I do have a problem with that. I would prefer the Mona Lisa to remain in the hands of the Louvre than be regularly auctioned off. I would prefer American Gothic to remain in the hands of the Art Institute of Chicago, etc.

Try to imagine a reasonable policy rather than assume the worst possible policy and then the outcomes that follow.

One can imagine that public charities or government assets for example are exempt from such a scheme (since they don't pay tax anyway usually).

I’m trying to imagine the reasonably predictable response to the policy that you sketched out. Removing private property rights is not a casual undertaking I agree and would require substantial thought and care, perhaps too much to be practically workable.

Your replies so far don't seem to indicate you gave much thought to how such a system would reasonably work -- as evidenced by the assumption that art owned by charities or governments (institutions which don't pay tax) would also be up for auction.

You likewise don’t appear to have given a ton of thought to the logical responses that would likely occur from your proposal.

How long until some rich art collector starts a charity to hold their art and protect it from being auctioned?

There are already laws that would make such abuse illegal. Abuse of charities is not a new problem.

I'm not a lawyer - but it seems like one obvious factor would take into account where the artwork purchased by the charity resides. Is it in a private residence? A freeport? Probably not really a charity.

Is it hanging on the wall in the Art Institute of Chicago? Might be fine.

Then the question is what happens if the charity tries to sell it back to a private collector at some future point. Might be allowed as long as back taxes are paid assuming some appreciation schedule.

I think the more general point is that policy is _hard_, and to assume that something doesn't work because you've thought about it for 2.5 seconds is probably a bad assumption to make. Most of our existing laws/policies would be similarly easy to attack if distilled to one sentence. There's a reason actual policy and laws are really long.

Yes, policy is hard. That’s the exact same reason that when you think “it’s not that hard to find a price for a rare…”, you probably still have a lot more thinking ahead of you than behind you.

That comment was meant to be taken in theoretical sense not that I had the text of a law ready to go into effect tomorrow. I'm well aware there's plenty more thinking to be done.

You however, seem to think that because you can find a corner case in a two line proposal, the whole thing has no merit.