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The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

johnhiggs.com

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Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#101

Post by matheusmoreira »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #97
matheusmoreira wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people don't "throw away" money, they spend it. The money is circulating and enriching others for services rendered. In fact, the more money they "throw away" the better. The rational thing to do as a capitalist is to capture as much of that money as possible. What they don't do is set it on fire, thereby depriving others of it permanently.

Isn't burning money just the opposite of Quantitative Easing and thus it slightly increases the value of existing money? If burning money is "depriving others of it permanently", then when banks issue currency (e.g. quantitative easing), they are supplying money to others permanently. Logically, it would seem that if you are against the destruction of currency, then you should be a proponent of banks creating as much…

Nope. The whole point of money is to buy things. Banks create new money backed by debt which is what creates real value. The new money is destroyed when people work and pay off the debt. This "act" has created nothing of the sort.

You could argue that they theoretically increased the value of everyone else's money but the actual amount is so infinitesimal it would just add insult to injury. The vast majority of the money in existence is just numbers in bank databases, actual cash is a small fraction and burning an even smaller fraction of that does absolutely nothing beneficial to anyone.

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#102

Post by coldtea »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #95
coldtea wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pain of not having enough is a fundamental human experience, and to see someone who had more than most will ever see in their lifetime literally burn it away hurts. Still, nobody bats an eye when some other celebrity or CEO or socialite throws away 1 million just for a single wedding or even a birthday party, or 10 million to have a large swimming pool. Which happens like every single day. $1m is probably what…

Rich people don't "throw away" money, they spend it. The money is circulating and enriching others for services rendered. In fact, the more money they "throw away" the better. The rational thing to do as a capitalist is to capture as much of that money as possible. What they don't do is set it on fire, thereby depriving others of it permanently.

>Rich people don't "throw away" money, they spend it. The money is circulating and enriching others for services rendered

Rich people stock way more money (percentage-wise) out of circulation (like in real estate property, tax havens, jewlery, and so on) than working and middle class people - which spend almost all the money they make. For many rich what they actually spend and re-circulate, is a tiny slither of their income (much less their overall wealth).

Not to mention the externalities destroying the environment and societal value from spending money in certain ways (from flying across the world in your private jet, to throwing money at taking people out of actual productive work to cater to your BS fancies like building you an olympic sized pool and organizing BS parties for your friends, to influencing politics and law with your money outside of the democratic process).

>What they don't do is set it on fire, thereby depriving others of it permanently.

Nothing in that case was "deprived from others permanently". Those KLF guys still bought things they needed, and paid for them - just with other money.

They didn't destoy actual value or stole anything. What they did is basically the same as if they just didn't spend their money (and kept it in a safe or under the matress).

Not to mention they've helped with lowering inflation!

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#103

Post by dri_ft »

ectopod wrote: post #94

According to an article in The Times years ago (early 2000s?) the money was used notes from the Bank of England that was going to be burned anyway. With insurance, security, and a BoE employee to supervise it was expensive, but not a million pounds expensive. That said, I could imagine the KLF inventing this story too, so I don't know what the truth is.

I heard at least part of this version of the story a few years ago from someone who was in the British music industry at the time. I seem to recall getting the impression that he was relaying what he'd heard at the time, but of course I can't rule out that he got it from the Times article you mentioned.

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#104

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #101
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't burning money just the opposite of Quantitative Easing and thus it slightly increases the value of existing money? If burning money is "depriving others of it permanently", then when banks issue currency (e.g. quantitative easing), they are supplying money to others permanently. Logically, it would seem that if you are against the destruction of currency, then you should be a proponent of banks creating as much…

Nope. The whole point of money is to buy things. Banks create new money backed by debt which is what creates real value. The new money is destroyed when people work and pay off the debt. This "act" has created nothing of the sort. You could argue that they theoretically increased the value of everyone else's money but the actual amount is so infinitesimal it would just add insult to injury. The vast majority of the m…

I don't agree with your description of money creation as a primary means of creating value. Surely value is created by human endeavour and currency is just a convenient means of tracking that?

If there was a bank that just continually created new money and gave debt to everyone, then do you believe that they are creating value and presumably a society could exist purely from the value created by these numbers?

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#105

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Great book. There's a BBC radio/podcast comedy drama that tells this story too.

If you listen to it without prior knowledge it probably sounds like something Douglas Adams made up, but it's all basically true:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06y18n2

> How To Burn a Million Quid lays the story bare. A comic, surreal and fast moving adventure that sees Bill and Jimmy rise to the very top of the music industry, becoming the biggest selling music act in the UK before crashing out of the industry in spectacular fashion and heading toward the art world with the intention of creating similar mayhem. Inspired by a madcap theatrical genius and a cult novel, they blaze a trail that takes them to Sweden, the North Pole and the Sierra Nevada, via Northampton, before arriving finally on the Isle of Jura, with two suitcases containing a million quid.

