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We all like to think that life is 'priceless' but the truth is we put dollar values on people's lives routinely. Just ask insurance companies or the health care
by Devilboy 16y ago
We all like to think that life is 'priceless' but the truth is we put dollar values on people's lives routinely. Just ask insurance companies or the health care system or charities.
There's no such thing as 'priceless'. The Mona Lisa is worth more than $10 million but certainly less than $10 billion. Same for David or the Sistine Chapel. I'm sure these treasures are also insured for some fixed amount too. We may call them 'priceless' mainly because they can't be replaced, not because they actually have infinite value.
- brc 16y agoActually : common misconception on the insurance for 'priceless' artworks. Most museums of the type of the Louvre carry no insurance. The premiums are out of their budgets, which are usually state / ticket sales funded, and there are major valuation problems on irreplaceable artworks, as you have pointed out. Musuems probably spend more money on public liability insurance than they do on their artworks. Instead they put the money they would have spent on premiums into fire and security systems, and 'self insure' to an extent. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if 'priceless' is actually originally a technical insurance term, like 'write off' that has entered the lexicon (probably not true, just using it to make a point) disclosure : used to do some coding for one of the worlds 'great' museums, learned a lot of this stuff.