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In Belgium, it is relatively easy to get "artist-statute" which is a subsidized higher monthly welfare income (Basic Income for artists). Belgium runs on the "s

In Belgium, it is relatively easy to get "artist-statute" which is a subsidized higher monthly welfare income (Basic Income for artists). Belgium runs on the "subsidize-and-conquer" paradigm, the tax burden is one of the highest in the world. The government keeps lower class happy with welfare, the upperclass with culture and mainly business subsidies. The productive middleclass is effectively squeezed. The art sector here is mostly publicly funded. This too has advantages for our gov: no artists will criticize the subsidizer of their lifestyle, so no real anti-authoritarian culture takes hold. Don't bite the hand that feeds. You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class artists, since so many can work unbothered by the oppressive forces of market trends. Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm.

OptionOfT 2y ago
Being from Belgium, and having gone (suffered) through high-school there, I remember going to see a theater play which was about a red square and a blue circle. That's all I remember. It was horrible.
Yeul 2y ago
The problem with the arts is that nobody really gives a shit. The vast majority of the population doesn't visit the opera or is interested in modern art. Despite a century of government funding the needle hasn't shifted. The first thing any artist should realize is that they live in a bubble. You're not going to change the world. As for market forces: our beloved Rembrandt did commission work he had a very expensive lifestyle to fund.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Just make art people actually want to pay for like furry art.
  - edm0nd 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    A company already has a world leadership on that. Look into Nutaku.
  - egypturnash 2y ago
    I do this. http://egypt.urnash.com http://egypt.urnash.com Commissions and Patreon subscribers welcome.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  >> vast majority of the population doesn't visit the opera or is interested in modern art. Never in history has this been any different. "High" art has always been the domain of a narrow few and, frankly, those few want it to remain that way. But that isnt all art. Movies are art. Modern music is art. The vast majority of the population consumes an immense amount of art, i'd argue more than any time in history. It just isnt the high art of galleries and opera houses.
  - posterman 2y ago
    the person you are replying to claims an artist wont "change the world". you couldn't ask for a more "hacker-brained" take on culture. what, sitting around on our computers building dinky little apps does more than movies, film and music?
    - lubujackson 2y ago
      To this day I maintain Obama wouldn't have been electable if not for the black president on "24" getting middle America used to the idea.
      - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
        Middle American checking in here. Never even heard of 24 and I find your prejudiced view of middle America to be ignorant.
      - sandworm101 2y ago
        Also Morgan Freeman.
    - NitpickLawyer 2y ago
      > you couldn't ask for a more "hacker-brained" take on culture. what, sitting around on our computers building dinky little apps does more than movies, film and music? Uhhh, yes? Can you imagine a global pandemic of 2020s magnitude happening in, say '94? Would the world at large have fared as well as we did without the "dinky little apps" like click-to-get-food and click-to-stock-warehouses and click-to-develop-rna-vaccines and click-to-work-remotely and click-to-talk-to-family and click-to-watch-anything and click-to-stay-sane? Are you seriously arguing that art is doing more for the world at large than the IT industry? Come on...
- nine_k 2y ago
  In 19-century Italy, opera was about as popular as pop music today. As an artist, you certainly can change (some of) the world if you do art which people care about. If you do refined academic portraits, or [adjectives expunged] postmodern art, only a bubble is going to care. If you do art like, say, Banksy, a lot more is going to care. If you sing in classical opera, only a narrow (but usually wealthy) circle of opera goers will care. If you sing like Taylor Swift or like Whitney Houston (who had a powerful, opera-worthy voice), you may have a much wider effect.
