Saturday 3 September 2016

4:00 PM $28,798 PLEDGED! THANK YOU ALL, AGAIN!

One of the things that's "shifting" relative to The Cerebus Archive itself is the relationship between the Cerebus audience -- primarily the Pledge Partners -- and Aardvark-Vanaheim Inc.

My plans to have A-V dissolve itself at the moment of my death and convert into the Cerebus Trust has foundered on the fact that anything that happens with the corporation on my death that involves transferring its assets to another entity has HUGE tax consequences.  Basically, everything has to be evaluated financially and then a percentage of that goes to the Ontario government.  Big hit on the proceeds from my insurance which will be A-V's primary "lifeblood".

So, now I'm trying to figure out how to keep the "on-paper" corporation alive after I'm dead while ensuring that it sticks to doing a very limited number of things.  One of which would be continuing to publish the CEREBUS ARCHIVE Portfolios as a means of financing "in perpetuity" while also making sure that CEREBUS enters the public domain.

The most devoted part of your audience is really the best guarantor of your wishes being followed.

I'm trying to figure out, basically, how to make AMOC, after I'm dead, into the Aardvark-Vanaheim "government".  Except, if I can make it another ten or twenty years, I think you can take the quotation marks off of there.  Corporations governed on the Internet will, I think, be the rule, rather than the exception.

5 comments:

Michael R. said...

Hi Dave!

It's a "safe" bet that you have a lot of planning to do get all the original artwork insured and put away for "safe" keeping. :)

Since you are the "first person" who has to be thereto open the vault. You should pick the "second person". He/she should be someone ---

A- you trust with the key to the vault
B- close enough to be present to access the vault
C- who is younger than you
D- who is in good health

I believe then both of you should pick a beneficiary if both of you are no longer alive. This person should only have enough information and identification to go the insurance company to gain access. Almost like picking the next pope way before needed. And on a way smaller scale of people (2) selecting the next beneficiary.

Unknown said...

Hi Mike! Again, this is all far more contingent on who the insurance company trusts in any of the roles. Most of my job is going to be imagining different configurations that address insurance company concerns.

And the problems are all centred on "in perpetuity". We can't really have a mechanism that depends on who I trust, because I won't be here after the first iteration.

Thanks for posting!

Michael R. said...

I have some thought of trusting the security guard. What if the "bonded" security guard is in cahoots with the visitor and both "bond" together and run off with the artwork. If you can't trust the security guard , what's the point of going to all these measures of how secure the vault will be.

Sorry, Dave, I watched quite a few bank heist movies.

Michael Ragiel

Unknown said...

Hi Michael - I don't think that's likely to happen. The "bonding" process is very, very strict. Not in Hollywood movies, but then Hollywood needs to make stuff up that makes for more interesting stories than what happens in real life. It's like Sean talking about going to the Louvre and seeing Gustave Dore's work. Those are the people who actually go there. BANK heist movies are about big piles of money. Has there ever been a major COMIC ART heist? They definitely had a security guard at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion in NYC. It's just common sense when you have millions of dollars worth of rare art and comic books on the premises. But, mostly it's for insurance purposes.

Also, at the point this happens, we'll have a 100% verifiable inventory list of Cerebus Archive artwork that we can circulate that would make it very difficult -- impossible, actually -- for someone to sell the artwork even if someone managed to steal it. And there are other measures that can be taken. Margaret got me an invisible ink pen years ago when all this first came up. What if I autographed each page in invisible ink on the back? If it's autographed on the back in invisible ink, it's stollen. Period.

It's really a matter of the (in terms of the actual risk) ridiculous extremes you need to go to in order to satisfy an insurance company and keep your premiums down.

Menachem Luchins said...

I want an Invisible Dave Sim signature!