If I am not honest, I will have no clients. It's that simple for me.Originally Posted by bob carnie
Lenny
If I am not honest, I will have no clients. It's that simple for me.
Lenny
EigerStudios
Museum Quality Drum Scanning and Printing
Some business lines obviously garner more disrespect than others. I remember back when I sold equipment to local car dealerships. Literally only one in fifty had an honest service dept. And marquee glitz tourist-row galleries tend to attract more questionable operators than most business models. I remember when the FBI had a full time detail just in Carmel - a town noted for great photographers but sleezy painters - some of these allegedly famous painters didn't even exist - the painting were mass-produced on assembly lines in Mexico! But overall, given all the business contacts I've had over the years, big and small, I'd estimate that it's only about 2% of the people that generate 98% of the grief. And it rarely pays off for them in the long run. Yeah, there is a culture in this country of vulture capitalism and flipping companies like toilet paper, and it has a huge impact on the entire economy. But for every such instance there are plenty of decently run corporations. They just don't make the headlines.
Drew, I have to agree. When I sold tools to auto mechanics, I sold only with my own cash loans. Which was Snap-On Tools full retail prices on a payment plan. No added interest and no one in my territory ever qualified for bank type loans. I had at least $100K on the street at all times. 2 to 4% of these not credit worthy individuals would disappear, lose their job or just stiff me. But 96% paid. I was selling in a long empty Chicago territory in an all immigrant area. 4 miles square, however half the land was cemetary, so many of my potential customers were dead. I made good money. I hustled. I only quit due to divorce lawyer greed. They lost.
Tin Can
That might be true on the micro scale, but honesty and sucsess in business have little to do with each other, despite american dream idioms we like to believe in.
Any profit is based on the disenfranchisement of someone else, which init of its own is an inherently dishonest thing to do, especially while claiming someone is doing their best ____ for ____. That is of course not to say any one making a profit is a dishonest person, especially none of the posters who commented here, its just the way things are, business and personal practices aside.
My man Norman Chompsky:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro
The problem here is that the concept of what is "fair" or "honest" or even "best" varies wildly form culture to culture, from place to place, and is a moral implication, which is not universal. The only constant is that profit arises from surplus value, which can only be generated off the devaluation of someone else (or their work/value etc.). The morality of profit is constant even if the above quote varies.
And to get back on track in the same direction - even if Lik is totally dishonest, he is no better or worse then a politician or corporation, just because profit is on his mind. He is infact no worse then any of us because of this, even if we might impose some misplaced moral judgment against him.
Ok, I'm going to have to unpack this tautology. You are not naming a specific corporation or politician, so you are implying that all corporations and politicians are dishonest—and that they therefore set a benchmark for our expectations of dishonesty. And then you are saying that if Lik is lying, he's no worse than this benchmark, and so we have nothing to fault him for.
Do you see how this is ... uh ... problematic?
My take: if Lik staged this sale, it is problematic because
1) it means he's dishonest;
2) His dishonesty served to create false value, and therefore fleece his potential customers;
3) he made an international spectacle of his dishonesty, which also served to fuel his (apparently) colossal ego;
4) his ruse is so preposterous as to insult the intelligence of his peers and the entire art community.
On the other hand, if he didn't stage this sale,
1) he has $10 million and doesn't have to care what anyone thinks;
2) but I'm not betting on it.
sorry, i do not, i did not say anything about expectations but this might be due to my cultural lag.
That logic could be used to excuse literally anything.
All of this can be said, regardless of the very high price, the subject of this thread. How do you in fact sell a digital image which is so widely proliferated?
How can anyone, let alone someone who's images are on so many screen savers worldwide confirm to a potential buyer/owner, that he owns the rights to the image, in the digital age? Its not like he can shred his hard drive as evidence towards no more reproductions. Can he sign a legal agreement precluding him from reproducing the image again and selling it off the books again,to someone who might not have heard about this 6.5M sale? what if he gives it away for free without telling anyone?
Even when silly thins like cutting the negative and handing it over with the AP at a gallery sale were common practice this was meaningless, and thus the prices paid for photo "fine arts" are always lower then those paid for other "hand crafted" craft things, such as paintings (though maybe there is also a historical aspect here that drives the two prices apart which needs to be considered).
At any rate, the rediculous thing here is not the sum, nor the potential dishonesty (which as i mentioned above, can be said of a 7eleven selling cum at a profit, as the quesiton of how much is fair for one to earn, or what is a decent living standard cannot be universally answered), but is in fact the concept that digital art can be sold, in reality.
I asked these questions about 20 posts ago, but it got sidetracked i guess, so here it is again:
anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing
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