  - karmonhardan 2y ago
    This isn't even necessarily true. High art is the basic research of culture. You'd be amazed at how many elements from your fave this-or-that are copped (often wholesale) from some obscure piece of media. Often, that reference lifts the latter out of obscurity, and everyone pretends that they knew it was groundbreaking and brilliant all along. "The favorite artist of your favorite artist," is a real concept. An example : Darren Aronofsky's now-famous cribbing of Satoshi Kon's work, back when anime was mostly thought of as, "Sex and violence, Pokemon, and Miyazaki (if you even knew of Miyazaki)." And even that's kind of the tip of the iceberg. Decades-old expressionist films, little-known performance and video art, paintings, music, fashion; unless you really know the landscape, how can you tell what is and isn't influencing culture down the line? How much of your experience in the world of 2024 was shaped by the proclivities of teenagers on IRC and 4chan in 2004, just trying to make each other laugh? [Insert that monologue from The Devil Wears Prada]
    - nine_k 2y ago
      Thank you, that's a nice take! As J.L.Borges aptly noted, a serious artist produces not only successors but also predecessors. (Regarding Miyazaki, I could not miss an animator who was praised so highly by Kurosawa. I learned about the rest of anime later.) But my point was more narrow: however beautiful The Magic Flute or Barber of Ceville or even Carmen may be, they are sort of stuck in a particular point of cultural space, you can't materially change them without leaving the genre that defines them. This is not specific to genres that became high-brow "refined art"; you can't play a rock-n-roll like it's 1957 either, it will only resonate among the fans of the genre / period, not very numerous now. With that, both opera and rock-n-roll were once the epitomes of wide, overwhelming popularity, each at their time. I agree about lineage. This is basically how culture grows and develops. The past is absolutely not worthless, but no cultural epoch is a final destination. Rainbow in 1970s, Jethro Tull in 1990s, and Master Boot Record in 2020s all directly quoted baroque music, but each of them did that differently, and not exactly the way an authentist ensemble would play it.
- welferkj 2y ago
  >The problem with the arts is that nobody really gives a shit. It'a almost as if divorcing the artist class from having to care about public opinion was a bad idea. If you want this to change, the solution is painfully obvious. End the subsidies, force them back on the open market. Remove open disdain for the audience as an option.
  - scandox 2y ago
    Open disdain for audience is rarely in the mind of the artist and often in the mind of someone that doesn't like what they created and for some reason interprets this as an attack. Many artists have a small audience in mind and that is quite reasonable.
    - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
      > Open disdain for audience is rarely in the mind of the artist When they say "don't buy it" I take them at their word. I just wish my stolen tax money didn't also fund them.
    - welferkj 2y ago
      >Open disdain for audience is rarely in the mind of the artist Thanks to many artists being incapable of abstaining from Xitter loggorhea, we definitively know this to be false.
    - EarthBlues 2y ago
      I’m no expert, but iconoclasm is a pretty common trope in western music, and it tends to come with some amount of disdain for audiences. Mid-career, Duke Ellington chafed under the racist and unadventurous expectations of his audiences, and charted a new musical path, making music that was primarily aimed at pleasing other musicians. Many of these compositions are now jazz standards. In modern classical music, 20th Century figures like Boulez, and even earlier composers like Wagner thought their audiences were hopelessly sentimental and complacent, and worked intentionally to disturb them. A great many of the household names in modern classical music meet this description, and they certainly set the direction of classical music to follow. Now to my point: I think some of these artists made good, enduring art. But if we look at the media in which they worked — Jazz and Classical music — these forms are, I regret to say, completely culturally irrelevant. They’re dead media; the only interaction that classical music has with the culture at large is through movies and video games, and jazz is publicly perceived as a novelty genre at this point. It’s hard not to see some truth in the above post’s sense that the net result of these artists’ influence was a kind of wish granted by the monkey’s paw. They set out to destroy the idols of their day and succeeded, and the long run outcome was essentially suicidal. I wonder if we need to re-examine the trope of the iconoclast, in hopes of finding new artistic pathways that are capable of expressing new ideas and asking new questions without destroying the traditions that give rise to them.
- mikojan 2y ago
  What you are referring to is not intended for mass consumption. If it were you would be watching a popular music video instead. That does not mean however that it has no effect on popular culture. Popular music scenes transition seamlessly into avant-garde music circles where I live and I would assume in most metropolitan areas. And youth culture has always been experimenting of course. If you only looked at the most prestigious outlets of modern art you may well be missing the connection just like you might miss it if you looked only at the dirtiest punk venues. But that does not mean that it is not there. More boldly: Lana Del Ray would have probably not happened without Musique Concrete, Ambient, Field recordings happening first.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > The first thing any artist should realize is that they live in a bubble. It is my experience that everyone lives in bubbles. They form the lens that filter our perception of other people's existence.
