←back to thread

300 points pseudolus | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
Show context
BrenBarn ◴[] 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.

replies(31): >>44410825 #>>44410866 #>>44410867 #>>44410916 #>>44411075 #>>44411231 #>>44411300 #>>44411331 #>>44411377 #>>44411383 #>>44411390 #>>44411522 #>>44411551 #>>44411588 #>>44411793 #>>44411818 #>>44412810 #>>44413214 #>>44413504 #>>44413995 #>>44414020 #>>44414102 #>>44414213 #>>44414713 #>>44414846 #>>44415180 #>>44415597 #>>44415836 #>>44416489 #>>44416737 #>>44422633 #
skeeter2020 ◴[] No.44414213[source]
I do a lot of things as an amateur but at pretty high level: athletics, music, art and more. I also pay a huge portion of my income as a software developer in direct and indirect taxation. Convince me I should fund people to focus full-time on things where they can't make a living, the same things I love to do but realize can't be your sole pursuit.

You've conflated people busting ass who can't keep up with those following their passion in the arts voluntarily. Those don't feel anything like the same thing to me. I don't think I'm alone in a perspective that if you keep taking more from me I'll stop contributing all together, and we'll all fail. The ultra-rich and others with means to avoid picking up the tab have already done so.

replies(14): >>44414333 #>>44414403 #>>44414406 #>>44414602 #>>44414691 #>>44414778 #>>44414843 #>>44415383 #>>44415464 #>>44415489 #>>44415785 #>>44416240 #>>44419572 #>>44439326 #
pavlov ◴[] No.44414778[source]
I love art and I also love making art, but I have to work so I don’t get to spend as much time on it as I’d like.

Yet that doesn’t mean I want to see other people making less art. On the contrary: I wish other people could create more great stuff that makes me happy, and I’m also happy if my tax euros (and my private consumption) help pay for that.

What I’m trying to say is that this idea of “I don’t get to do it, so nobody else should either” seems completely foreign to creativity. It’s not a zero-sum game.

replies(2): >>44414875 #>>44415513 #
orangecat ◴[] No.44414875[source]
“I don’t get to do it, so nobody else should either”

That's not it at all. There are already tons of people doing it, so many that the incremental value of one more person is small. The low pay reflects that; it's a signal that you should consider other jobs that are more in demand.

replies(1): >>44417817 #
1. pxc ◴[] No.44417817[source]
Art-as-job is an artifice we've instituted through the invention of copyright, whose purpose is to ensure that we live in a society rich with art. There is not and never has been any reason to believe that this system, though it may serve its purpose to some extent, actually captures or meaningfully quantifies the value of art to society. The "demand" for art is made-up in the first place, not an end in itself or a measure of an end itself.

One invented means of propping up art isn't necessarily especially legitimate or natural compared to others.