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The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

(thewalrus.ca)
300 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 28 Jun 25 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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BrenBarn ◴[29 Jun 25 06:43 UTC] No.44410806[source]▶
> I heard one answer more than any other: the government should introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford artists the security to create art, but it’s also extremely fanciful.

Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our problems will persist. This article is another in the long series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high. It's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

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anovikov ◴[29 Jun 25 06:59 UTC] No.44410867[source]▶
Only problem is that it requires totalitarian world government to do it. There is that thing called competition. Societies where people aren't pushed to work by fear of hunger, homelessness, and social exclusion, will very quickly lose out and fall apart. Perhaps this is why universal basic income doesn't exist. I mean, Soviet Union was very close to having it: there was no unemployment and if you were fine living on the base salary you could do nothing on your job and as long as you didn't come there drunk or disseminated anti-Soviet jokes, you'd be fine. See where it ended up.
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1. foxglacier ◴[29 Jun 25 07:25 UTC] No.44410973[source]▶
No because the whole first world has protections against starvation and homelessness, while social exclusion is usually for social behaviors rather than not working. However, what does drive people to be productive in those countries is the unbounded upward mobility offered by doing productive work. People strive to be richer than each other in a virtuous cycle that has the side effect of benefiting everyone. People, especially men, love and often need to be better than their peers to attract better partners, and that's a powerful driving force for many. For others, it's just feeling successful or gaining the power to by what you want. You can't do that if you're not rewarded for higher performance than your competitors (socialism).

Homelessness in the west is mostly not because people can't afford a house but because they'd rather spend their money on other things (drugs) or don't want a house at any price, or can't avoid losing their house because of their behavior.