  - goostavos 2y ago
    Unfortunately, my bubble isnt subsidized.
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      You'd be surprised.
- mapt 2y ago
  That is if you define "The Arts" as specifically "Archaic forms of art too unpopular to survive without subsidies from government or the aristocracy". That's a tautology. Hip hop music isn't getting government subsidies. DeviantArt isn't getting government subsidies. Etsy isn't getting government subsidies. Youtubers aren't getting government subsidies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn't getting (many) government subsidies.
  - jasondigitized 2y ago
    This. Modern music. Woodworking. Digital illustration. Pottery. All very much thriving.
  - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
    > Marvel Cinematic Universe Apparently comedy is thriving as well too.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    The article under discussion, though, isn't about arts that are surviving as for profit businesses--which includes all of the ones you mention. IT's about arts that aren't doing that. Those are the forms of art that the GP comment was about.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    >>The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn't getting (many) government subsidies. Maybe not US subsidies, but I'd bet that there are some Canadian film and tax credit logos at the end of most credit reels. When you film/edit/design/create on an international scale, you pick up lots of local tax credits. Also probably UK/Scotland credits too. Heck, the 2005 reboot of DrWho was backed by Canadian government money. (Just check the final credits.)
    - SideQuark 2y ago
      Those are usually granted by local governments to increase local revenue, not lower it. It's how one jurisdiction can attract more investment relative to another.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  If no one gave a shit these venues would close. Instead some of them have been lovingly maintained for a century. What does that say about your reductionist assessment of the world? Are things only valid if they are upheld by the overwhelming majority of the population? Is that a realistic expectation given the things that do in fact influence a heck of a lot more people often have to resort to psychological manipulation over standing on its own merits to do so? Take your head out of the sand and see what the arguments you are making are actually pencilling out to be.
- kredd 2y ago
  I generally understand this sentiment as a couple of my best friends work in theatre industry, although I have no inclination towards anything related to arts. That being said, you don’t need mass market to get second order effects. Especially for tourism industry. Not everyone who visits NYC goes to a Broadway show, but they know of the industry and how it attracts the talent. Not everyone who goes to Berlin dances their night out till 6am, but they know of it. These subsidies help to create the image of the city, and in some sense help the residents to identify with their surroundings. I understand it’s a bit lame, but I don’t mind some of my tax dollars going into an industry that I never directly benefit from.
mandmandam 2y ago
> no artists will criticize the subsidizer of their lifestyle They do. Do they get attention on corporate media so you hear about them though? > You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class artists ... It does. Are they given exposure in corporate media? > so many can work unbothered by the oppressive forces of market trends Being able to afford basic necessities does not, in fact, make artists immune to the "oppressive forces" of the market. > mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Ie, Sturgeon's Law.
- gillesjacobs 2y ago
  Coincidentally, the "corporate" media in Belgium is also heavily subsidized (as in a significant amount of their revenue is subsidies). And we also have public media. Yet no credible evidence of the effectiveness of endless subsidies. If we're going to namedrop economic laws like it means something: Parkinson's law: the art and media sector have become part of the self-perpetuating ineffective bureaucracy.
sputr 2y ago
Slovenia is similar, but with even more intervention in the form of public grants. We also have no tax breaks for individuals who may wish to support the arts/humanitarian/ngo endeavors. It's all “systemic”. Which is "fine" as long as a certain ideology controls the government (not always the same party, just the same "network"/ideology). Now, the quality/quantity of the output is a mater of my subjective opinion, which would only muddy the water. What isn't is what happened when the opposite ideology took over the government. Suddenly the much lauded ministry of arts became the enemy who chose different artists to subsidize. There were many Pikachu faces that day.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Is there some articles about this? I'd love to read more.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
> The productive middleclass is effectively squeezed. That's why I left Belgium. Getting squeezed to the bone to pay for endless leeches producing absolutely nothing that I enjoy or respect: it's not just the arts. Administrations are pathetically inefficient and arbitrary in how they treat people too. So I already left and now I'm selling everything I have there: a little apartment, one garage, a few items worth a little something. I'm fully planning on acquiring another nationality and then I'll just abandon my belgian one. > Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Totally.
