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Sell to the rich, and give to the poor
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We don’t ask our children what they want to be when they grow up. The chance of them having any kind of clue is so slim; it’s not worth the trouble. Nonetheless, daughter Isabella regularly reminds us she wants to be an artist. She is also hoping money will no longer be in existence by then, and we’ll all live in a sort of worldwide commune, where everything is shared by everybody and nobody goes hungry. Wanting to be an artist and wishing the money system out of existence are two things that go hand in hand very well, I must give her that.
Still, at eight years old, she’s smarter than most adults: the notion that no human being should ever go without having his or her basic needs met isn’t all that strange, albeit quite idealistic and, unfortunately, unrealistic.
“People don’t want to share everything,” I tell her, and she frowns:
“Why would anybody want others to go hungry?”
“Because it’s human nature to think about yourself first,” I say, “your own family, your own neighborhood, your own country, and so forth.”
I cringe when I tell her this; shouldn’t these conversations wait until she’s a teenager?
Luckily, she really doesn’t understand any of this, so she doesn’t linger. It’s more fun to talk about the kind of artist she is going to be. She is going to make big things; paintings as big as a house, humongous sculptures made with plaster of Paris, which she will then paint in bright colors. The paintings and sculptures will express her feelings, she says; she will not bother to make small things, because she doesn’t experience small feelings.
She is imagining a gigantic studio that spans several blocks, and I am starting to understand why she wants to overturn the economy and get rid of money.
“Why don’t you just find someone really rich to marry?” I ask her, but she looks at me as if I’m the biggest idiot she’s ever seen.
“I’m selling the paintings I have already made,” she says, and I will use the money to buy more materials.” She doesn’t add an actual ‘duh’, but I know she wants to.
“How much?” I ask, pointing at a recent painting that’s drying on a bookshelf. She names her price. It’s steep, for an eight year old, so I try to haggle by naming a lower price that still sounds ridiculously high for an eight-year-old. She doesn’t budge. “What if someone is really poor,” I say, “and can’t afford your art, but really loves it and wants it?”
“They’d get it for free. Because people that are really that poor need art in their life.”
So she is going to be an artist, and the rich will pay exorbitant prices, while the poor will get it for free. Sounds like a plan. I am starting to think that Isabella was born in the wrong decade, and would have functioned quite well in the sixties.
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