I guess this is news? A recent article at Yahoo talked about Justin Sun eating a 6.2 dollar banana:
Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2 million on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall -- by eating the fruit. At one of Hong Kong's priciest hotels, Sun chomped down on a banana in front of dozens of journalists and influencers after giving a speech hailing the work as "iconic" and drew parallels between conceptual art and cryptocurrency.
Two things come to mind from reading this. The first is the quote from Sun in the article. I am not sure a guy this high up in the crypto hierarchy should be saying things that draw comparisons to crypto and 6 million dollar bananas. It simple gives talking points to anyone out there looking to badmouth crypto. I mean, this is the obvious thing to take away from article though, that rich people can do things like this.
The second thought I had was when I opened the comments. I knew the first thing I would see is someone complaining about a rich guy wasting money instead of giving it to the poor, and sure enough, the first comment was:
About 9 million people die from hunger each year, while someone spent $6.2 million on a single banana. Wouldn't it have been more meaningful if that money was used to help the poor instead? This is heartbreaking and highlights the extreme inequality in the world.
I don't want to sound insensitive here, but, Ayn Rand talked about this in Atlas Shrugged years ago. I will paraphrase here, "Quit whining." Ok, it was a little more than that. My argument is not to tell this person to stop complaining, but that there is nothing better* for the economy than for rich people to be silly with their money. I use the word silly and not stupid, because this guy spending 6.2 billion on a banana is like me spending 30 bucks on an Ugly Christmas sweater party. Respectively, neither are that big of a deal in the great scheme of things to either of us, but, one puts millions of dollars into circulation in the economy. This fruit purchase put a lot of money in play, there are taxes, commissions, fees, the expense to stay at the fancy hotel, journalist's salaries for the story, and I am sure the artist getting a windfall is going to buy a lot of stuff over the next few months.
So, sure, giving money to the poor is nice, but, it is a one time thing. Overpaying 6.19999 million for a snack is a real economic boost.
(*OK, not really nothing better, investing back into their business and hiring a bunch of people is better, but, that makes for a boring article.)