- gillesjacobs 2y ago
  Like many I am looking for an exit too, at least fiscally. Right now I am -like many here- territorially bound by family and real-estate. But the negative economic death spiral has set in here. More people work for the public sector directly and indirectly than the private sector, and the tax burden is ever increasing while services received are dwindling.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    I've often wondered if a colony in some of the unclaimed lands of Antarctica could soak up everyone who is fed up with the death spiral of productivity in the west. You'd meet some interesting people if nothing else.
  - formerly_proven 2y ago
    For an unhealthy length of time (definitely since c. 2009 and arguably since the 90s) anyone with economically interesting skills was better of emigrating to the US, and many of these "best and brightest" did. I think the ceiling where you're better off in the US (or a few other Western states) is getting lower and lower, especially since the last few years have starkly shown just how unwilling and resistant to change the central european populace truly is. Right now you can still leave without huge exit taxes (unless you happen to own a company, most don't). I'm guessing as the brain drain keeps picking up pace, we'll see hefty exit taxes targeting basically everyone starting in 5-10 years.... after all, when people leave, they won't be able to pay 70% (~50% taxes and mandatory insurance, 30-40% rent or a mortgage, whose principal directly went to some old dude) of their income into your young-to-old wealth transfer system where they don't get anything out. So when they wanna leave you, you gotta make them pay dearly! Abusive relationship? Not at all!
Eumenes 2y ago
[flagged]
Retric 2y ago
Belgium’s tax burden is close to California, they just don’t split it up into a bunch of different categories. However, look at how much a self employed single person retains from their income when doing to comparison and the situation is more clear.
- gillesjacobs 2y ago
  I am a self-employed freelancer and I have done all fiscal optimization possible in BE and my effective tax burden is 37%. From what I find in Google about CA's total optimized tax burden for a one-man freelance company it is about 28%. And a lot more buying power too probably, but that is hard to compare in. Of course this is personal income from labour via one-man companies ("net take-home"). This does not take into account VAT, capital gains taxes, etc.
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
    > This does not take into account VAT For the viewers at home that is 6% on food, and now electricity (how kind daddy govt), and 21% on everything else. So this tax burden is in fact higher.
  - Retric 2y ago
    There’s a ton of different ways to do these kinds of comparisons, but I’m unsure how you could end up with a single number here: > CA's total optimized tax burden for a one-man freelance company it is about 28% CA’s tax burden varies wildly based on a host of factors. However the simple calculation for a freelancer filing as a single person making 50k = 24.6%, 100k = 32%, 150k = 36.5%, 300k = 40% which some people actually pay. https://www.upwork.com/tools/freelance-tax-calculator https://www.upwork.com/tools/freelance-tax-calculator
    - gillesjacobs 2y ago
      According to that calculator my CA tax burden ratio would be 29.7% so seems the websites I read were not far off the mark.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
This is why I don't think that government-run UBI is a good idea. We need something to fall back on in case it becomes necessary to do away with a problematic government for a while, not something that the government can use to negatively reinforce the status quo. Safety nets are for making otherwise dangerous things practical.
- gillesjacobs 2y ago
  Pray tell, what enlightened incorruptible entity would enforce and organise UBI?
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    What enforcement is needed? Either you opt in to accepting the UBI currency, or you don't. If there's an enforcer involved then you've got government UBI. As for issuing the tokens, there are a variety of UBI systems that handle that without a centralized authority. CirclesUBI and Idena come to mind. Admittedly some work is needed here, but the technical barriers are not the hard part. The hard part is establishing the collective political will to build a culture around accepting them, otherwise it's just meaningless numbers.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Why would you even need or want "UBI currency" for UBI? Just give people money.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        That sets up a problematic power dynamic. Whoever is doing the giving has power over whenever is doing the receiving. And you'd want it as an alternative for cases where the other money is questionably legitimate. Like if the people who control its supply have stopped acting in the best interest of the people who use it.
