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I'm mystified at this type of comment. What business does government have to choose the culture you experience? This is like the idea that it is perfectly fin

• dmos62 3y ago
  Canada is a democracy. If you're not happy with your representation, you should pick that up with your representatives. The way you describe being forced to pay sounds like you think you're living in an autocracy. Art is awesome and brittle. It's very hard to make a living from art. Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society. And, i don't think that art that is funded publicly has to be popular. The goal is the opposite. Commercial art has to be popular enough to survive. The idea of funding it is to free the artists from those constraints.
  • verisimi 3y ago
    It's not a democracy, as you then explain - it's a 'representative democracy'. You choose 1 person (from a selection of 2 or 3) and then they make all the decisions for the next 4/5 years. If they don't do what they said they would, this is fine - their pension is not at risk. Democracy is where you choose, or at least input into, the decision-making process. Forcible extraction of wealth, to be invested as the government sees fit cannot be justified by the fact that art is brittle. Art is awesome I agree, I don't want propaganda as art.
    • andrei_says_ 3y ago
      > Art is awesome I agree, I don't want propaganda as art. I totally get that and invite you to take a look at the art films sponsored by the film board of Canada. I have been unable to see any pro-government narrative in anything I’ve seen made with government money. It’s usually films which are just non-commercial and would otherwise not have been made. I absolutely want my tax dollars to go for that.
      • WalterBright 3y ago
        > I absolutely want my tax dollars to go for that. It's kinda cheap to be willing to spend other peoples' money on something. If you want to support such art, buy a ticket to see it.
        • closewith 3y ago
          Is there any government spending that you approve of? After all, all of it is spending other people's money.
          • WalterBright 3y ago
            Sure. The top functions of government are: 1. provide enforcement of peoples' rights 2. provide for the common defense 3. enforce contracts 4. protect common areas (like national parks) Pretty much what the US was for well over a century.
      • verisimi 3y ago
        You should spend your dollars how you like. Talking about the best way to spend dollars extracted forcibly (aka stealing) is a different question. It is stealing, if I don't want to pay, right? And it's ~40% of most people's income - far more than when one was expected to tithe 10% to the church. Re seeing a government narrative - how would you know? Do you see any films in support of trump, against the military, against government, promoting traditional Arab values, castigating Israel for taking no refugees, etc? These aren't causes I agree with btw, I mention them as blindspots in the presentation of reality that is provided, and that is a type of propaganda for the long game. Canadians especially (though Scandinavians are similar) have high level of trust and tolerance in government - where any external authority of your money, actions, etc is unwarranted. There is no agreement that we signed to allow for such unfettered control.
  • WalterBright 3y ago
    A vote does not mean you have a free choice. A democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. > Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society. Conjecture. > i don't think that art that is funded publicly has to be popular. The goal is the opposite. If it has value, people will pay to experience it. Government art stands out as art that nobody would personally pay for.
  • willcipriano 3y ago
    > It's very hard to make a living from art Its very hard to make a living off bad or average art. Most art/music/text is garbage that people wouldn't be willing to pay for. It's similarly difficult to make a living microwaving hot pockets in a town full of five star restaurants.
    • dmos62 3y ago
      > Its very hard to make a living off bad or average art. If your implication is it's easy to finance good art, I disagree. Where I live, most good theater productions are state funded. Production costs a lot. People aren't lining up around the block. Those who are lining up aren't willing to pay that much. A new wave of art marketing is improving things, but not enough. End of the day, art isn't very popular. The options are to subsidize, or let the industry die. If the art industry is as good as the money it brings in, then let it die. If its value to society is more than that, subsidize it. The commercial or non-state-funded theater productions (where I live) generally have little artistic value. They're populist and safe. Their priority is to be easy to market and to be a safe investment (think marvel movies).
      • willcipriano 3y ago
        > People aren't lining up around the block. Art that doesn't move people isn't good art. You can argue all day long how great a show is but if nobody wants to see it (or at least enough to cover the cost of creating it), it isn't. (Sometimes things are discovered posthumously sure, but that's a rare exception) We would never subsidize a restaurant that served food nobody wants to eat, why subsidize art that nobody wants to see?
        • Fricken 3y ago
          Orson Welles couldn't get his movies funded. Van Gogh never sold a painting. Mozart was near broke most of his career. The list of great artists who struggled to fund/sell and generally make a living off their work is so long it's a cliche. It can take a generation or several for this kind of work to matriculate into greater culture. Their value is immeasurable and uncapturable. Artistic and cultural works precede market economies by tens of thousands of years. A restaurant meal has an audience of 1 and is gone forever a half hour after it has been made.
  • goodbyesf 3y ago
    > The way you describe being forced to pay sounds like you think you're living in an autocracy. No. He's describing tyranny of the mob. Which is worse than an autocracy. At least in an autocracy you know you are being fed a pile of bullshit. > Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society. No it's not. It's called government propaganda. > The idea of funding it is to free the artists from those constraints. No. It's to constrain artists to agenda. What you are really saying is I agree with the government propaganda and hence support it. That's all you are saying. In a democracy, government should be apolitical. People like you prove that democracy is actually a bad idea. It's funny how the foundation of modern democracy ( US ) was created on distrust of government and elites, but the 'democracies' that worship british royalties was founded on slavish worship of authority.
    • dmos62 3y ago
      Guy, I don't know who you're upset with or why, but it's not me. > tyranny of the mob You know that just means the perils of being a minority in a democracy, right? > pile of bullshit > propaganda > agenda > propaganda > distrust of government and elites > british royalties > slavish worship of authority What on earth are you talking about?
