I mean, no? Ownership is always based on societal constructs; in the useful sense it means that the state is enforcing it. If someone takes it you can use violence or the threat of violence (legitimately, by proxy) to retrieve it. If someone else claims that it is theirs they can attempt to retrieve it through courts (with the the backing of legitimate violence or threat of violence by proxy again). You may exclude people from the use of the thing you own (with violence or threat of violence by proxy, or sometimes, by direct violence for which the state will excuse you).
It devolves always to the state having an effective monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. This is a social construct in a sense, but NFTs are a poor substitute.
Notably, most NFTs can be replicated bit-for-bit, and anyone else can emit a new NFT with the same exact payload, only lacking the traceability, but otherwise indistinguishable from the original. The only way to prevent that would be legal action, in which case you might as well dispense with the notion of the NFT itself.
In fact, a great business if you want to get in on this scam is to just sell counterfeit NFTs; even openly counterfeit! Call yourself "The Copy-Cat" and just resell Copy-Cat original copies of existing high-value NFTs. Even in the real life art world it has transpired that well-done forgeries have acquired a value of their own.
Any sane man understands this, but crypto people are too steeped in lies. They're detached from reality, just like their beloved crypto money.
Even if a perfect decentralized database will be invented, the violence, that enforces the rules under which the real world operates, can't be decentralized.
Oddly enough, I'm a "crypto" person myself -- I've been active in the Bitcoin community since forever, basically. I still think cryptocurrencies are an enormously powerful concept, but we can't blind ourselves to the reality of how money and ownership works in the real world.
I think the real reason my post got downvoted is that someone really wants to do my CopyCat idea and now they're worried that I'll sue them for stealing my idea. Should have made an NFT out of the business proposal.
There's a strong argument that the nature of "civil society" is how far removed from that threat of violence we live. That is, people obey "the law" because it's the right thing to do and they don't do that.
People don't steal, not because they worry about being arrested or imprisoned, but because stealing isn't right. Policing and Law Enforcement scales sublinearly with population size only if the population is by and large compliant, or rather, that the laws are compatible with the behavior and motivations of the majority of people.
So we keep that foundation far away -- instead of violence, it's the thought of the social opprobrium of the prospect of the threat of violence. But it has to be there, otherwise people who were willing to resort to violence would take everything.
> maybe we dont want a society that is based upon threats of violence.
I'm not convinced that such a thing is possible.
Fundamentally, for such a society there has to be some kind of rule that "threats of violence" and "violence itself" are not allowed. How is such a rule enforced? If your society is unwilling to be violent in any way, under any circumstances, but someone else is willing to be violent you're going to have a bad time.
I mean, no? Ownership is always based on societal constructs; in the useful sense it means that the state is enforcing it. If someone takes it you can use violence or the threat of violence (legitimately, by proxy) to retrieve it. If someone else claims that it is theirs they can attempt to retrieve it through courts (with the the backing of legitimate violence or threat of violence by proxy again). You may exclude people from the use of the thing you own (with violence or threat of violence by proxy, or sometimes, by direct violence for which the state will excuse you).
It devolves always to the state having an effective monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. This is a social construct in a sense, but NFTs are a poor substitute.
Notably, most NFTs can be replicated bit-for-bit, and anyone else can emit a new NFT with the same exact payload, only lacking the traceability, but otherwise indistinguishable from the original. The only way to prevent that would be legal action, in which case you might as well dispense with the notion of the NFT itself.
In fact, a great business if you want to get in on this scam is to just sell counterfeit NFTs; even openly counterfeit! Call yourself "The Copy-Cat" and just resell Copy-Cat original copies of existing high-value NFTs. Even in the real life art world it has transpired that well-done forgeries have acquired a value of their own.