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#106

Post by wpietri »

msla wrote: post #41
leoedin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they piss it away though? That single statement was so powerful it's still causing emotional arguments about it 20 years later. Can you say that about other things people spent £1m on in 1994?

> That single statement was so powerful it's still causing emotional arguments about it 20 years later. I hate this argument, because it's worse than vacuous: It makes out that art is about as meaningful as a gunshot in a crowded room. Is that art? It'll damn well get a reaction, especially from the person who was just shot. Shouldn't we demand more from art? Like actual meaning and maybe, just maybe, a positive impa…

You aren't quite getting how money works.

The lifesaving potential of Great Britain was exactly the same before and after they burnt the money. Same number of hospitals and doctors. Same amount of food and housing. Etc, etc.

The money supply of Great Britain was recently 3,598,911 million pounds down from around 3,700,000 million pounds, [1] a difference 100,000 times as great as what the KLF did. Are you 100,000x as outraged because of that change in the money supply? Are you perhaps 3.6 million times as outraged because all that money isn't being used to save lives?

I'm guessing not. You might think about why you so intensely blame them and not all the other people who could be spending their money more in line with your values.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/money-supply-m3

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#107

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sprkwd wrote: post #60
tinus_hn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately many of their albums are unavailable to the public at large because the use of samples makes them impossible to license for streaming services.

There’s a bunch of their tracks on Spotify now.

They actually chose to stop selling their music, since that was were the million quid they burnt came from. Part of the same stunt "The KLF has now left the music industry".

They relented recently after 23 yesrs but the copyright issue mentioned remains so for example their "Chill Out" album was officially re-released by them as "Come Down Dawn" but the Elvis, Fleetwood Mac and Acker Bilk samples got removed as part of that.

Still available on Youtube via unofficial channels though.

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#108

Post by Minor49er »

nineteen999 wrote: post #17
Minor49er wrote: post #7

The White Room, Chill Out, and Jimmy Cauty's Space have all been on my recent rotation. They are so good. Long live The KLF!

I never understood the attraction. But then again I didn't understand what all the fuss was about over the Prodigy and "Firestarter" either. Or Underworld after they moved from rock to dance. All seemed vastly overrated to me. There is something I must be missing.

Maybe you're simply not into those flavors of electronic music

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#109

Post by refuse »

gnfargbl wrote: post #75

A few years back, the KLF (as CALLENDER, PHILLIPS, CAUTY & DRUMMOND UNDERTAKERS) were attempting to build a giant pyramid in central Liverpool. The pyramid was/is to be constructed of bricks each containing 23g of cremated human remains. https://www.mumufication.com/get-mumufication/ Much more interesting than burning a million quid. Wonder if they're still following through with it.

Yes, you too can be MuMufied!

https://www.mumufication.com/

Re: The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M

#110

Post by wpietri »

Baeocystin wrote: post #35
wpietri wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought it was deeply selfish stunt then, and still do now. Not sure if this helps you, but the money supply changes all the time. The government creates and destroys money as needed and nobody ever says boo. What these folks did made all the other money in circulation worth slightly more, so nothing was actually lost in the way that would have been had they, say, bought houses and burned them down.

I appreciate the kind words. My anger at their actions comes from how coddled from reality they had to be to make such a choice. The levers of monetary supply and demand, of course, 'make' and 'destroy' much larger sums on a daily basis. But those aren't liquid values under control of a single person, either. Money that is, is much more salient, and more valuable. And they just pissed it away.

I don't think I'd call it that.

Even if we look only at "liquid values under control of a single person", this was a tiny, tiny fraction of the UK's stock of money. I can't find M3 numbers for back then, but currently this would be 0.0000027% of money. It would be hard to argue that this was the worst spent million, or even in the bottom decile.

I'd say what they got for it was a lot of people questioning and discussing the value and purpose of money. For decades! Given that so much of our culture is supportive of acquisition regardless of harm, it could be argued that a million pounds of anti-greed propaganda was one of the most socially positive things they could have done with it.

And even if we don't go that far, even if we discount the social value of art to 0, they still provided a hell of a lot of public entertainment for a million pounds. The latest Rolling Stones tour costs about 100m pounds. Major blockbusters cost 100-300m pounds each. Many indie films will cost more than 1m GBP. Compared with that, this looks like excellent value for money, and here nobody had to buy a ticket.

So I think at the very least there are much worse uses of money to be mad about. But if you'd still prefer this one, I imagine they'd be fine with that. Stoking outrage was clearly one of the intended goals of the project, and they wouldn't have achieved their goals without it.

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