It's not just marketing. I was in the manufacturing program of a large public university in Michigan, where you would expect all the staff to be heavily biased in favor of Detroit automakers, and the constant refrain was "Toyota, Toyota, lean manufacturing, six sigma, Toyota."
But don't you see, you're missing the entire point. Banksy is a graffiti artist. At no time have any of his works been capable of being bought or sold. His graffiti has routinely been lost, painted over, weathered, or ignored. That is the whole point of his work. Not only that, but often the point of his work is to devalue some other seemingly valuable thing--witness his Ronald McDonald statue[1].
Just because some rich people feel like attaching monetary value to most art doesn't mean Banksy's art has to fall in line. It's not like you're going to take down a section of wall and sell it, and someone did, he would also be missing the entire point.
Just be happy that cameras exist and take a picture.
If people enjoy seeing it it seems decidedly churlish not to preserve it for future generations. As does someone who can only enjoy it because other people won't be able to.
As for missing the point, I'll raise you death of the author. A piece of art must stand on its own merits, not the intentions of its creator.
But you can't preserve it for future generations, because the location and inevitable impermanence is part of the work. By covering it, you'd be defacing the work to protect it.
Yes, generally we do, and I'd agree for graffiti done in canvas or similar mediums, but I think street art is an obvious exception, since the canvas is the whole street. You could only preserve the artwork by preserving at least the whole building, and possibly more than that.
Are people going to enjoy looking at it less if the building changes (assuming the painted part doesn't)? My guess is that the overwhelming majority of the enjoyment will be preserved.
The interest on the national debt is $260 billion per year, on nearly $17 trillion in debt, for an effective interest rate of 1.5%. If that interest rate were to rise to 1980 levels, for instance, at 6% [2] that would be an annual interest payment of over $1 trillion/year.
In order to come up with an extra $700 million per year, the government would have to raise taxes by 25%. Possibly more depending on economic factors.
Now that I have run the numbers it seems that this is not as much of a Ponzi scheme as I thought but it still seems pretty bleak. Has anyone seen this video[3] of Japan's debt problem?
Note that the U.S. holds fixed-interest debt. If interest rates go up it will be forced to refinance at higher rates, but it will happen over some period of time. The weighted average maturity of the debt right now is over 5 years, so it's not like it'll be an extra $700 billion all of the sudden.
In any case, a worrying level of debt does not make something a Ponzi scheme...
In a chat with one of my older friends who I respect very much, he lent this advice: Mark, the first thing you need to do to be successful is make a decision on what you want to accomplish, and then commit all your resources to that goal.
Can I get a citation for any of this? It was my understanding that the USDA allows cattle to be fed "cage lining" which is chicken feathers, poop and feed taken from the bottom of chicken cages. The chicken feed, in turn, contains cattle meat and trimmings, thus making your "side of scrapie" scenario a small but significant possibility.
In other words, what makes you think the USDA is not beholden to the commercial interests that it regulates, like every other government agency?
Look at the difference in Salmonella rates between the US and France for instance.
And yes, regulatory capture is an issue with the FDA, that has periodically resulted in scandals; but the meatpacking industry knows that without some obvious checks on their hygiene their industry as a whole is worse off. If one plant cuts too many corners and starts shipping moldy meat, the entire industries sales suffer; so it's in the meat companies interest to have someone policing defectors from good practices.
I believe it was originally because of postwar wage/price controls, which led to employers giving health insurance to attract employees, which led to the IRS taxing health insurance, which led to Congress exempting health insurance from tax, which led to the current regime we have today, compounded by the McCarran-Ferguson Act as well as the HMO Act.
