YouTube link here. Addie makes a visit!
It’s a long one this week, AND no question. But we really felt that more needed to be said about NFTs, and we both watched a LOT of movies (some of us documentaries, some of us absolute trash). We also give an explanation for why Tony was a dick last week. We do not give an explanation for why Tony was a dick this week. Or all the other weeks. Enjoy!
PLEASE NOTE: The documentary mentioned in the episode is on Disney+, and is titled “Drain the Sunken Pirate City”.
QUESTIONS:
None. We bad.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Er… I misspoke… I meant to say that Port Royal was one of the largest cities in the *Western Hemisphere*, and I think it was the largest English city on this side of the Atlantic at the time. Sorry for the confusion!
And yet, no apology for the fact that the documentary you suggested didn’t contain the words “draining” OR “Port Royal”. 😉
Also, in the US, we called it a Port Quarter Pounder.
Oh yeah, that, too.
“For me this changes the shape of the world. For you who were slaves with me, it means that we’re no longer slaves, that we once more have a home and a country. For you who are English it means a chance to fight for your native land… for I now propose to sail into Port Royal and take it from the French!”
Captain Blood?
Indeed.
I’m not sure I really understand NFTs but your conversation made me think of the differences between exchange value, use value, and labor value. Exchange value is the value something has compared to other objects in the market place. Use value has to do with the material use to which an object can be put (fulfilling a need/want). And labor value is the amount of labor time it took to produce it.
I think this gets a bit trickier when we’re talking about artistic creation because I think some people argue that art doesn’t really have use value, but I’d disagree with that. Art does fulfill a need/want and I would argue that this does have to do with it’s physical properties.
To use the contrasting examples about Tony making a million dollars from his book, this is how I’d explain the contrast using those terms.
Example 1. A billionaire pays Tony a million dollars because there’s some way that Tony makes a particular edition of the book unique. I’ve changed this to a billionaire because I think realistically a millionaire would not be throwing around a million dollars, but for someone who’s incredibly wealthy, a million dollars is chump change.
Example 2. A 100,000 people buy Tony’s book for $10.
In the second example, I think the labor value on Tony’s side would consist of the value of making something desirable and entertaining enough that 100,000 would want to buy it (wanting it=use value). There’d also be labor value on his side in having to promote the book. And the exchange value of $10 would represent labor value on the side of the consumer. Maybe there a few billionaires in that mix of 100,000, but for the majority of people that $10 is going to represent 30 minutes – 1 hour of labor time.
In the first example, the billionaire is really paying for whatever the symbol of uniqueness is. And it doesn’t seem to me that that symbol represents much in the way of actual labor time. You could say the billionaire is also getting the work that Tony put into making the book, but really that’s not what they are paying for because if that’s what they wanted they could pay $10. And then one has to ask where does the labor value come from that allows a mega-rich person to pay a million dollars for a symbol of uniqueness? I think we can say generally that it’s not the labor value of the mega-rich person. Jeff Bezos makes approximately $9 million dollars/hour. I don’t think anyone’s labor is worth that much. So the labor value is coming from other people–people who don’t have a million dollars to spend on a symbol of uniqueness. And the use value for the billionaire of having a symbol of uniqueness isn’t about how fun or entertaining the book is (which is what I think the use value is for the general consumer); it’s a kind of bragging rights/status symbol. And what does that symbol mean–it means they have enough money that a million dollars for them is chump change.
Was hot hail a reference to the 7th plague of Egypt and why am I turning into the shows Old Testament fact checker?
NFTs are also, apparently, pretty wasteful of energy as it takes a lot of maintain the black chains. I legitimately love that William sees the benign use of these things and hasn’t deceived Tony’s cynicism that things like NFTs can be exploited for the benefit of the ultra wealthy and the waste of resources they can piss away that could change lives if applied well.
I’m noticing that shift in myself lately from capitalist or ethical anarchist or libertarian left to more democratic socialist. I love the idea that we can all be free to do and pursue anything and letting the real free market shake things out, but the last 4 years or so have proven to me that the bulk of humanity is too stupid, greedy and evil to let that work and leashes need places.
I need to see Psycho Gore Man soon, I don’t have my usually dumb movie buddies. All 12 year olds are borderline sociopaths.
Do you list to Brea Grant on Reading Glasses? I have meant to try and I just have too many podcasts.
Nope. Not familiar with the podcast.
I think the term “free market” is really a misnomer. The idea of the free market which kind of comes out of the 18-19th century market revolution is that markets are these self-contained units unaffected by any outside force, but in fact markets don’t have a kind of natural order isolated from the historical, social, or political eras in which they exist. There’s a book called “The Illusion of the Free Market” which I haven’t read yet, but which looks very interesting. The author, Bernard Harcourt, juxtaposes the market revolution with the development of policing and asks why on the one hand we think that the government is not to be trusted as a means of control when it comes to the market, but is given this incredible leeway to control the individual. I’d venture an answer to that question myself which is that the idea of the free market hides the way in which markets and government are actually very connected (probably to the mutual benefit of both), and one of the ways in which government benefits the market is in policing the individual–who in this scenario is represented as not being capable of having freedom (unlike the market) because so inherently corrupt and in need of control.
Here’s a link to the author talking about that book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAj7a_VXmuQ.
It appears that Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is a big fan of the Hat, listens right away, and draws very quickly. Because this was today’s comic:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/nft