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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

This is typical in the art world - crime lord or otherwise. Art is often kept in freeports - storage facilities that exist outside of the realm of domestic taxation. This allows the artworks to be sold without incurring taxes or customs. Many artworks pass through owners who never actually physically lay eyes on them, and many pass through multiple owners without ever physically moving.

For a lot of people who transact in art, actually looking at the art is not at all the point of the exercise. Speculation on the art is the whole point. These things are effectively fanciful, convoluted, tax-dodging securities instruments, with only the most cursory nod to the appreciation of art.

Which, y'know, is awfully reminiscent of something else in recent memory...

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> Art is often kept in freeports

One of my most interesting memories when visiting Geneva as a tourist a few years back was travelling in a public transport bus near the city's freeport, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) in the world. I was asking myself while on that public bus about how many masterpieces might be stored in the anonymous depot-like building I was seeing through the bus's window. A special kind of Louvre or Kunsthistorisches Museum, if you will.

Societies could mandate that works of art that are stored in freeports be publicly accessible. Locking away priceless historic art for speculation purposes should be banned.

Basically, either you wish to enjoy the artwork alone, then you have to pay taxes, or you wish to hide it from taxes, then you have to share it with the general public.

>> Societies could mandate that works of art that are stored in freeports be publicly accessible

This is true, societies could choose to be less free. Alternatively, societies could choose to be more free.

I would rather my society be more free than it currently is, rather than less free.

Ya this is true but who’s gonna pay for the roads and the schools and the cops? Not the people with art in freeports.

What’s “more free” about a legal loophole that allows million/billionaires to hoard art for speculative gains, while avoiding being taxed on them like everyone else?

You're asking what is more free about allowing someone to do something than mandating that they do something else.

“someone to do something”

In this phrase, “someone” are only million/billionaires (1%) and “something” is avoid taxes on a niche, speculation on art.

Not sure how that is much of a freedom to be honest.

All human beings desire freedom to some extent... the expressions may include freedom to stack up artworks in a warehouse, or freedom to post weird comments on an Internet forum.

Or, that art exhibited in museums open free of charge to the general public enjoy the same tax benefits as freeports - putting freeports out of business.

True, but most museums also keep the bulk of their collection -- except of course for the crowd-pleasing hits -- in storage. I think their motives are mostly better but the end effect is often the same: a work of art is rarely, if ever, seen live by humans.

One fun thing about The Broad (pronounced "Brode") in Los Angeles is that you can peek into the storage and restoration area where the staff is often moving pieces of the collection around for cleaning and so on.

The movie Tenet has some fun with the freeport idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyoI7_C6N_s

> freeports - storage facilities that exist outside of the realm of domestic taxation

Billions (TV show) depicts how these freeports work as well, exactly like you’ve explained. Absolutely disgusting that these loopholes exist…

Note: I find that when examples like these are used, you always get comments saying “Anyone can use a freeport” and “They have perfectly legal usecases”.

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