The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

> 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.

And yet they just voted to do the opposite. It’s not universal income that’s the solution, it’s breaking apart the monopolistic legislation that allows certain companies strangleholds on the markets. M&A shouldn’t be allowed if 65% of the majority of the market is owned by those two companies. Individuals with wealth should be capped and any excess should be used for low-income development programs.

We built a world for higher level thinking but ever since 2010, we’ve been failing to meet that standard.

one idea I've been toying with is to give municipalities ability to be hostile to corporations. for instance, levy a hefty tax on the wealth that is extracted from the community and paid to shareholders.

Of course I'm sure there are a million laws against this at the state or federal level, but citizens could still band together to make them comply or else run them out of town. ie. the police could agree to stop responding to McDonalds, or courts could allow trial by jury for eviction cases, and simply have the jurors find them not guilty (for the case of corporate landlords). These would be elements of last resort. The first resort would be to require corporate owners to pay a lot more to do business. A second line would be to rescind a lot of the "tax cuts" given to companies to build there. Just say sorry, this is an emergency and we cannot afford to give you the cuts anymore.

It would be dangerous, no doubt, and ripe for abuse. But it's a tool that could be used at the local level to provide relief. Ultimately, I think certain sectors should be forbidden for corporations to operate, such as restaurants and landlording. These are entry-level small business opportunities for normal people to get involved in, and they do not deserve to be pushed out by wealthy corporations.

A community that engages rapaciously with enterprise based on unpredictable or moving standards is one that will quickly be left without any enterprise. I cannot imagine opening a restaurant in a city that could one day decide to fine me for doing too much business or have the police stop responding (an open invite for consequence-free theft).

If you want to raise higher taxes across the board that's one thing, but becoming hostile is shooting yourself in the dick. An ultimate example of short term over long term thinking.

> one that will quickly be left without any enterprise

I would be fine with a small town lacking any chain restaurants or big box stores. Imagine that, small business owners could do commerce with each other and not have to have 7-figure sums as barriers of entry?

> or have the police stop responding (an open invite for consequence-free theft)

That's the point: a covert way for people to take back the power even if there is a foot-thick stack of UCC and other bullshit laws preventing them from fucking with Daddy Bezos. The business would have to shut down because it would be de-facto legal to steal from it.

Sorry you like simping for megacorps, but as the UHC shooting shows, people who have had every ounce of power stripped from them will find other means to be heard.