it probably wouldn’t be something that is high profile. I would pick something in the 1-10k range and start from there. /cluelessrant

The result would ultimately be the same, just a less extreme example.

I doubt this. I imagine it is easier to create forgeries of low profile things, lets say a Thomas Kinkade painting vs a Monet. Its also more likely that as the price of an item goes up, the buyer would be more interested in verification.

For context:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership

> Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be any asset, including an object, land or real estate, intellectual property, or until the nineteenth century, human beings.

In light of this

> In current capitalist societies, ownership of property is fully secured by the military (police) and judicial (law) power of the state.

Any examples of non capitalist societies that actually governed more than just a city for more than just a couple of months where there were no enforcement of exclusive rights over anything?

Because if I can think of none, just for example, USSR would get real pissy real fast if you infringed on the exclusive rights which they thought existed over a whole host of things.

Sure, in most non-capitalist societies people had no exclusive rights to their own labor, or their own persons, but there were still many people who had exclusive rights over things that would be enforced by use of force. And the state did have exclusive rights over the person and labor of their subjects, which is a key differentiation from most "capitalistic societies" as you call them.

I wasn't talking anything at all about non-capitalist societies, don't understand where you're coming from.

So then why did you qualify your sentence with "capitalist societies" if what you say applies to non capitalist societies also? And if it does not, give examples.

If you do believe the same thing applies with non-capitalist societies, then you then surely agree even more with my initial criticism with NFTs? (which was the primary thing I was talking about?) I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of this.

Yes, I believe that my statement can be expanded into certain non-capitalist societies also, like in previous instances of feudalism and communism (where the state "owned" everything through military coersion). The reason I've brought out capitalism is because it's the environment in which NFTs were born, and therefore its relationship with it should be talked about it. But what you're talking about has absolutely nothing to do with the main discussion (which is, how state power and ownership is crucially interlinked, and NFT's failure to acknoweledge this is the problem).

> The reason I've brought out capitalism is because it's the environment in which NFTs were born, and therefore its relationship with it should be talked about it.

NFTs are a world 3 construct (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popper%27s_three_worlds) and has no dependency on any economic system or even society to exist and the problem of using them to represent an ownership relation is not limited to any economic system either, but exists due to factors inherent in both the concept of ownership and what NFTs are. NFTs can't reach from world 3 into world 1 by themselves and this is no more or less a problem in any specific economic system.

So we seem to both agree that what NFTs (and blockchain) is doing is actually just bookkeeping, and this “data” cannot invade the physical world unless we actually act upon the physical world according to that data.

What I was talking is: the reaching from world 3 to world 1 (in Popper’s terms) in capitalist societies are often enforced with the absolute power of the state, and “free” markets emanate from that power. NFTs don’t add anything more to this current state of society, since it is just another way of bookkeeping, and the actual reaching from world 3 to world 1 is left unsolved (which for me, how to do this without relying on violence and coercion is the most important question of liberalism, and failure of this will lead to its demise). NFTs and crypto are still exchanged in US dollars, and people always talk about it in how many US dollars it represents. So value is ultimately delegated to the dollar, the dollar which holds its global monetary status via the US’s hegemonic military power, so we’re back to our current problem.

So, do you think NFTs can actually change the current status quo? Does it bring anything new to the equation?

> So, do you think NFTs can actually change the current status quo? Does it bring anything new to the equation?

No, it does not change the status quo, and brings nothing new to the equation.

To kind of rephrase what you said slightly: All ownership relations exists in world 3, that is their nature, they can't act in world 1. NFTs don't bring anything to the table here, crypto does not bring anything to the table here. With NFTs, ownership relations is still a world 3 thing, and world 3 things still cannot act in world 1. And no enforcement mechanisms we currently have for ownership relations give any special recognition or consideration to NFTs, blockchain or crypto assets.

The only disagreement we have is that I don't think it makes sense to qualify sentences with "capitalist societies" when the claims they make are more broad. It's a bit like saying "all Furry mammals are characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young", it may be true, but the word "furry" in that sentence adds negative value:

http://www.biomedicaleditor.com/hedging.html

> To strengthen your argument and increase clarity, limit the number of qualifiers in each sentence to only those necessary for accuracy—the remaining qualifiers will then do their job well.

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