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You know, I would much rather see the super wealthy spend mroe millions on art than buying yet another super-yacht or Gulfstream. Art probably has a much smalle
by qzw 7y ago
You know, I would much rather see the super wealthy spend mroe millions on art than buying yet another super-yacht or Gulfstream. Art probably has a much smaller carbon footprint than most other forms of conspicuous consumption.
- bluecalm 7y agoIt's not like anything is wasted either. It's just an exchange of resources. The world doesn't become poorer when someone buys a painting for 9 figures.
- yeahitslikethat 7y agoIt does actually because they didn't pay people who will spend it with that money, as in workers. Is just rich people exchanging it.
- simonh 7y agoSuppose there are two possibilities. The transaction could occur, or it could not occur. If the transaction occurs, how does the world 'actually' become poorer as you assert? What's the mechanism that takes value from other people, or otherwise harms them, when this transaction occurs?
- yeahitslikethat 7y agoIt's about the other options for the money other then art. If they had hired people to work, the world would be richer.
- bluecalm 7y agoThey can still hire people and pay them. The situation is the same as before the translation it's just another person with 100m now and a different one with a painting. There is no waste there.
- kaffeemitsahne 7y agoAll this money kept out of circulation leads to an increase in purchasing power of all the other money in the world. A bit like when the KLF burned a million quid.
- fifnir 7y agoGive me 90% of your $100, it'll increase your 10 dollar's buying power
- bluecalm 7y agoBut the money didn't disappear either. Now the person that got the money can do that. If the money is kept from circulation for a long time that's obviously good for everyone else as more their purchasing power for things like homes and food increases.
- rawTruthHurts 7y agoAn exchange of processed resources, which is where the wastage goes.
- danieltillett 7y agoActually its doesn’t matter as any dollar spent by the rich will filter down through the economy and ultimately end up with a near identical carbon footprint. It would only be if the rich spent their money directly on subsiding fossil fuels would it make any difference.
- onion2k 7y agoActually its doesn’t matter as any dollar spent by the rich will filter down through the economy and ultimately end up with a near identical carbon footprint. Imagine two billionaires buying a painting from one another, and just swapping it back and forth between their mansions. How does that dollar spent leave that closed system? It doesn't. They might pay people to move their precious painting, pay for insurance, and alarms, but the painting itself is a fixed store of value. That value is never doing to trickle down. Large amounts of wealth will never leave the pockets of rich people unless they spend on investing or buying newly created assets (like Gulfstreams). Rich people buy investment art because it keeps their money in their own pockets.
- yeahitslikethat 7y agoAsset tax? Why don't we have that?
- teh_infallible 7y agoBecause it would necessarily involve tracking everything everyone owns?
- nutjob2 7y agoDon't forget, it also supports artists. I wonder if artists could sell art with a contract stipulating a royalty whenever it changed hands.
- m_fayer 7y agoIt warps and stifles artists and the art world. An artist knows that only maybe 5% of artists manage to survive financially off their work, and maybe 1% become wealthy. Knowing that there is that lottery ticket, and that the odds can be boosted by catering to the whims of the ultra-rich and engaging in their cynical high-end social politics, that's hard to resist for many who are otherwise looking at being forced out of a beloved career or living in poverty. Many take the bait without realizing they're doing so, or somehow attempt to split the difference. Either way, it eventually causes some very fundamental psychic distress, and both artist and output suffer.
- osullivj 7y agoIs that so different from the world of startups?
- m_fayer 7y agoAt least we in tech can easily practice our craft outside of the startup world and remain financially secure.
- lmm 7y agoStartup employees largely have better working conditions (even those who let themselves get conned into unpaid overtime) and softer landings. I remember a retrospective on a photo-sharing startup did the rounds a couple of years ago: it was a failure as a business but the developers were well-paid and able to walk into fresh software jobs at a good salary.
- osullivj 7y agoIt was founders, not employees, I had in mind. It's a massive longshot, survivor bias clouds our thinking, and you need connections.
- michalu 7y agoI'd much rather see "super-rich" spend their money on whatever than supporting the greatest contemporary marketing scam called modern "art"
- ahartmetz 7y agoSome of it does seem to express something that needs expression. But then you have bullshit artists like Damien Hirst who seems to know exactly what kinds of tacky garbage people with much more money than taste like to buy. Sometimes I wonder how hard it would be to make a profit with art trading. I'm not that much into (looking at) art, but a little.
- whamlastxmas 7y agoI would rather see tens or hundreds of millions spent on a project that employees hundreds or thousands of people for years. Buying art is just money changing hands between rich people.