Case shuffled into the nearest door and watched the other passengers as he rode. A couple of attendees were approaching him, strictly wannabes, they had maybe 200 ETH between them in deviantart apes. He flew away, somewhere in the twisting mazes of the market there would be exclusivity, only the billionaires with digitally executed works at hand to interact with.

When a work was digitally executed it was put into a room that functioned as a 3d scanner, then the room's heat was turned up high enough to vaporize iron. The 3d scan of the work would be saved to an NFT complete with digital proof of its absolute destruction.

Case was currently looking for the Gauguin, which, after its execution was now the most expensive NFT in the world, estimated worth, two billion dollars. Bezos would pay double that.

"The living organism, in a situa­tion determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintain­ing life; the excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, will­ingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically."

- Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy

Why does 'Case' still sound like a cyberpunk name? It's like it's perpetually from five to ten years in the future.

Because not a lot of parents from the cyberpunk reading generation ran out to name their kids "Case". I mean if Case McGraw had grown up now to be a top NFL Quarterback, Case would not immediately raise connections to cyberpunk in your mind.

We are living in a William Gibson world.

That would be infinitely better than the Faux News sponsored one we are actually in.

Is it so surprising? Humans desire status, this is pretty much baked in. Ambitious 20-somethings suffer from this even more than usual. If you cannot get status quick enough in the "real" world because the entrenched interests are too powerful, building your own subculture in which to be important is a tried and tested strategy.

This was also the case in eastern Europe during the Cold war - some countries came quite close to being classless societies, but people there nevertheless made up a bunch of status symbols out of fairly ordinary items - like jeans. Young people didn't flinch at spending one-month worth of income for a pair of jeans, while scoffing at nearly identical non-denim trousers, at 1/20 the price

There were also the car number-plates. Out here in Romania having a 3-digit car-number plate meant you most probably were part of the nomenklatura (the local one, if you had a county-specific number-plate, the national one if your number-plate was from Bucharest). The "normal" people had 4-digit number-plates, while the great majority of people had no car at all. Quite interesting.

I've heard Saudis will similarly pay as much for their license plates as for their sports cars, repeating or alliterative numbers being highly desired.

Yes indeed:

https://www.regtransfers.co.uk/info/worlds-most-expensive-nu...

9 out of the top 10 are in UAE. Top price 7 million.

> some countries came quite close to being classless societies

This really does not comport with my own knowledge. At minimum there was always the nomenklatura and the ruled. None of the Soviet ruled states went as far as the Chinese in putting the boot on the educated class so the pre conquest educated class stayed relatively distinct. Soviet rule didn’t last that long. The extermination of the Jews and expulsion of the Germans had at least as large an impact on the class structure.

I believe, after survival, the #1 human driver is prestige. It is amazing how immediate it manifests. People moments after surviving imminent death will jockey for positions of influence with their saviors. It is baked into the human psyche, and as long as we ignore this Orwellian Driver of Human Personalities, we are doomed to repeating civilization wide failures.

Is there a specific example you are referring to re: “ People moments after surviving imminent death will jockey for positions of influence with their saviors”?

2020s looking suspiciously like the 1920s in so many ways. Great Internet Gatsby.

1910s had the spanish flu, we have (had??) the COVID-19, so...yep