1. How much money do they have is somewhat relevant though.
2. The cost of preserving it indefinitely isn’t finite. So...maybe they wouldn’t be willing to pay a cost like that because the good they want isn’t for sale.
3. In order to afford to keep the Colosseum open it’s going to have to be in use. Do you, really want that?
This isn’t a great way of thinking about intangible value, since most people are far less liquid than the value of the things in their lives. If your mom needs life-saving treatment for $10,000 and you can’t afford to pay it, does that mean your mom is really worth less than $10,000 to you? No—her existence might contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars of devotion, emotional support, and sage advice to you. It’s just that nobody will accept those things as collateral for a loan.
The Colosseum doesn’t have as stark a value proposition going for it, but by a similar argument it’s easy to imagine the public benefit of some building being greater than the amount of money that can be raised to support it. Personally, I think the Colosseum is mostly only valuable to the Italian state for the legitimacy that it buys it, a little self-justifying scheme of wasting taxpayer money to manufacture taxpayer assent.
I would argue that if people across the world are not willing to pool enough money together to save the Colosseum, then for all their claims that culture is important to them, it clearly just really isn’t. I’m reminded of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/21/the-economics-of-art-and-the-art-of-economics/
1. How much money do they have is somewhat relevant though.
2. The cost of preserving it indefinitely isn’t finite. So...maybe they wouldn’t be willing to pay a cost like that because the good they want isn’t for sale.
3. In order to afford to keep the Colosseum open it’s going to have to be in use. Do you, really want that?
This isn’t a great way of thinking about intangible value, since most people are far less liquid than the value of the things in their lives. If your mom needs life-saving treatment for $10,000 and you can’t afford to pay it, does that mean your mom is really worth less than $10,000 to you? No—her existence might contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars of devotion, emotional support, and sage advice to you. It’s just that nobody will accept those things as collateral for a loan.
The Colosseum doesn’t have as stark a value proposition going for it, but by a similar argument it’s easy to imagine the public benefit of some building being greater than the amount of money that can be raised to support it. Personally, I think the Colosseum is mostly only valuable to the Italian state for the legitimacy that it buys it, a little self-justifying scheme of wasting taxpayer money to manufacture taxpayer assent.