4 ms·

It’s not a silver bullet, but an expanded social safety net would make it significantly less risky to pursue art (or open source software or whatever) as more t

It’s not a silver bullet, but an expanded social safety net would make it significantly less risky to pursue art (or open source software or whatever) as more than just a “nights and weekends” thing.

robocat 4y ago
> an expanded social safety net would make it significantly less risky to pursue art Paraphrased: workers should be taxed so that we can 100% subsidise some other people’s dreams. Fuck that. I accept our society should subsidise some: art (I do like the BBC, especially so because I don’t pay for it), or music (I like CreativeNZ videos), or sports, or hobbies (HAM radio spectrum), or open source (yayyy), or even subsidise sitting around doing nothing (society should not demand all our time just for us to survive). But the idea that society should subsidise everyone to follow their dreams is simply unworkable. And if you want to start ranking which dreams are worthwhile, well, society ends up with systems such as we already have.
- kiba 4y ago
  Some of our greatest scientific achievement come from aristocratic or independently wealthy folks who don't need to earn a living. So I wouldn't knock these subsidies. I think we could rearrange society to provide such subsidies on a sustainable basis if we choose to.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  That’s not an accurate paraphrasing; many social programs actually cost less than the alternative. Sounds like you live in the UK, so maybe you take the NHS for granted. It would be a vast improvement from what we have in the US, where we have amongst the most expensive health care system in the world with far from the best outcomes. Group insurance is generally negotiated by employers; access to affordable healthcare is a huge obstacle to pursuing anything other than a traditional job. Even loftier goals like ending homelessness don’t turn out to require the financial tradeoffs you’re talking about. Study after study, we’ve seen that simply giving people homes is costs less than shelters, police raids and a Kafkaesque system of requirements to prevent people who Don’t Deserve Help from getting it. Consider that US workers are taxed in order to subsidize the dreams of the second wealthiest man in the world, for not one but two of his businesses. Would SpaceX or Tesla have succeeded without government handouts? We’re never asked to question that, but as soon as we suggest that people be able to make art without worrying about medical bankruptcy or homelessness, people start looking at the balance sheet with a magnifying glass.
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    [dead]
  - robocat 4y ago
    You appear to be introducing three new tangential topics, and I don’t think you are addressing the point you originally raised. Your original comment says that we should take a system that is there to provide insurance for the unfortunate (social safety net) and use that system to fund people’s desires (art, open source, or whatever). I very strongly disagree with that idea: different systems have different purposes and commingling a safety net with creative goals will likely lead to very unfair outcomes.
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      That’s not really what I meant, but I suppose I can see why you’d infer it. I’m saying that a social safety net decreases the risk of pursuing art rather than a more traditional job, not that we should repurpose it to give people additional income to fund specifically artistic goals. So I’m not really introducing any tangential topics. In the US, medicine and healthcare are expensive and usually tied to employment; by providing those to everyone for free or cheap as part of a social safety net, it becomes less risky to dedicate your time to producing art.
      - robocat 4y ago
        Ahhhh, that makes more sense. I did jump to the conclusion you meant UBI, or full-time “welfare” benefits for artists (à la https://wikipedia.org/wiki/UB40 https://wikipedia.org/wiki/UB40 — the eight musicians formed a band, deciding on the name 'UB40' after a friend suggested it was an appropriate name given the unemployed status of all of the band members). But you are still implying some cost to the rest of society to support creatives in their cups. And I am saying that many people who are working don’t like that. Plenty of people think artists should have to worry about their own balance sheet and society provides them plenty already, as opposed to your special-status-for-artists comment “people be able to make art without worrying about medical bankruptcy or homelessness”. Instead, Western society’s usual deal is supposed to be: work 40 hours a week and you get your needs met, plus some disposable money to use as you wish, and the rest of your week (evenings, weekends) to do whatever you wish (art, open source, whatever). Alternatively society provides ways to monetise your interests. Those deals actually work in some countries, and don’t work in many others. I understand why you feel that the 40-hour deal might be broken in the USA. Many people from other countries look at the deal given to the median American with envy, and that is perfectly reasonable too. I have multiple artistic and musician friends where the jobs-for-money deal seems to work for them and they mostly own their own homes (however I am a ~50 year old in New Zealand and the majority of my artistic friends are 40 or over). I also have arty friends that get government benefits! And yeah, the USA medical system is rather perverse: hopefully you guys can fix that for all of yourselves (not just artists etcetera).
