Baseball cards are only slightly less stupid because artificially enforced digital scarcity does not (yet?) have the rule of law backing NFT valuation. Don't worry, I hate baseball cards like 99.9% as much as NFTs. The things people value are stupid because people are stupid. Economics!
The scarcity of NFTs isn't artificially enforced, though. It's the core feature of the technology. It's what makes NFTs NFTs - they are Non Fungible. Now - if you think of an NFT as a jpeg of a cat, you're right - there is no limit to the number of digital copies of that cat jpeg. But the actual NFT is the naming rights to that jpeg of a cat. If you own the NFT of the cat jpeg, you and only you get to say "I own this particular NFT of this particular cat jpeg." Is there anything preventing you from minting another NFT of that particular cat jpeg? Well now we're talking artificially-enforced digital scarcity because we're getting into trademark law and other saucy shit. Does having an NFT of a jpeg somehow make the jpeg worth something? No it does not. This is the confusion the whole world has with NFTs. The world thinks they're pictures when point of fact, they are limited-use intellectual property. You can buy naming rights to a star. It's abject nonsense and means nothing. You can also put your name on a cobblestone at the civic center. It's also abject nonsense and also means nothing. Yet people do both. In the former case, there is no scarcity - you're paying for a piece of paper that says "you paid for a piece of paper." In the latter case, there is scarcity - there are only so many bricks. Western tradition has a thing against mass graves. We don't like to think of ourselves or our loved ones passing into The Great Beyond without a memorial, or without a shared memorial. We want to leave some form of marker, even if we have to share it. What do you think - do we waste more space with golf courses or cemeteries? We could totally dual-purpose that shit but we don't. So - what is that marker? What is its nature? Fundamentally, it is "I am linked to this." We do this a lot when we're alive, too. "I am linked to this" through some intermediary we trust. Certificates of authenticity. Appraisal documents. Provenance studies. NFTs render it all moot - "I am linked to this, indelibly, visible to all, utterly beyond counterfeit." That's obviously valuable to any government that collects taxes or demographics. And its first use case is Nyan Cat jpegs.
This was a great reply, thanks, yo :). Overwhelmingly agree. Maybe more thoughts later when I'm not on mobile. The only thing I'd like to characterize better is "energy" costs to manufacture e.g. paper vs. costs to maintain NFT blockchain records. Could be bad for blockchains. Proof of stake NFTs? Dunno. I need to think more about that. Also, I learned early that life is shit by spending my allowance on Star Wars customizable card game cards. They're worthless now.
So... look at a real use case - Arianee. Arianee builds a framework for Breitling (among others) to verify their product via NFT. This is a private blockchain (Ethereum white-label) where the only write-points are controlled by Breitling and Arianee. They're readable from anywhere - but the robustness of the network only matters to Breitling and its customers so it doesn't take many. When I talked to Arianee they said they have about sixty nodes. that's everyone on Arianee, so Vacheron, Panerai, IBM, etc. Mining performance really doesn't matter because they aren't mining, so you can run that stuff on a Raspberry Pi, or as a tiny subprocess on a virtual server. That's proof-of-work, by the way, but proof-of-stake is the same because you're just there, you aren't trying to get paid. Sixty nodes at 15 watts is 900W, for every NFT on Arianee. Breitling puts out 200,000 watches a year, every year, and has been on Arianee since 2017. A sheet of paper, by way of comparison, is 50W/h. That's before you print it, of course, or package it, or distribute it. And that's just Breitling.The only thing I'd like to characterize better is "energy" costs to manufacture e.g. paper vs. costs to maintain NFT blockchain records.