Nothing Economy

Foreword

Everyone’s scrambling to find the next big thing, so that they can be rich. But things don’t come out of thin air, they are borne of ideas, sometimes even great ideas, and it is these ideas, coupled with a vision and hard work that resulted in the thing.

But where do ideas come from? Well, for the most part, ideas come from nothing. So really, nothing is the root of all these.

What if, we can skip all the in-between steps and just get rich off nothing? Move over Knowledge Economy, and welcome the Nothing Economy.

As usual, a reminder that I am not a financial professional by training — I am a software engineer by training, and by trade. The following is based on my personal understanding, which is gained through self-study and working in finance for a few years.

If you find anything that you feel is incorrect, please feel free to leave a comment, and discuss your thoughts.

Atop this pedestal there is nothing…

So someone sold a statue. It is, at the same time, an extremely unique statue, and yet a very common one, because it looks exactly like the statue in the picture above. No, not the statue of the man, but the statue between his palm and his face — nothing. Yet, it is also unique, in that well, that nothing was presented on a pedestal, and sold for $18,000 dollars. 18,000 cold, hard, American dollars.

Nobody has ever done that before. Usually when someone wants to sell you nothing for real money, they have the decency to lie to your face like, “I’m gonna sell you this car for $18,000.” Then they take your money, make up some excuse (“I really need the bathroom, must be the oysters!”), and you just never see them again. Nothing sold. Money changed hands, somebody is happy, everybody understood what happened.

Nobody has really outright told anyone they were selling them nothing for $18,000, and then taken their money, legally and with both parties happy. It’s just not done, there are etiquettes and all that. But someone just did it, and it is unique.

To put it simply, the artist sold nothing, and the buyer bought it. For $18,000.

Doing it wrong

Now, I don’t want to go around besmirching the good name of great inventors and all that, much less inventors of a whole new field of economics/finance, but really, I think the artist did it wrong.

Now that they’ve sold the nothing (I mean, statue), they can’t very well sell it again. It’s not theirs anymore. You simply just can’t go around selling things you’ve already sold. That’ll be fraud. And fraud is bad.

So that means all these following tips I’m gonna throw out, will be completely useless to them. They cannot act on these marvelous tips. Too bad.

Tip 1: We must go deeper

Why stop at selling the nothing itself? All the cool kids know you have to NFT it (1). An NFT is just a reference to something. In this case, nothing. That makes it even more meta. An NFT that references something is always kinda iffy, what if that something is destroyed? Or lost? Or stolen? Then that NFT seems kinda pointless, no? Wrong, even.

But if the NFT references nothing… then, it’ll.. always do the right thing? It just reference nothing no matter what. If you got burglarized, and the burglars stole nothing, you won’t call the police — what would they do? (“Sir/Mdm, they stole nothing, so we’ll do nothing, and you’ll have recovered nothing, and everybody’s happy.” ) Instead, you’ll simply shrug, and replace your nothing with nothing, and you’ll be made whole (2), and your NFT still makes sense… kinda.

Now, because the NFT is just a reference to nothing, it’s not fraud to just churn out more of it (all pointing to nothing!), and then sell them. Imagine the merchandising deals you’ll make! Disney will be green with envy.

Tip 2: … and nothing is fireproof

Why stop at selling the nothing, or the NFT of nothing? Take the next step and just burn it, make a video of you burning it, and then sell an NFT of that video. Is your head spinning yet? That’s just called art. You just need to be better at art to understand this.

Now, normally, the “burn something” NFTs are always a little bit dangerous. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out you know? Like the statue in the picture above (yes, the man this time) — it doesn’t burn very well, I’d bet. It’s all stone and clay and stuff, and those things don’t burn. Stone and clay just don’t like to cooperate like that. And other times, they burn too well. Like, burst in flames and burn down the whole building well. That’s just inconvenient. So, after you make a great big announcement about a “burn something” NFT, either it doesn’t burn (fraud!), or it burns down your house (not fraud, but potentially painful). Dangerous.

But nothing? Man, nothing burns very well all the time. Nothing burns like thermite. Yet burning nothing will never burn down your house — nothing burns until there’s nothing left, and since there’s nothing left in the first place…

And most importantly, after you’ve burnt nothing, and even if you’ve burnt everything, you’ll still have nothing more to burn!

Folks, this is a sustainable, repeatable process. And to a businessman, that’s just the sound of money. Ka-ching!

Tip 3: Franchise, franchise, franchise

Ok, I lied earlier. This tip will work for the artist. I’m human too, I make mistakes.

Now, think of all the crime’y people trying to come up with ways of laundering their illicit cash. They go through all sorts of crazy schemes to make the money seem legitimate, and in the process they lose 50-70% of the cash due to transaction costs and taxes. But really, they should have just did what the artist did.

“This cash is not illicit! I worked hard for it! I am a financial speculator by trade, and this is the profit of my trading!” I’d imagine they’d say when the police comes knocking. “What do you trade in, sir/mdm?” the police will ask, and our crime’y folks will, with a perfectly straight face, say, “nothing. I trade nothing.”

It’s a grammatically correct, factually correct and, apparently legal (3) answer.

So, the tip here is just to go big! Set up a whole business built on selling nothing! Then sell licenses to operate a similar businesses under the same trade name to others — franchise the hell out of this! I can already see the mob bosses lining up to get in on a piece of this action.

What goes around…

So, we have a financial system that is entirely backed by the “full faith and credit” of various governments, i.e.: fiat money. Basically, they are backed by nothing (tangible).

The crypto fans are upset about this, and so their response is to create a better system. One based on blockchain, and math, and backed by ideas. And well, long story short, backed by nothing (tangible).

And then someone used either the first nothing, or the second nothing, to buy the third nothing. Albeit, the third nothing comes with a fancy presentation, pedestal and all that.

So I guess they got a good deal?

Footnotes

1. Yes, I just used NFT as a verb. I’m cool like that.
2. Mathematicians will tell you that not all “nothings” are the same — some nothings are better than other nothings. But that’s just mathematicians being mathematicians — they just like to get in on a good joke and make a mess of it.
3. Precedence set by the artist I guess?