- tpush 4y ago
  > Paraphrased: workers should be taxed [...] No, the richest people should be taking most of the tax burden.
  - robocat 4y ago
    Yeah, I would like to have phrased it better. However I am struggling to think of a clear alternative. If we assume that the rich get their wealth from the workers, then taxing the rich is now just indirectly taxing the workers. If we talk about taxing everyone in society, then how do we tax an artist or anybody else spending time on their dream? How do we measure an artist’s contribution to society? Should we pay anyone highly if they contribute great artistic wealth to society? Should we pay someone whose art or hobby has no merit to society? Do we treat a rich artist like you seem to want to treat a financially rich person - tax the value of their art until they are “equal”? If someone has worldwide status or high renown, should we somehow share that wealth of status with the less fortunate? What if some high art is immensely valuable to a small number of people - how do you fairly manage that? Our society has a huge variety of different means to deal with the conflicting goals above. One of those is money which often equalises competing unmeasurable needs so that as individuals we get to value incomparable things (catching polio vs. a Van Gogh vs. an apricot vs. playing Mario Brothers vs. reading a book vs. a massage). We all have huge disagreements about how the wealth of society should be divided - and our society has many radically different solutions for that problem. Should the average wage of a US citizen be allowed to be radically higher than a citizen of Haiti? What about an artist in Haiti?
    - int_19h 4y ago
      Any kind of "measuring contribution to society" becomes hopelessly politicized. UBI is the way to go.
- lordfrito 4y ago
  Thank you. It feels like lately more and more people somehow believe it's a societal/structural failure that achieving their dream life isn't easier. Maybe it has something to do with a generation raised on endless immediate gratification via free (you're the product) digital products. FOMO, whatever. Then again, maybe it has something to do with me getting old. Anyway thanks for some sanity today!
  - yadoomerta 4y ago
    I think it's more that most current employment is awful - you're either doing something useful and paid peanuts or a cog in the machine making the (you're the product) type products. There's terribly few jobs available that are ethical, useful, and well compensated. People aren't unwilling to do a hard days work, they're unwilling to do it for less than a living wage, which is the current offer for a lot of people right now, especially young people. And to your first sentence _YES_, society should of course be set so that people can achieve their dreams as much as possible! That's the point! I understand that doing this via wealth redistribution is touchy but you're acting like wanting things to be easier is a stupid goal in general.
    - lordfrito 4y ago
      Survival has always been awful. Hunting and gathering aren't glamourous activies, they're simply necessary. Dreams are mostly just that, dreams. I'm all for helping dreams become reality. Pursuit of happiness and all that. But there is real injustice and inequality in the world. Real human suffering. Lets find solutions to those problems first, before we focus the resources of society on solving the problems of struggling musicians.
      - yadoomerta 4y ago
        Almost every job right now is so far abstracted from survival that it barely makes any sense. My job (that pays very well) involves taking an existing product and shuffling the UI around so people think it's a different product. Even people with useful jobs like baristas and janitors aren't really helping anyone survive they're just making it nice for everyone else. So few people are in farming, or medicine, where you can really say that. This is a societal problem imo, people really want/need to feel useful and we haven't been able to come up with 8 billion useful things to do Also, yes there is injustice around the world, sure lets solve that, it sounds great. I feel like the solution is pretty similar to how we solve what's happening to poor people in our own country
- harimau777 4y ago
  That's not at all what the parent said. No where did they say anything about people being 100% subsidized to follow their dreams. You are attacking a strawman.
kiba 4y ago
That just mean that you don't make a living making art since the safety net provide a living for you.
akiselev 4y ago
So much so that it's actually kind of a trope in the UK music industry [1]. A lot of the most famous British musicians from the 70s and 80s were "on the dole" receiving welfare before they made it big. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/horace-trubridge/class-and-the-arts_b_8647352.html https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/horace-trubridge/class-and-...

