"History"
Interesting thread. Upon re-reading the original comments that started this thread it appears the author is more concerned about the disposition of the "history of a thing" rather than the "thing" itself. In that he is probably correct.
The "history" should be maintained in a public archive open to all as "the public" paid for that history through effort and tax dollars. The history itself really has no monetary value that can be realized at the time of disposal (that value only develops over time) and there are tangible reasons for its retention. That is in a perfect world.
The "thing" itself is just an asset acquired to fill a need and if the need no longer exists or the item is obsolete then it should be disposed of and new assets procured. The Government should do all it can to recover the most it can from the scrapped or surplused items so as to lessen the burden on the taxpayer. The taxpayer should also have the ability to purchase these surplus items and re-purpose them for civilian use.
Thankfully, items were surplused and private citizens re-purposed them and preserved them for us to acquire and restore. Museums of all types rely on the private citizen, they provide the funding, they volunteer their time and they often provide the artifacts that would have been lost to time without their efforts. Its a thankless enterprise, but governments will never do it.
I was really intrigued by Rob's statement that Canadians have no "property rights" could you elaborate? Just as a discussion not a legal opinion.
Just as an aside, the US government spent billions on the Saturn V rocket to launch their moon missions. After the missions were complete, there came a need to retain this new and expensive technology and that meant a huge amount of work. Drawings had to be converted to CAD from paper, special materials developed for the program needed to have all that data archived so they could make it again if required, special processes developed needed to be transcribed and a team of people kept on staff to keep the specifications up to date as new materials were developed and old ones obsoleted. Faced with that cost, the US Government and NASA decided just to let it fade. The had the unused rockets to set up at museums but couldn't make another Saturn V if they needed it. Preserving history isn't just the "thing" there are many other facets that need to be preserved for posterity.
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