As IF Times

Source: Facebook, Texas, China: Your Thursday Briefing – The New York Times

The recent Facebook drama has underscored the most sinister disease afflicting modern society.  E and O.  No, not Errors and Omissions, that boilerplate notice at the bottom of legal documents, I’m referring to Entitlement and Outrage, the drivers of most of the sensationalist news we see today.

A casual check of the day’s headlines will list various stories of someone’s imagined offences against accepted sensibilities, or of some concocted notion of a denied right.  Stories of people actually having their rights taken away, ie by being killed, are far less newsworthy than those concerning the horrific plight of those offended by an unfortunate choice of words.  It’s as if the entire population had been lulled into believing as children do, that fantasy trumps reality.

Look at the highly irrational debate on guns and gun rights.  While this is a topic for another discussion, there exists among many, a highly illogical view of guns.  For example, most of us have seen those decals affixed to the entrance of public buildings indicating no guns allowed on premises.  By implication, this means that the building is safe from guns. If this elegantly simple solution works, why not use the same idea and post “do not rob” signs on banks and 7-Elevens?

The recent outrage de jour is directed at Facebook, because apparently, data collected  from and freely submitted by users has been revealed to have been used for nefarious purposes;  apparently to help elect Donald Trump.  Some of us may recall that when the employment of social media techniques were used during the last president’s campaigns, it was characterized as innovative and brilliant.  But in the current context, people are outraged that their top secret images of cats, kids  and selfies at vacation spots and ‘dear diary’ entries are vulnerable to be used for commercial purposes!  Somehow, rights have been breached!

Let’s be objective and sane for a moment: People get a ‘service’ for free, Zuckerburg becomes a billionaire.  Wonder if there’s a connection there.  It’s like getting sandwiches for free and then complaining about the lack of mustard.

If only there was a way to prevent people’s personal stuff from being be pried into, spied upon and sold for financial gain; if only we could stop posting…if only there was an off button….hmm.   To stop using social media is of course, not an option.  Social media, internet access and NFL Redzone are now seen as rights. People now feel entitled to figuratively stand on their front lawns in their underwear and expect others not to look.  Mark Zuckerburg for his part, has been cowed by the indignant crowd by conceding that Facebook had failed their users.  Apologizing is a popular thing these days, whether genuine or not.  What he should have said was, “What did you expect for free? We’re not in the free lunch business.  If you want security, use paper.”

Source: $1bn painting only matter of time as art prices surge

One billion…with a B…hmm.  I suppose if the US dollar were to go through a massive devaluation and fell by let’s say…90% we could conceivably have someone pay a billion for a painting.  Barring that, the claim seems iffy.

We get it, art is unique…only one of its kind, yada yada yada.  But absent the aforementioned currency collapse or an elaborate insurance scheme, it’s hard to picture a scenario in which a painting, one painting, would be worth more than the total net output of many nation states.  It’s as if to say, the cumulative efforts of an entire country are of less value than the rarefied brushworks of a long dead painter.  Actually, at a billion dollars, the amortized value of each brushstroke competes only with the per word rate that lawyers charge in their racket.

In 2010, Pablo Picasso’s, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (the image shown above) was bought for a cool one hundred six and a half million dollars.  This was a painting of Picasso’s lover Marie Therese Walter, thereby making this painting the most expensive piece of soft porn ever.  We could argue that the abstract work is laughably jejune, but obviously, we don’t know abstract art.  Personally, if I was the girlfriend, I’d be insulted after sitting hours upon hours for this result and would probably have made Pablo get some glasses.

If we’re not making 9 figure incomes every year, it’s hard to imagine writing a cheque on which you’d need to tape on an extra piece to accommodate the zeros.  As you can bet, the enormity of the sums paid would not work without insurance companies willing to offer coverage for the amount merely by paying them monthly premiums that look like phone numbers.  It’s a racket and has little to do with refined tastes.  There is no other explanation.

But the inherent beauty of a free market is that people are at liberty to pay whatever they feel an item is worth to them, whether it’s real estate, cars, rare coins, stamps, works of art, or even Pokémon tokens. Just remember that next time someone claims Bitcoin is a scam.  In fact, if you used Bitcoins to buy paintings…..