robocat 4y ago

> an expanded social safety net would make it significantly less risky to pursue art Paraphrased: workers should be taxed so that we can 100% subsidise some other people’s dreams. Fuck that. I accept our society should subsidise some: art (I do like the BBC, especially so because I don’t pay for it), or music (I like CreativeNZ videos), or sports, or hobbies (HAM radio spectrum), or open source (yayyy), or even subsidise sitting around doing nothing (society should not demand all our time just for us to survive). But the idea that society should subsidise everyone to follow their dreams is simply unworkable. And if you want to start ranking which dreams are worthwhile, well, society ends up with systems such as we already have.

kiba 4y ago
Some of our greatest scientific achievement come from aristocratic or independently wealthy folks who don't need to earn a living. So I wouldn't knock these subsidies. I think we could rearrange society to provide such subsidies on a sustainable basis if we choose to.
jakelazaroff 4y ago
That’s not an accurate paraphrasing; many social programs actually cost less than the alternative. Sounds like you live in the UK, so maybe you take the NHS for granted. It would be a vast improvement from what we have in the US, where we have amongst the most expensive health care system in the world with far from the best outcomes. Group insurance is generally negotiated by employers; access to affordable healthcare is a huge obstacle to pursuing anything other than a traditional job. Even loftier goals like ending homelessness don’t turn out to require the financial tradeoffs you’re talking about. Study after study, we’ve seen that simply giving people homes is costs less than shelters, police raids and a Kafkaesque system of requirements to prevent people who Don’t Deserve Help from getting it. Consider that US workers are taxed in order to subsidize the dreams of the second wealthiest man in the world, for not one but two of his businesses. Would SpaceX or Tesla have succeeded without government handouts? We’re never asked to question that, but as soon as we suggest that people be able to make art without worrying about medical bankruptcy or homelessness, people start looking at the balance sheet with a magnifying glass.
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  [dead]
- robocat 4y ago
  You appear to be introducing three new tangential topics, and I don’t think you are addressing the point you originally raised. Your original comment says that we should take a system that is there to provide insurance for the unfortunate (social safety net) and use that system to fund people’s desires (art, open source, or whatever). I very strongly disagree with that idea: different systems have different purposes and commingling a safety net with creative goals will likely lead to very unfair outcomes.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    That’s not really what I meant, but I suppose I can see why you’d infer it. I’m saying that a social safety net decreases the risk of pursuing art rather than a more traditional job, not that we should repurpose it to give people additional income to fund specifically artistic goals. So I’m not really introducing any tangential topics. In the US, medicine and healthcare are expensive and usually tied to employment; by providing those to everyone for free or cheap as part of a social safety net, it becomes less risky to dedicate your time to producing art.
    - robocat 4y ago
      Ahhhh, that makes more sense. I did jump to the conclusion you meant UBI, or full-time “welfare” benefits for artists (à la https://wikipedia.org/wiki/UB40 https://wikipedia.org/wiki/UB40 — the eight musicians formed a band, deciding on the name 'UB40' after a friend suggested it was an appropriate name given the unemployed status of all of the band members). But you are still implying some cost to the rest of society to support creatives in their cups. And I am saying that many people who are working don’t like that. Plenty of people think artists should have to worry about their own balance sheet and society provides them plenty already, as opposed to your special-status-for-artists comment “people be able to make art without worrying about medical bankruptcy or homelessness”. Instead, Western society’s usual deal is supposed to be: work 40 hours a week and you get your needs met, plus some disposable money to use as you wish, and the rest of your week (evenings, weekends) to do whatever you wish (art, open source, whatever). Alternatively society provides ways to monetise your interests. Those deals actually work in some countries, and don’t work in many others. I understand why you feel that the 40-hour deal might be broken in the USA. Many people from other countries look at the deal given to the median American with envy, and that is perfectly reasonable too. I have multiple artistic and musician friends where the jobs-for-money deal seems to work for them and they mostly own their own homes (however I am a ~50 year old in New Zealand and the majority of my artistic friends are 40 or over). I also have arty friends that get government benefits! And yeah, the USA medical system is rather perverse: hopefully you guys can fix that for all of yourselves (not just artists etcetera).
