Ian Vanagas

High-modernist (think Bauhaus and Le Corbusier) aesthetics necessarily lead to simplification, since a reality that serves many purposes presents itself as illegible to a vision informed by a singular purpose. Any elements that are non-functional with respect to the singular purpose tend to confuse, and are therefore eliminated during the attempt... See more

Framing matters a lot. Spending for the benefit of the group feels a lot better than spending solely for yourself. People ideally want both.

When she was laid off from her role at a fintech startup in the pandemic panic of early 2020, Paris doubled down on driving traffic to her DePop store to make money. She saw TikTok as an untapped fount of opportunity, and made creating videos for it her full-time job. She posted dozens of times a day, drawing viewers in with her... See more

NFTs provide access to things people want. People value access to scarce resources; therefore, access is worth money. Money has always been traded for access and will continue to do so. NFTs are internet-native keys to access events, communities, identities, future benefits, people and status.

Ideas are alien life forms with an agency and intelligence independent of any mind or substrate which they inhabit.

David Friedman points out that people only do things for other people for three reasons – love, money, or force. Love doesn’t scale, so the economy can only run on money or force. The force experiment has been run and found wanting. Let’s stick with money.