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> NEA is doing this as a public service, funding people who wouldn't have been funded otherwise. Many would argue that "taking taxpayer money to fund something

> NEA is doing this as a public service, funding people who wouldn't have been funded otherwise. Many would argue that "taking taxpayer money to fund something that no one would pay for" is a coherent definition for "public disservice."

kikocherman 15y ago
Absolutely right, this point is crucial. Kickstarter funds projects by voluntary and democraticly (by which I mean by citizens) means, while the government does it forcefully (taxes) and undemocratically (politicians deciding).
ajross 15y ago
That's a distortion. You don't mean "no one would pay", you mean "no one would pay enough", which is a very different metric. No one would pay enough to build a nice mural or sculpture in a poor neighborhood, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Likewise the translation projects in the grandparent post aren't going to appeal to the mostly English-speaking, wealthy technolibertarians like yourself. But they still have value to a lot of people. The straightforward corrolary to what you wrote is that the artistic desires of the wealthy are inherently more valuable, which seems a little unethical to me.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  > You don't mean "no one would pay", you mean "no one would pay enough" Fair enough, but that distinction only makes a real difference if the NEA commonly does "last mile" funding (the last 5-20% to reach a threshold of viability, say). Is that the case? > No one would pay enough to build a nice mural or sculpture in a poor neighborhood, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. 1. The fact that someone has not yet paid, by some date, to build a nice mural or sculpture in some particular poor neighborhood, is not a proof that no one would pay to do so. 2. When I have participated in such projects, they were municipally funded in addition to neighborhood donations of time and materials, and I doubt any expenses were recouped from some NEA "hood aid" package. 3. If you think it's worth doing, do it. > The straightforward corrolary to what you wrote is that the artistic desires of the wealthy are inherently more valuable Artistic desire is a universal to which all humans are entitled. The power to commission other people of talent to create physical manifestations of my artistic desire is something I am only entitled to if I can afford to pay those people for their time and materials.
  - ajross 15y ago
    > 1. The fact that someone has not yet paid, by some date, to build a nice mural or sculpture in some particular poor neighborhood, is not a proof that no one would pay to do so. Doesn't this invalidate your whole point then? How can it be a public disservice to fund this stuff if it's never possible to know if it's unwanted? Shrug. I know the libertarian line on this. I just think it falls down in the face of reality. It's nice to imagine that your government is lighting your precious tax dollars on fire with its wasteful nonsense, but the real world is always more complicated.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      How can it be a public disservice to fund this stuff if it's never possible to know if it's unwanted? The theory is that in the universe of all possible projects, the vast majority are a bad idea. E.g., most startups fail. So unless we have some compelling reason to believe a project is a good idea, it is likely to be wasteful. ...but the real world is always more complicated. This is a logical fallacy. You are claiming the world is more complicated, and then assuming the complexity hides facts or mechanisms which would support your preferred policy. But you don't even attempt to explain these mechanisms.
      - ajross 15y ago
