4 ms·

Why is this a surprise? There's a point at which money no longer makes sense - both to the people without it as well as the people with it. There are many rea

by blunte 9y ago

Why is this a surprise? There's a point at which money no longer makes sense - both to the people without it as well as the people with it. There are many reasons for spending relatively incomprehensible amounts of money for something. One is to show others that you can; it's a demonstration of just how wealthy you are. Another is to try to make something special of the money that otherwise has reached a level of being useless/pointless. Think a bit in terms of a normal human lifetime. If you aspire to be rich, what amount of money defines that level? Once you reach a level where you can own and operate more properties, vehicles, and even employees than you can even remember, what does the excess money represent? Ok, this is an absurd analogy. But as technical people, imagine building a multi-petabyte storage device. Practically no private individual has such a thing. Using your intellect, experience, and perhaps ingenuity you can have such a thing. Then what? You store all the porn you have time to download. You save every movie you ever thought about watching. You take 1000 photos every time you go out. It's thrilling! But how much of it do you ever really go back and enjoy? Frankly, unless the buyer places it in a public museum, I judge it as a hollow effort to find value in excess (which will last about three months). Humans are great at acclimating to new and better, and soon we need more. What else is there?

comboy 9y ago
> What else is there? Storage of value. If you want to diversify, you may want something easy to move/hide for some scenarios. I'm not saying this painting works great for that purpose, just that that's one of the things that may make people want to buy it.
- blunte 9y ago
  If you have $4bn, unless you're investing in Beanie Babies, you really don't have to struggle to find stable stores of value. At that stratosphere of wealth, an art piece is not about diversification. It's a bit like buying a 200m yacht to surpass all other private yachts. What I find amusing is that even the ultra rich people are statistically NEVER the richest people. There are perhaps 5 people in the world who could be debated as one of the richest people in the world. And their individual wealth exceeds the "poor rich" such as this person by a factor of 20+. To people outside their bubble it just looks "sad" (pardon the Trumpism).
  - drcode 9y ago
    I agree- I would estimate 95% or more of really rich people are mostly indistinguishable from an upper middle class person from the outside: Sure, they have maids and maybe fly their own plane or have an expensive classic car but there are these 5% of rich people who somehow have a strange compulsion to advertise their wealth as widely as possible and they're the ones who have the 100 mil yachts and go to these sorts of auctions (the exception maybe being Bill Gates' Da Vinci notebook purchase... likely Bill just thought those were super cool)
    - blunte 9y ago
      Clearly Bill Gates doesn't need to flaunt his wealth. I'm sure he was just really excited by Da Vinci, and the opportunity to own a real piece of history was totally worth it. Despite Gates's (very) questionable method of rising to greatness, what he has attempted to do with his wealth is well above what most "rich" people do.
      - vixen99 9y ago
        And he's done a brilliant PR job. https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/ https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/
        zxcmx 9y ago
        Oddly enough I find it easier to believe that Bill Gates wants to change the world for the better than to believe that he is secretly pushing some neocapitalist agenda. Mainly because he personally has everything to gain from the former and practically nothing from the latter at the wealth level he operates at. Dude could get a better return on index funds than from his philanthropy. Cynically, plain investing is low status where he is at, less cynically he has a lot of time to think about things and a lot of resources and I believe many (most? hmm) humans would act the same way under those conditions. Maybe I'm just an optimist.
  - comboy 9y ago

by blunte 9y ago

comboy 9y ago

> What else is there? Storage of value. If you want to diversify, you may want something easy to move/hide for some scenarios. I'm not saying this painting works great for that purpose, just that that's one of the things that may make people want to buy it.

blunte 9y ago
If you have $4bn, unless you're investing in Beanie Babies, you really don't have to struggle to find stable stores of value. At that stratosphere of wealth, an art piece is not about diversification. It's a bit like buying a 200m yacht to surpass all other private yachts. What I find amusing is that even the ultra rich people are statistically NEVER the richest people. There are perhaps 5 people in the world who could be debated as one of the richest people in the world. And their individual wealth exceeds the "poor rich" such as this person by a factor of 20+. To people outside their bubble it just looks "sad" (pardon the Trumpism).
- drcode 9y ago
  I agree- I would estimate 95% or more of really rich people are mostly indistinguishable from an upper middle class person from the outside: Sure, they have maids and maybe fly their own plane or have an expensive classic car but there are these 5% of rich people who somehow have a strange compulsion to advertise their wealth as widely as possible and they're the ones who have the 100 mil yachts and go to these sorts of auctions (the exception maybe being Bill Gates' Da Vinci notebook purchase... likely Bill just thought those were super cool)
  - blunte 9y ago
    Clearly Bill Gates doesn't need to flaunt his wealth. I'm sure he was just really excited by Da Vinci, and the opportunity to own a real piece of history was totally worth it. Despite Gates's (very) questionable method of rising to greatness, what he has attempted to do with his wealth is well above what most "rich" people do.
    - vixen99 9y ago
      And he's done a brilliant PR job. https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/ https://www.liberationnews.org/real-agenda-gates-foundation/
      - zxcmx 9y ago
        Oddly enough I find it easier to believe that Bill Gates wants to change the world for the better than to believe that he is secretly pushing some neocapitalist agenda. Mainly because he personally has everything to gain from the former and practically nothing from the latter at the wealth level he operates at. Dude could get a better return on index funds than from his philanthropy. Cynically, plain investing is low status where he is at, less cynically he has a lot of time to think about things and a lot of resources and I believe many (most? hmm) humans would act the same way under those conditions. Maybe I'm just an optimist.
- comboy 9y ago