Sure, people have to eat. But that's kinda a base thing to build a cultured society around. Can't we do better than that yet, what progress has humanity made?

Sure, people have to eat. But that's kinda a base thing to build a cultured society around. Can't we do better than that yet, what progress has humanity made? Agency is what artists need to perform their cultural function in society. Sure there are demands for music and images that don't care for the cultural role of art; but most artists seem to want at least some agency, though the need to do bread-and-butter work (baseline earnings) is something that hits early in any artists career.