        Your first statement asserts that the "vast majority" of NEA projects are bad ideas. Seems that reality doesn't bear that out, most of them seem reasonable to me. And the second is weird doublethink nonsense. Asserting that reality is complicated is just the truth. It's the libertarian position that is absolutist ("the vast majority of NEA projects are bad ideas", "no one wants to fund NEA projects"). My position is that for pretty much any project, there are people who want it and people who don't. And so you need to look carefully at the evidence and fund the stuff that's good. Where's the fallacy?
        yummyfajitas 15y ago
        Your first statement asserts that the "vast majority" of NEA projects are bad ideas. Seems that reality doesn't bear that out, most of them seem reasonable to me. Actually no, my first statement takes the universe of all projects as a reference class. If you think the NEA picks good projects, go ahead and argue why that is the case. You haven't done that yet, you merely said "it's never possible to know if it's unwanted." I.e., you are assuming the facts we don't know will somehow support your position. Asserting that reality is complicated is just the truth. But there is absolutely no reason to believe complexity supports your position over any other position. If you want to delve into the complexity and make an argument for the NEA, do it. You haven't yet.
Jun8 15y ago
There's quite a bit truth about your comment but I think it is somewhat simplistic. To better analyze your objection, let us remove the taxpayer part first: Should art projects be funded (by whatever means) that the general public sees no value in, i.e. this is how I parsed your "no one would pay for". This goes into deep discussions about "what is art", "how do you define the value of an art object" etc. Without going into detail, let us observe that in almost all art fields it frequently happens that even the educated public's taste lags the appreciation. I don't know much about painting/sculpture etc. but examples abound in literature (one of the most famous is The Great Gatsby) and film. So, the mechanism here is very much similar to entrepreneurship: an artist producing work of dubious value asks for support, there's considerable risk in this, i.e. the work is most probably is junk but you might as well have discovered the new Warhol or Banksy. Therefore, it's not a case of funding works "no one would pay for" but how to manage the risk. The bigger question is: should the state be in this business, with its clueless, bloated and generally ineffective machinery? Again, avoiding the long discussions about how controlling government should be I propose (the obvious but somewhat naive) solution: government should fund some reasonable amount but the works so funded should be under joint ownership of the artist and the public, i.e. the artist should own it but the public should have perpetual view rights, at least from a web site. Continuing the NEA example I gave above, the text of those translations should be available from the NEA site. The public should get value in return, other than the moral feelgood effect of supporting artists.
- dantheman 15y ago
  I think both Warhol and Banksy were actually financial independent and didn't receive funding from government endowments.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  > To better analyze your objection, let us remove the taxpayer part first: Should art projects be funded (by whatever means) that the general public sees no value in, i.e. this is how I parsed your "no one would pay for". The fact that taxes are collected under threat of force is the entire basis for the objection. Any "funded" work of art, absent the use of stolen money, is by definition an artwork that someone would pay for. The next time someone takes money from you at gunpoint, be sure to ask them whether they're doing so "to amortize the risk of finding the next Warhol or Banksy." One can hope, right?
MaysonL 15y ago
How many people would have paid money back in the '60s and '70s for the Internet? And yet ARPA funded it with "taxpayer money"