      • goodbyesf 3y ago
        > Guy, I don't know who you're upset with or why, but it's not me. I'm not mad at ya. Just your stupidity. > You know that just means the perils of being a minority in a democracy, right? Hence why the US is a republic. > What on earth are you talking about? 'It's funny how the foundation of modern democracy ( US ) was created on distrust of government and elites, but the 'democracies' that worship british royalties was founded on slavish worship of authority.' Or you can play your silly and childish games.
  • millimeterman 3y ago
    The government is using tax money to fund the creation of consumer products, while consumers vote with their wallets that they don't want those products. Doesn't sound very democratic to me.
• pavlov 3y ago
  > “It's great that you like it, but what if I don't like the culture/science it spends my tax dollars on?” Boo hoo? What if I don’t like the spending on fighter planes and fossil fuel subsidies? My options are the same as yours: move to a country that doesn’t fund this stuff, or vote for politicians who will cut the funding. > “How is this not simply about driving whatever agendas government is promoting?” A valid question that is at the core of how funding for arts and sciences is structured in the West. There are many levels of indirection in place exactly to avoid direct interference from elected officials and to have experts in each field making the decisions on what deserves funding.
  • verisimi 3y ago
    > My options are the same as yours: move to a country that doesn’t fund this stuff, or vote for politicians who will cut the funding. Why should I move? Can I state the fact that this is a tyranny? Must I love the tyranny? Can I say that government is far, far beyond whatever use it may have served? Can I say, that it is no longer the servant, but the master? It chooses my art!
    • pavlov 3y ago
      I don’t know which country you live in. If it’s Russia or China for example, then yeah, I’m sorry, you don’t get a real say. But if it’s a democracy, then you can always go start a political party yourself if nobody else has taken up this cause. In most countries, voters don’t seem to love the idea of eliminating funding for arts and sciences. It’s a very small part of the total budget for any state, and it tends to have appeal that connects with the purpose of having a nation in the first place (“who’s going to make movies in our language if we don’t?”)
• systemvoltage 3y ago
  It’s socialism under disguise. Gov props up various institutions to create jobs programs. Some of these are OK, but yes, I don’t want my tax payer funds in any culture stuff. In America, we have so much money dumping into bullshit DEI programs. These are all fake made up jobs that add very little value to our national progress. NRC has been printing laws ad-nauseam for 50 years. I don’t have a problem with Government existing and providing services, but there needs to be strong accountability. We have zero oversight over the performance of Gov. NYT will never investigate poor productivity in the deteriorating state of Gov, media has become the voice of the state. When culture is propelled by Canadian Gov, you’re creating a mass brainwashing campaign at tax payers expense. Propaganda films. To be fair, the people are just doing what they’re incentivized. There is no malaise here, but the nature of government is to expand endlessly. Canada’s government worries me deeply, it’s becoming more totalitarian by the day.
  • malauxyeux 3y ago
    > These are all fake made up jobs that add very little value to our national progress. Sitting in a small country, another argument for these types of programs is to promote the country/culture abroad. In the same way, a country might host the Olympics, etc. Or – more directly – set up some sort of "come work/invest in country x" promotion program. Fwiw, I saw NFB stuff as a kid and maybe that worked. I lived/worked in Canada for 15 years.
• cumshitpiss 3y ago
  You'd be surprised to know that Hollywood also receives funding from the US govt. For instance to use a fighter jet, the military would offer a steep discount to a film producer provided there's a few changes to the script
  • suoduandao2 3y ago
    Weird that this comment was flagged, is this actually a controversial statement?
• version_five 3y ago
  I agree 100%. Not that I mind support going to tha arts, but the process funds artists who optimize for funding instead of who are recognized for good art. Canada's art and cultural scene (like our science and tech scene) sucks, it's a bunch of watered down government agenda friendly politically correct crap, and largely funds the same club of favored people. As far as wastes of tax dollars go, government funding is a minor problem, it's the hollowing out of the arts to be the crap that we have that's the bigger concern. Look no further than the fact that every good Canadian artist immediately goes to the US if they get some success. It's the same with startups/tech. The lame ones stay in Canada and mooch off the government, anyone remotely good gets out. Yes I know shopify is a counterexample.
  • malauxyeux 3y ago
    > and largely funds the same club of favored people Without taking a side, I have an anecdote that might be able to shed some light on why that's the case. While living in Canada, I met a woman in charge of administering publicly funded contemporary visual art grants. She said those grants only go to successful artists. "Why do already successful artists need the grants?" I asked. Her answer was that the point was to raise their profile – and Canada's – internationally. From the government's perspective, it's a bid for soft power, like funding athletes who have a shot at winning an Olympic medal.
• whynotmaybe 3y ago
  Does it boggle your mind that the gov uses your taxes to fix roads to places you'll never go? Is it overreach to build a bridge to a community that's only reachable by boat?
• Daub 3y ago
  I live in S E Asia. Here Korean occupies a uniquely elevated place in the minds of the young. This is directly traceable to the huge amount of effort that the Korean government has spent promoting and supporting it's culture: K pop music, Korean TV dramas, Korean movies. All this translates into dollars in diverse ways, such as Korea being the number two language that young people want to learn after English. Such as tourism. Check out the book the creative economy for more depth on this phenomenon.
• dghughes 3y ago
  > I have so many issues with the idea that government is a benefit to us, The Internet started as ARPANET a US Government military program. You seem OK using it.
• rfwhyte 3y ago
  Typical entitled, selfish libertarian bullshit. Everything is about you, and all you care about is getting yours and keeping it to yourself.