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One can imagine reasonable policies around things like housing, my original two line reply was not meant to detail all the ways this would for all types of asse
by ekelsen 5y ago
One can imagine reasonable policies around things like housing, my original two line reply was not meant to detail all the ways this would for all types of assets.
I don't think anyone would have much of a problem with the simplistic scheme applied to rare art though.
- sokoloff 5y agoI do have a problem with that. I would prefer the Mona Lisa to remain in the hands of the Louvre than be regularly auctioned off. I would prefer American Gothic to remain in the hands of the Art Institute of Chicago, etc.
- ekelsen 5y agoTry to imagine a reasonable policy rather than assume the worst possible policy and then the outcomes that follow. One can imagine that public charities or government assets for example are exempt from such a scheme (since they don't pay tax anyway usually).
- sokoloff 5y agoI’m trying to imagine the reasonably predictable response to the policy that you sketched out. Removing private property rights is not a casual undertaking I agree and would require substantial thought and care, perhaps too much to be practically workable.
- ekelsen 5y agoYour replies so far don't seem to indicate you gave much thought to how such a system would reasonably work -- as evidenced by the assumption that art owned by charities or governments (institutions which don't pay tax) would also be up for auction.
- sokoloff 5y agoYou likewise don’t appear to have given a ton of thought to the logical responses that would likely occur from your proposal. How long until some rich art collector starts a charity to hold their art and protect it from being auctioned?
- ekelsen 5y agoThere are already laws that would make such abuse illegal. Abuse of charities is not a new problem. I'm not a lawyer - but it seems like one obvious factor would take into account where the artwork purchased by the charity resides. Is it in a private residence? A freeport? Probably not really a charity. Is it hanging on the wall in the Art Institute of Chicago? Might be fine. Then the question is what happens if the charity tries to sell it back to a private collector at some future point. Might be allowed as long as back taxes are paid assuming some appreciation schedule. I think the more general point is that policy is _hard_, and to assume that something doesn't work because you've thought about it for 2.5 seconds is probably a bad assumption to make. Most of our existing laws/policies would be similarly easy to attack if distilled to one sentence. There's a reason actual policy and laws are really long.
- sokoloff 5y agoYes, policy is hard. That’s the exact same reason that when you think “it’s not that hard to find a price for a rare…”, you probably still have a lot more thinking ahead of you than behind you.
- ekelsen 5y agoThat comment was meant to be taken in theoretical sense not that I had the text of a law ready to go into effect tomorrow. I'm well aware there's plenty more thinking to be done. You however, seem to think that because you can find a corner case in a two line proposal, the whole thing has no merit.