6 ms·

> Further, spaces like the Kennedy center (or amphitheaters) play a revolving set of shows which makes it difficult for any private entity to have enough skin i

by LanceH 5y ago

> Further, spaces like the Kennedy center (or amphitheaters) play a revolving set of shows which makes it difficult for any private entity to have enough skin in the game to fund it. It's really difficult to fund it when you have government backed competition which doesn't answer to the market. I'm not sure if this applies to the Kennedy Center, but it certainly applies to the mega stadiums which double as concert venues that seem to be popping up around here. It would be impossible to compete against a government owned venue which will certainly have at least a conflict of interest in the development of supporting infrastructure and other legislation.

HWR_14 5y ago
Yes, there is an issue with megastadiums that double as a concert venue. Among other things, the stadium and associated concert revenue, while built with government money, go to the sports team. It's hard to get a large amphitheater going without government support. While I'm sure there are examples, but none spring to mind either currently or throughout history. But subsidizing live events of a revolving nature is different from subsidizing a billionaires sports team.
- LanceH 5y ago
  The flip side of it is I can't imagine going entirely private either. You would have a billion dollar asset completely beholden to the local government, which could extract what they want from you.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > You would have a billion dollar asset completely beholden to the local government, which could extract what they want from you. That's not how anything in America works. Billion dollar skyscrapers or complexes as private enterprises exist, often in the same jurisdiction as they stadiums.
maerF0x0 5y ago
> for any private entity to have enough skin in the game to fund it. This is exactly what capital markets are for and some capable and incentivized entrepreneur would acquire/develop such a venue and charge rental rates as applicable.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  The answer to arts funding is not “capitalism” any more than military funding is. We don’t question the financial cost there because we assume there is a broader benefit beyond direct profits. Why aren’t the arts treated the same way? Do people really not see why they are worth funding, regardless of whether or not they turn a profit? Unless I’m misunderstanding your point, you’re sort of indirectly advocating against grants for the arts. Is that accurate?
drekk 5y ago
For every dollar I give to Uncle Sam, 12 cents goes to military defense contractors like Raytheon. 0.004 cents go to the National Endowment for Art. I know which of those two provides more value to society, and I think it's a fucking joke how art & music are not seen as things humans do like birds making a nest, but as something to commodify and court private investment with. We completely cut art and music from most curriculums in K-12 to afford budget cuts and what did we get out of them? Did you notice the extra fraction of a fraction of a penny this year on your return? The reason private entities don't fund art is the same reason they don't fund public transit or worker pensions or guaranteed pay sick leave or... it's not profitable. I yearn for the day Americans are willing to support something regardless of how much money it makes them. Especially for a country that waxes so much poetic about its "moral majority".
- bgandrew 5y ago
  As a person living outside of US I appreciate those 12 cents from you much more than 0.004. US provides at least some level of global security and I don't want this role to be taken by any other country. As for art, I always can look for other options.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I would rather your own country pay for your own defense (and join NATO for a boost) but if the USA has to be a hegemony rather than Russia or China, I can see your point.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    We have enough money to do both! I like that the US military is a military superpower. And I like finding art (and healthcare, and a bunch of other things). If we stopped giving uber rich people unearned tax breaks, we could afford to do them trivially.
  - illusivesaint 5y ago
    What global security? The military has done more harm than good and the reason no one fights back is because of how mighty it is and the IMF. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq, did it leave it better off? Or its influence in Latin America. How's it's going in Ukraine, other than selling weapons? You don't want the US to "protect" you.
derefr 5y ago
I would point out, as an aside, that Opera itself is basically "an open-source community of musical-play development" — i.e. performances where the source material is in the public domain such that anyone can put on a performance of them without paying royalties. This is unlike "musicals", which are protected by copyright, and are thus only run by the musical's rights-holder's licensed troupe(s), in a particular place (usually Broadway), with a particular interpretation of the material (the rights-holder's); where the revenues are due to high ticket prices that can be charged often only due to the artificially-created scarcity of performances of said musical due to IP law. (I.e. for many musical, nobody is going because they're fans of the particular actors/director/etc; they just wanted to see a performance of musical X, akin to what you'd get from seeing opera X. But there's only one available performance of a given musical X. Musical producers have a monopoly on performances of their musical.) Musicals make money, by design. Opera does not make money, by design. Instead, opera houses take donations, in much the same way that you might imagine a "local open-source software development collective" might take donations. When the people of a municipality get together and decide that they consider their local opera house a "local cultural institution" worth supporting with their tax money (usually only to prop it up in bad donation years), this does certainly make the opera house into a "government-backed" project. But in this case, the "government" here is just the mob-action of the people of the city. It's the atheist version of a church congregation agreeing that their tithes should be partly directed to some local needy cause.
- atdrummond 5y ago
  While I love opera and have supported it financially in multiple places I've resided, I find it laughable that any major urban electorate in the US would actually support the Opera fiscally if that decision was left to them directly.
  - derefr 5y ago
    Nothing in a democracy happens because the majority of constituents want it to happen. The majority of constituents don't know or care enough to explicitly agree with any particular novel-and-domain-specific policy. Instead, things happen in a democracy because vocal minorities of constituents push for it, and nobody in the rest of the constituency cares enough to push in the opposite direction. If a policy turns out to be disliked by the majority, the expectation is that the policy will rile up another vocal minority enough that they'll be inspired to come along and advocate to change things back in the other direction. If no vocal counter-minority ever forms, the policy stays. To be clear, this isn't a corruption of the democratic process; rather, this is what it means to have a decision be made "democratically." See also: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1039854944 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1039854944

by LanceH 5y ago

HWR_14 5y ago

Yes, there is an issue with megastadiums that double as a concert venue. Among other things, the stadium and associated concert revenue, while built with government money, go to the sports team. It's hard to get a large amphitheater going without government support. While I'm sure there are examples, but none spring to mind either currently or throughout history. But subsidizing live events of a revolving nature is different from subsidizing a billionaires sports team.

