An Art Show in the Hamptons, or, a Definition of Wealth.
Originally the people of New York assumed dwelling and cultivation rights alone. The earth and the sky was the property of the Great Spirit and granted to all.
It was also long ago conceded in Europe and Asia that whoever controlled the productive landscape controlled the wealth. They were the wealthy, and they imposed their disparate views on the people of Long Island, eventually building The Hamptons as a vacation spot for those who claim property of a slice of the productive landscape.
Of course, omnirealistically, no one has a valid deed to ownership of anything; least of all a plot of land – all the ground below and the sky above as purchased through the ironically named “real” estate agency. A legal title stating that a rectangle of planet earth and sky reaching outward vertically through heaven to eternity through which cosmically aimed core stars and asteroids from time to time
trespassingly travel is the property of the deed holder. Property is theft.
What is wealth? No matter how much wealth they have humans know they cannot alter a fraction of yesterday.
(A) Wealth is irreversible.
(B) Wealth can only be articulated in the present and the future.
The billionaire on the sinking ship who offers to pay all their billions in cash for the sole life preserver is rejected. So it follows that money is not wealth, for it cannot buy any future days of life.
(C) Wealth is the assured number of future days for the number of human beings provided for by on hand artifacts and consumables; including both physical and metaphysical considerations.
The physical considerations of wealth are the tangible assets of stolen land: The means of production. The objects on that land, the factories, the tools, the people, the products. There is a fixed amount of physical wealth, and it is entropically diminishing.
The metaphysical consideration of wealth is ability. The ability to create, invent, and teach. Metaphysical wealth can only increase. All experience teaches. We constantly learn and the more we learn the more words and pictures we need to describe what we have learned. Art, science, and language all build upon themselves and so can increase indefinitely.
Art’s creation is a result of metaphysical wealth. Those who trade only in physical wealth see no tangible land, no means of production, and so assume they too can create. Because, really, they could probably write a novel themselves if they had time.
Capitalist accounting systems push the profit of inexorable metaphysical wealth growth into the earning accounts of those who own the equipment, gallery, connections, and materials. The balance sheet ignores the fact that it is only the metaphysical that produces the wealth.
So metaphysical knowledge becomes physical in a work of art. To create something out of nothing and sell it, art is only art if it is sold. Artists happily become assets, and perpetuate the broken cycle.
The Hamptons is populated by capitalists who practice the alchemy of turning genuine infinite metaphysical wealth into horded physical wealth. Capitalism underrates most artists and lauds a few. Only once an artists metaphysical wealth is easily transferable into the physical will the capitalist acknowledge that the artist’s time is worth money. The investment only increases when the artist dies and the well drys up. Never mind that the font of metaphysical wealth is infinite, self increasing, running at an inexorable profit. Infinite wealth means selfishness is no longer valid, but the market corrects for that – perverting creation into a straw man of figures and accounting sheets. Hording the true wealth of future human days on stolen land.
John Hutt 