tpush 4y ago
> Paraphrased: workers should be taxed [...] No, the richest people should be taking most of the tax burden.
- robocat 4y ago
  Yeah, I would like to have phrased it better. However I am struggling to think of a clear alternative. If we assume that the rich get their wealth from the workers, then taxing the rich is now just indirectly taxing the workers. If we talk about taxing everyone in society, then how do we tax an artist or anybody else spending time on their dream? How do we measure an artist’s contribution to society? Should we pay anyone highly if they contribute great artistic wealth to society? Should we pay someone whose art or hobby has no merit to society? Do we treat a rich artist like you seem to want to treat a financially rich person - tax the value of their art until they are “equal”? If someone has worldwide status or high renown, should we somehow share that wealth of status with the less fortunate? What if some high art is immensely valuable to a small number of people - how do you fairly manage that? Our society has a huge variety of different means to deal with the conflicting goals above. One of those is money which often equalises competing unmeasurable needs so that as individuals we get to value incomparable things (catching polio vs. a Van Gogh vs. an apricot vs. playing Mario Brothers vs. reading a book vs. a massage). We all have huge disagreements about how the wealth of society should be divided - and our society has many radically different solutions for that problem. Should the average wage of a US citizen be allowed to be radically higher than a citizen of Haiti? What about an artist in Haiti?
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Any kind of "measuring contribution to society" becomes hopelessly politicized. UBI is the way to go.
lordfrito 4y ago
Thank you. It feels like lately more and more people somehow believe it's a societal/structural failure that achieving their dream life isn't easier. Maybe it has something to do with a generation raised on endless immediate gratification via free (you're the product) digital products. FOMO, whatever. Then again, maybe it has something to do with me getting old. Anyway thanks for some sanity today!
- yadoomerta 4y ago
  I think it's more that most current employment is awful - you're either doing something useful and paid peanuts or a cog in the machine making the (you're the product) type products. There's terribly few jobs available that are ethical, useful, and well compensated. People aren't unwilling to do a hard days work, they're unwilling to do it for less than a living wage, which is the current offer for a lot of people right now, especially young people. And to your first sentence _YES_, society should of course be set so that people can achieve their dreams as much as possible! That's the point! I understand that doing this via wealth redistribution is touchy but you're acting like wanting things to be easier is a stupid goal in general.
  - lordfrito 4y ago
    Survival has always been awful. Hunting and gathering aren't glamourous activies, they're simply necessary. Dreams are mostly just that, dreams. I'm all for helping dreams become reality. Pursuit of happiness and all that. But there is real injustice and inequality in the world. Real human suffering. Lets find solutions to those problems first, before we focus the resources of society on solving the problems of struggling musicians.
    - yadoomerta 4y ago
      Almost every job right now is so far abstracted from survival that it barely makes any sense. My job (that pays very well) involves taking an existing product and shuffling the UI around so people think it's a different product. Even people with useful jobs like baristas and janitors aren't really helping anyone survive they're just making it nice for everyone else. So few people are in farming, or medicine, where you can really say that. This is a societal problem imo, people really want/need to feel useful and we haven't been able to come up with 8 billion useful things to do Also, yes there is injustice around the world, sure lets solve that, it sounds great. I feel like the solution is pretty similar to how we solve what's happening to poor people in our own country
harimau777 4y ago
That's not at all what the parent said. No where did they say anything about people being 100% subsidized to follow their dreams. You are attacking a strawman.

kiba 4y ago

That just mean that you don't make a living making art since the safety net provide a living for you.

akiselev 4y ago

So much so that it's actually kind of a trope in the UK music industry [1]. A lot of the most famous British musicians from the 70s and 80s were "on the dole" receiving welfare before they made it big. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/horace-trubridge/class-and-the-arts_b_8647352.html https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/horace-trubridge/class-and-...