LanceH 5y ago
The flip side of it is I can't imagine going entirely private either. You would have a billion dollar asset completely beholden to the local government, which could extract what they want from you.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > You would have a billion dollar asset completely beholden to the local government, which could extract what they want from you. That's not how anything in America works. Billion dollar skyscrapers or complexes as private enterprises exist, often in the same jurisdiction as they stadiums.

maerF0x0 5y ago

> for any private entity to have enough skin in the game to fund it. This is exactly what capital markets are for and some capable and incentivized entrepreneur would acquire/develop such a venue and charge rental rates as applicable.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Forgeties79 5y ago
The answer to arts funding is not “capitalism” any more than military funding is. We don’t question the financial cost there because we assume there is a broader benefit beyond direct profits. Why aren’t the arts treated the same way? Do people really not see why they are worth funding, regardless of whether or not they turn a profit? Unless I’m misunderstanding your point, you’re sort of indirectly advocating against grants for the arts. Is that accurate?

drekk 5y ago

For every dollar I give to Uncle Sam, 12 cents goes to military defense contractors like Raytheon. 0.004 cents go to the National Endowment for Art. I know which of those two provides more value to society, and I think it's a fucking joke how art & music are not seen as things humans do like birds making a nest, but as something to commodify and court private investment with. We completely cut art and music from most curriculums in K-12 to afford budget cuts and what did we get out of them? Did you notice the extra fraction of a fraction of a penny this year on your return? The reason private entities don't fund art is the same reason they don't fund public transit or worker pensions or guaranteed pay sick leave or... it's not profitable. I yearn for the day Americans are willing to support something regardless of how much money it makes them. Especially for a country that waxes so much poetic about its "moral majority".

bgandrew 5y ago
As a person living outside of US I appreciate those 12 cents from you much more than 0.004. US provides at least some level of global security and I don't want this role to be taken by any other country. As for art, I always can look for other options.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I would rather your own country pay for your own defense (and join NATO for a boost) but if the USA has to be a hegemony rather than Russia or China, I can see your point.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  We have enough money to do both! I like that the US military is a military superpower. And I like finding art (and healthcare, and a bunch of other things). If we stopped giving uber rich people unearned tax breaks, we could afford to do them trivially.
- illusivesaint 5y ago
  What global security? The military has done more harm than good and the reason no one fights back is because of how mighty it is and the IMF. Look at Afghanistan and Iraq, did it leave it better off? Or its influence in Latin America. How's it's going in Ukraine, other than selling weapons? You don't want the US to "protect" you.

derefr 5y ago

I would point out, as an aside, that Opera itself is basically "an open-source community of musical-play development" — i.e. performances where the source material is in the public domain such that anyone can put on a performance of them without paying royalties. This is unlike "musicals", which are protected by copyright, and are thus only run by the musical's rights-holder's licensed troupe(s), in a particular place (usually Broadway), with a particular interpretation of the material (the rights-holder's); where the revenues are due to high ticket prices that can be charged often only due to the artificially-created scarcity of performances of said musical due to IP law. (I.e. for many musical, nobody is going because they're fans of the particular actors/director/etc; they just wanted to see a performance of musical X, akin to what you'd get from seeing opera X. But there's only one available performance of a given musical X. Musical producers have a monopoly on performances of their musical.) Musicals make money, by design. Opera does not make money, by design. Instead, opera houses take donations, in much the same way that you might imagine a "local open-source software development collective" might take donations. When the people of a municipality get together and decide that they consider their local opera house a "local cultural institution" worth supporting with their tax money (usually only to prop it up in bad donation years), this does certainly make the opera house into a "government-backed" project. But in this case, the "government" here is just the mob-action of the people of the city. It's the atheist version of a church congregation agreeing that their tithes should be partly directed to some local needy cause.

atdrummond 5y ago
While I love opera and have supported it financially in multiple places I've resided, I find it laughable that any major urban electorate in the US would actually support the Opera fiscally if that decision was left to them directly.
- derefr 5y ago
  Nothing in a democracy happens because the majority of constituents want it to happen. The majority of constituents don't know or care enough to explicitly agree with any particular novel-and-domain-specific policy. Instead, things happen in a democracy because vocal minorities of constituents push for it, and nobody in the rest of the constituency cares enough to push in the opposite direction. If a policy turns out to be disliked by the majority, the expectation is that the policy will rile up another vocal minority enough that they'll be inspired to come along and advocate to change things back in the other direction. If no vocal counter-minority ever forms, the policy stays. To be clear, this isn't a corruption of the democratic process; rather, this is what it means to have a decision be made "democratically." See also: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1039854944 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1039854944