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Comment by techno_tsar | Hacker News Reader

Deeply selfish? There are literally millions and millions of extremely wealthy people who would spend that amount doing nothing, buying a yacht, their 20th property, or do actual terrible things.

I don’t resent them for burning their money. They could have bought toys, instead they made a statement.

We live in a world where many of us (myself included) have to live with the pain of not having enough. I’m reminded of that every day. I wonder why we live in such a world. Do you think it has anything to do with why they burned a million quid?

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> Do you think it has anything to do with why they burned a million quid?

Absolutely not. It was all tied up with their distaste for the art industry, not inequality. The burning was the last attempt to create art with the money (after Nailed to the Wall, the failed Money: A Major Body of Cash exhibition, and the K Foundation art award).

The true absurdity should have been the message but it got lost in the outcome. From what I remember they tried to sell Nailed to the wall for £300k explicitly stating it was £1 million in legal tender, but the gallery refused to buy it because they couldn't get it insured.

> instead they made a statement

What does that mean? I mean really mean?

Follow-up question: did they achieve anything .. other than (even more) notoriety?

Making a controversial artistic statement that results in widespread media coverage places whatever issue being highlighted at the forefront of popular discussion and thought, if only for a time.

In this case, the ramifications of the public questioning and examining the fundamentals of ownership, the distribution of wealth and its potential injustices etc - are difficult to quantify, but can be assumed to be valuable.

Anything controversial by nature is also likely an under-examined yet extremely important issue. It's controversial partly because it's not been sufficiently examined or discussed to the point of understanding or resolution.

> the ramifications of the public questioning and examining the fundamentals of ownership

"The public"? Which public? No politican from Kier Starmer rightwards is seriously doing anything of the sort.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/government-breakfast-b...

They achieved that some 30 years later we are having this discussion about their art.

I hope that we all are able to be that creative - that we achieve something that humankind speaks of 30 years later.

I feel this thread is evidence that the question provoked by the performance is actually quite important, certainly more so than the average “but is this art” meta-debate.

Someone in this thread was upset that the artists burned more money than the average person sees in their lifetime. Another commenter questioned why this would be more unfair than all the “regular rich” who we know spend many times that amount of money on a yacht or another property that they don’t need.

Why are there two moral categories for wealth? Someone who is understood to not have money by default — like an artist — and then gets a sudden windfall is expected to use it responsibly. But someone who is simply rich has no such obligations and doesn’t answer to society. And yet the former category is a rounding error but the latter control the majority of resources on this planet.

Those that have everything change nothing, those that have nothing change everything or at least they try.

> Someone who is understood to not have money by default — like an artist [...]

I'm sure we can all think of a few counter-examples to that one!

Rihanna: net worth: ~ $1.4 billion Paul McCartney: net worth: ~ $1.2 billion Bono: net worth: ~ $700 million

> then gets a sudden windfall is expected to use it responsibly

"Expected" - by whom?

I may be just a bit jaded, but we should perhaps consider the hypothesis that for very successful artists it's a simple commercial decision to signal you're acting responsibly with your wealth, otherwise your much, much less wealthy customers who are buying your output might start to notice, disapprove, and ultimately stop buying your output. One could call this "fiduciary duty to oneself", really.

There is an category of artist who become overnight famous and cannot deal with the sudden interest and wealth.

Here I'm thinking of young Johnny Depp or Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, to give just three examples.

There are artists who do art for arts sake and not with the aim of getting wealthy. When these artists do have success, they can potentially become overwhelmed.

>What does that mean? I mean really mean?

What does anything "really" mean? We are all going to die anyway.

Keeping it in a less grand perspective, it means they made some people think and discuss the incident, debate the role of money and how we treat it, and made a fine punk gesture in the process...

It might even spoke to some people that money is not some God we should workship, and that being irreverant and having fun might be worth more!

The KLF may of thought money had something to do with god or at least some version of god, given their deep interest and knowledge of the occult.

All hail Eros

Eris, not Eros.

Same thing :)

When you spend money, you enrich others and drive the economy. There is no way their "statement" could be more valuable than that.

If you buy a yacht or a supercar you give the money to a number of people. If you actually burn the money you destroy it and it is lost for everyone.

So while people do what they want with their money, actually burning it like is rightly seen as a dick move by most people. It is also illegal in many countries.

Is it lost for everyone or is it more like a stock buyback? Did everyone's money become 0.000000001% more valuable by taking that chunk out of circulation?

Can an economist tell me please?

Not an economist, but in crypto, "coin burns" are a regular occurrence where a percentage of supply is destroyed, typically by sending to a public address for which the corresponding private key is proven unknown.

The result is intended to be a rise in price, benefiting all holders. It can be uncertain to assess whether a resultant rise in price is actually due to a coin burn, but given a coins supply is commonly used as a valuer, it's plausible.

That's not even a nitpick. Your own comment provides your answer: it does not change the value of money in any way and does not benefit anyone.

It does exactly that.

But if you go deeper in the meaning of money, it's even better: when you receive money, what you actually receive is an IOU for a good or a service. E.g. when you receive $40 for fixing a computer, it means the society owes you $40 that you can claim at any time. Burning the $40 means that you fixed the computer for free, and that you don't want anything in return, and at the same time nobody can claim the $40 in your name (i.e. you didn't give the money away).

The "you should buy anything to move the economy" is a well known economic fallacy.

The point is that in real life (as opposed to an academic textbook) burning those $40 does not do anything useful or positive to anyone, while spending them or giving them away to someone would do something useful.

Buying a 20th property &c is a statement that you don't have anything better to do with your money. It's kind of the same thing.

I'm not 100% comfortable with it, but MrBeast is probably the Musk of this potential. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2ifmkGGus

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