Focusing on monetary value impoverishes cultural work

When we look at cultural objects through the lens of their monetary value, we impoverish them. This is because:

• It attracts the wrong kind of consumer, i.e., one that trades in cultural objects to profit from them rather than to make them available. See, for example, what happens at the Geneva Freeport.
• It leads artists (in the broadest sense) to over-optimize for monetary value, which means pre-rationalizing rather than post-rationalizing (Most ideas can only be post-rationalized).

This isn’t to say that cultural work should be completely detached from economics. Instead, both artists and consumers should remember that Money is like oxygen.

As a corollary, because NFTs create transparency into the value of cultural artifacts, it follows that NFTs may do more harm than good for art.

References

• #022 Commodification Cripples Culture