Napoleon’s Looted Art

My friend, understand the difference between looting and preservation :-)

Do you have a reference for that? It sounds interesting.

Value is absolutely fleeting and has no sole or permanent definition.

Gold is valuable because it's the color of the sun, keeps its mass for large periods (doesnt oxide) and is rare enough to not be found in any idiots garden every other week.

A rocket or an airplane are much more valuable than their weight in metal, sure, but they wear over time. After 200 years, go fly a rocket or a plane, same for food. So their value drop with time.

I'd much rather own a fun book today than a gold coin, but one I read the book it lost so much of its value to me I'd be totally ready to give it to a friend, who'll consider it low value therefore. What if I had bought the gold coin instead ?

If I had to attempt a definition of absolute value, I'd say objects with the most value are those whose attributes stay the same over time. Land keeps producing food, gold keeps its mass and color, culture keeps influencing or entertaining people, etc. Food and machines, meh.

Aircraft can go up in value. A well-maintained cessna can appreciate as the economy goes up and down (more rich people wanting to learn to fly). So too with mining equipment in response to ore prices.

Value is but one of the many human illusions we create.

There are really two kinds of value - consensus value and individual value. Consensus value is what defines the things that society feels to be valuable. Individual value is arguably more important, as it defines the things important to an individual experience on this planet.

Value is also inherently ephemeral in the long run. There will be a point in human existence where nothing we've ever created will be of any value, because at that point human civilization will cease to exist.

One thing to remember or understand is even in the time of Napoleon, but much more in the 20th century and beyond, the rich and wealthy have used certain item classes as wealth and asset storage with a manipulable market.

There is a real reason the art world is one of the best ways to launder money. It can also provide value as continuity plans via insurance or as overvalued collateral for large loans. In that sense, these kinds of assets provide a large amount of value to the wealthy which then feeds back into the loop. That is very different than commodities that have a first-level purpose like food and transportation.

After WW2, the Allies took scientific, military, and industrial personnel and equipment from Germany. The biggest scoop for the US were rocketry advances with Von Braun and his team, but the Russians took scientists too. The also sought any nuclear developments but there weren't many. When the Russians withdrew from Austria, they took entire factories with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Austria#Mounti...