Quote:
Originally Posted by Betonov
DON'T YOU DARE, THAT THING BELONGS IN A MUSEUM  |
Says the great monopolised looter and crminal, the state. I say: natural law: finders, keepers. They can get it from me if it is so precious to them. They will need to pay me for it, however, and I will set the price at what it is worth to them, and me. Either a price can be agreed on, or not. The minimum is the material price of the gold, and then plus X.
The only exception is that the previous owner still lives and can be found. Then it is his. But a state never is a legitmised owner of anything. Whatever a state claims to own, it has plundered and stolen and expropriated. Land. claims for what is on the land, and within the ground.
So in the end even archeological findings come down to: property rights again. Anything else is just a mixture of sentimentality and vague dreaming about something one does not wish to define precisely, living by the illusion that the naming a material value of something would devalue its attributed immaterial value, which is a very subjective quality. But you do not and cannot sell the memory you link to and the emotional value you therefore attribute to that gold coin that has been possessed by your family since long, you only can demand price for the material value of the gold and the value the collector attributes to it, for whatever his reasons may be.