06-06-2025
A Good Life: Is it ethical to pay artists, and local kids, in cash to avoid taxes?
What is A Good Life? Plato said it requires virtue. Epicurus said the trick is never talking politics. Nietzsche said if you're striving for happiness, you're losing. To the Star, A Good Life is our new advice column in which our philosophical advisors help you navigate everyday dilemmas about romance, career and how best to spend your fleeting time on earth, guiding you out of the existential muck, toward A Good Life.
When people sell paintings, they seller gets the money, not the person who painted the work — so the proceeds of the sale of, for example, Lawren Harris's 'Mountain Forms' which sold in 2016 for $11,210,000, would go to the seller; not to Harris's estate. That seems wrong, particularly when we talk all the time about how we 'steal' the work of writers or musicians. I mean, once their work is sold, it's sold, right? What do you think?
