>The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts.
Still, nobody bats an eye when some other celebrity or CEO or socialite throws away 1 million just for a single wedding or even a birthday party, or 10 million to have a large swimming pool. Which happens like every single day. $1m is probably what some Wall Street guys spend on coke for their guests per year those days.
At least these guys earned it through their artwork, and never stole it from anybody, or created huge machines of surveillance and brain-washing like Facebook, or by treating people like disposable shit - like tech bros in companies like Uber.
I'd rather have a role model burning money than cherishing it.
Rich people don't "throw away" money, they spend it. The money is circulating and enriching others for services rendered. In fact, the more money they "throw away" the better. The rational thing to do as a capitalist is to capture as much of that money as possible.
What they don't do is set it on fire, thereby depriving others of it permanently.
>Rich people don't "throw away" money, they spend it. The money is circulating and enriching others for services rendered
Rich people stock way more money (percentage-wise) out of circulation (like in real estate property, tax havens, jewlery, and so on) than working and middle class people - which spend almost all the money they make. For many rich what they actually spend and re-circulate, is a tiny slither of their income (much less their overall wealth).
Not to mention the externalities destroying the environment and societal value from spending money in certain ways (from flying across the world in your private jet, to throwing money at taking people out of actual productive work to cater to your BS fancies like building you an olympic sized pool and organizing BS parties for your friends, to influencing politics and law with your money outside of the democratic process).
>What they don't do is set it on fire, thereby depriving others of it permanently.
Nothing in that case was "deprived from others permanently". Those KLF guys still bought things they needed, and paid for them - just with other money.
They didn't destoy actual value or stole anything. What they did is basically the same as if they just didn't spend their money (and kept it in a safe or under the matress).
Not to mention they've helped with lowering inflation!
Isn't burning money just the opposite of Quantitative Easing and thus it slightly increases the value of existing money?
If burning money is "depriving others of it permanently", then when banks issue currency (e.g. quantitative easing), they are supplying money to others permanently. Logically, it would seem that if you are against the destruction of currency, then you should be a proponent of banks creating as much currency as possible. Obviously it's not that simple and currency is not the same as 'value', so it's overly simplistic to think purely in terms of creation/destruction.
Nope. The whole point of money is to buy things. Banks create new money backed by debt which is what creates real value. The new money is destroyed when people work and pay off the debt. This "act" has created nothing of the sort.
You could argue that they theoretically increased the value of everyone else's money but the actual amount is so infinitesimal it would just add insult to injury. The vast majority of the money in existence is just numbers in bank databases, actual cash is a small fraction and burning an even smaller fraction of that does absolutely nothing beneficial to anyone.
I don't agree with your description of money creation as a primary means of creating value. Surely value is created by human endeavour and currency is just a convenient means of tracking that?
If there was a bank that just continually created new money and gave debt to everyone, then do you believe that they are creating value and presumably a society could exist purely from the value created by these numbers?
You misunderstand me. Money is indeed created by banks creating debt, but money is not the same thing as value. It's used as a convenient way to exchange value, but if you were stuck on a island with no-one else, you wouldn't find money to be of any use.
Still, nobody bats an eye when some other celebrity or CEO or socialite throws away 1 million just for a single wedding or even a birthday party, or 10 million to have a large swimming pool. Which happens like every single day. $1m is probably what some Wall Street guys spend on coke for their guests per year those days.
At least these guys earned it through their artwork, and never stole it from anybody, or created huge machines of surveillance and brain-washing like Facebook, or by treating people like disposable shit - like tech bros in companies like Uber.
I'd rather have a role model burning money than cherishing it.