Isn't most real world art buying also about social signaling and the scarcity and uniqueness associated with it?
If I was a billionaire, I would definitely own some $100K watches and probably have some million dollar artwork.
Why? Because some expensive watches are really nice, and so are some expensive paintings, and why wouldn’t I buy them if I could easily afford them?
I'd hope I'd consider it for barely a half second then elect instead to give that money to charity instead.
I'm regularly in this mind, walking as I do around London and seeing the sheer array of useless crap that monied people spend money on to advertise the fact they have money. Instead, I wonder at how many people's lives could have been eased if instead of that expensive car, they'd bought a car actually suited to this city.
.
As an aside to this, I spent a week working at the house of a Rothschild a few years back. His admittedly fancy pad was utterly laden with artworks. His car, on the other hand, was a crappy small Japanese thing and he dressed about as scrappily as I do. I had a lot of respect for that chap.
Why not just say you are an inverse snob?
Enjoy your watch or whatever other pointless tat it is that you value.
For me, personally I look at the life of someone like Roger Smith, and envy his craftsmanship and dedication to mastery. I see a great deal of similarity between him, and say John Carmack - as dedicated masters of their medium.
I would like to own a Roger Smith watch, partly because it’s beautiful, and partly because I would like to live in a world where more people get to develop their skills, and where skills are passed on, and artistry is encouraged.
Of course it’s terrible that more people don’t have the opportunity to do this, but that doesn’t have anything to do with watches.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_W._Smith
Yes, it’s easier for the rich to possess art than the poor, of course. No, that doesn’t mean art is only about the rich.
However, most people use such baublage to signify success and wealth, appropriately or not.
I don't think it snobbish (inversely or otherwise) for me to think that this is a sad squandering of resource and a more than slightly horrid aspect of the human character.
Do they? Maybe some do, but how do you know they aren’t just buying nicer stuff because they can afford to and it’s you know, nicer?
> I don't think it snobbish (inversely or otherwise) for me to think that this is a sad squandering of resource and a more than slightly horrid aspect of the human character.
I don’t see how people making fine watches is a ‘squandering of resources’. It’s also not obvious why you are attributing this ‘horrid aspect’ only to a stereotypical rich person.
Surely wearing a football shirt, cutting the labels of your clothes, wearing a chairman Mao suit, or a pair of Nike sneakers are all signalling status in one way or another.
Why are these things ok and watches are not? Why are expensive baubles more worthy of sneering than cheap ones?
Maybe NFTs turn out to be a way to redirect that gross status-seeking impulse, to turn it into incentives to create art and income for artists without copyright, DRM, and associated ugliness. That would be a pretty cool hack! There's a decent chance it works.
And a more organised storefront at https://objkt.com/
https://www.fxhash.xyz/ is doing generative art straight on the blockchain.
I have an account on Twitter as @CryptoAntonioni and I share decent art, avoid the trash.
As for fxhash, I don’t see that being much more than a ‘because we can’. Nothing on there strikes me as worth money, since there is an infinite supply of art like that and there is no distinguishing character to it. The point of a Non-Fungible token goes away if the art itself is fungible.