kikocherman 15y ago

Absolutely right, this point is crucial. Kickstarter funds projects by voluntary and democraticly (by which I mean by citizens) means, while the government does it forcefully (taxes) and undemocratically (politicians deciding).

ajross 15y ago

That's a distortion. You don't mean "no one would pay", you mean "no one would pay enough", which is a very different metric. No one would pay enough to build a nice mural or sculpture in a poor neighborhood, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Likewise the translation projects in the grandparent post aren't going to appeal to the mostly English-speaking, wealthy technolibertarians like yourself. But they still have value to a lot of people. The straightforward corrolary to what you wrote is that the artistic desires of the wealthy are inherently more valuable, which seems a little unethical to me.

feralchimp 15y ago
> You don't mean "no one would pay", you mean "no one would pay enough" Fair enough, but that distinction only makes a real difference if the NEA commonly does "last mile" funding (the last 5-20% to reach a threshold of viability, say). Is that the case? > No one would pay enough to build a nice mural or sculpture in a poor neighborhood, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. 1. The fact that someone has not yet paid, by some date, to build a nice mural or sculpture in some particular poor neighborhood, is not a proof that no one would pay to do so. 2. When I have participated in such projects, they were municipally funded in addition to neighborhood donations of time and materials, and I doubt any expenses were recouped from some NEA "hood aid" package. 3. If you think it's worth doing, do it. > The straightforward corrolary to what you wrote is that the artistic desires of the wealthy are inherently more valuable Artistic desire is a universal to which all humans are entitled. The power to commission other people of talent to create physical manifestations of my artistic desire is something I am only entitled to if I can afford to pay those people for their time and materials.
- ajross 15y ago
  > 1. The fact that someone has not yet paid, by some date, to build a nice mural or sculpture in some particular poor neighborhood, is not a proof that no one would pay to do so. Doesn't this invalidate your whole point then? How can it be a public disservice to fund this stuff if it's never possible to know if it's unwanted? Shrug. I know the libertarian line on this. I just think it falls down in the face of reality. It's nice to imagine that your government is lighting your precious tax dollars on fire with its wasteful nonsense, but the real world is always more complicated.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    How can it be a public disservice to fund this stuff if it's never possible to know if it's unwanted? The theory is that in the universe of all possible projects, the vast majority are a bad idea. E.g., most startups fail. So unless we have some compelling reason to believe a project is a good idea, it is likely to be wasteful. ...but the real world is always more complicated. This is a logical fallacy. You are claiming the world is more complicated, and then assuming the complexity hides facts or mechanisms which would support your preferred policy. But you don't even attempt to explain these mechanisms.
    - ajross 15y ago
      Your first statement asserts that the "vast majority" of NEA projects are bad ideas. Seems that reality doesn't bear that out, most of them seem reasonable to me. And the second is weird doublethink nonsense. Asserting that reality is complicated is just the truth. It's the libertarian position that is absolutist ("the vast majority of NEA projects are bad ideas", "no one wants to fund NEA projects"). My position is that for pretty much any project, there are people who want it and people who don't. And so you need to look carefully at the evidence and fund the stuff that's good. Where's the fallacy?
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        Your first statement asserts that the "vast majority" of NEA projects are bad ideas. Seems that reality doesn't bear that out, most of them seem reasonable to me. Actually no, my first statement takes the universe of all projects as a reference class. If you think the NEA picks good projects, go ahead and argue why that is the case. You haven't done that yet, you merely said "it's never possible to know if it's unwanted." I.e., you are assuming the facts we don't know will somehow support your position. Asserting that reality is complicated is just the truth. But there is absolutely no reason to believe complexity supports your position over any other position. If you want to delve into the complexity and make an argument for the NEA, do it. You haven't yet.

Jun8 15y ago

There's quite a bit truth about your comment but I think it is somewhat simplistic. To better analyze your objection, let us remove the taxpayer part first: Should art projects be funded (by whatever means) that the general public sees no value in, i.e. this is how I parsed your "no one would pay for". This goes into deep discussions about "what is art", "how do you define the value of an art object" etc. Without going into detail, let us observe that in almost all art fields it frequently happens that even the educated public's taste lags the appreciation. I don't know much about painting/sculpture etc. but examples abound in literature (one of the most famous is The Great Gatsby) and film. So, the mechanism here is very much similar to entrepreneurship: an artist producing work of dubious value asks for support, there's considerable risk in this, i.e. the work is most probably is junk but you might as well have discovered the new Warhol or Banksy. Therefore, it's not a case of funding works "no one would pay for" but how to manage the risk. The bigger question is: should the state be in this business, with its clueless, bloated and generally ineffective machinery? Again, avoiding the long discussions about how controlling government should be I propose (the obvious but somewhat naive) solution: government should fund some reasonable amount but the works so funded should be under joint ownership of the artist and the public, i.e. the artist should own it but the public should have perpetual view rights, at least from a web site. Continuing the NEA example I gave above, the text of those translations should be available from the NEA site. The public should get value in return, other than the moral feelgood effect of supporting artists.

dantheman 15y ago
I think both Warhol and Banksy were actually financial independent and didn't receive funding from government endowments.
feralchimp 15y ago
> To better analyze your objection, let us remove the taxpayer part first: Should art projects be funded (by whatever means) that the general public sees no value in, i.e. this is how I parsed your "no one would pay for". The fact that taxes are collected under threat of force is the entire basis for the objection. Any "funded" work of art, absent the use of stolen money, is by definition an artwork that someone would pay for. The next time someone takes money from you at gunpoint, be sure to ask them whether they're doing so "to amortize the risk of finding the next Warhol or Banksy." One can hope, right?

MaysonL 15y ago

How many people would have paid money back in the '60s and '70s for the Internet? And yet ARPA funded it with "taxpayer money"