        2y ago
Arcanum-XIII 2y ago
Except that it nearly work only for people acting, dancing and working in « live » art. If you’re a painter or a sculptor, since you can’t provide proof of engagement length, you were out. That’s getting better but still not a UBI by any means. They’re poor. Do we have good contemporary art ? Yes. They’re not subsidized by the government, have to pay heavy taxes as we are and got to have lot of red tape for their enjoyment. So they move out of Belgium. With a raised middle finger… Meanwhile this same system is abused by Uber and other major.
feoren 2y ago
> You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class artists, since so many can work unbothered by the oppressive forces of market trends. Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. I don't really know enough to dispute this, but this statement is setting off alarm bells as a thought pattern that would be easy to fall into but hard to falsify. Most artistic output in the world is mediocre and irrelevant. Seeing the same from Belgium is not enough to say the policy is not working. Belgium has about the same population and GDP as Ohio. Genuine question: how does the "artistic output", however you want to measure it, compare between Belgium and Ohio? Note that I am not claiming this is any way "worth it", especially with your comments on the middle class which seem to be echoed by other Belgians. I'm only asking about the actual artistic output in isolation.
- gillesjacobs 2y ago
  You would think policy makers have an obligation to track this, but they don't. There are no studies, KPIs or attempts at tracking effectiveness of subsidy policy. The burden of proof should be on the policy maker and subsidizer to ensure the purported goals of spending tax many are met. My wife works in public procurement for research, but there too suggesting such a thing is taboo. This is of course by design: subsidies are a political tool for passivation of opposition, soft bribery and economic channeling of economic and societal outcomes. The less oversight and transparency the better. The Flanders region only got a publicly and centralised database of (some) subsidy channels in 2019, after decades of liberal and right-leaning people lobbying for transparency. There is no such initiative for our federal government.
  - wpietri 2y ago
    That strikes me as likely to do more harm than good, and research is a good example. We already have major problems with research quality because publication quantity has risen as important metric. I can't think of a metric for art quality that wouldn't introduce all sorts of terrible incentives and disincentives.
    - 2y ago
s_dev 2y ago
Ireland has this as well but it's still in a pilot programme: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemployment-and-redundancy/employment-support-schemes/basic-income-arts/ https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemploymen... 2,000 artists were selected with prior portfolios as well as control group for comparison. It will be revised in 2025.
gpvos 2y ago
> Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Of course. 90% of everything is crap, so you are going to pay for a lot of crap art if you want any good stuff. This is the same if you have a completely commercial model, because most people have no taste.
- goostavos 2y ago
  Huh? In the commercial model, why would an individual still pay for "a lot of crap art". What you call "no taste" is just "taste," right? Nobody who gets to pick is going to pick the crap stuff. I've liked 100% of the art I've ever purchased (that's why I purchased it)
  - ninalanyon 2y ago
    But you didn't purchase 100% of the art that was produced.
throw0101d 2y ago
> Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. And always has been: ninety percent of everything is crap. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
odiroot 2y ago
The situation you describe in the first paragraph applies to pretty much most of EU. At least the western states. The powers that be decided, the ambitious middle class has to foot the bill for everything.
ninalanyon 2y ago
> mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Surely that is also true of countries where it is not subsidized?
ericmcer 2y ago
Examples like that are really dispiriting because it points to us not being able to create talented people through nurture. American society is pretty focused on success, and many of us blame our mediocrity on a lack of effort, bad parenting, the government, etc. The cold truth might be that even with a perfect work-ethic, upbringing and unlimited resources most of us would fail to do anything original or interesting. If you are doing an ok job of sleeping/eating/exercising and you are relatively disciplined you are probably already performing at like ~90% of your potential. Exercising insane discipline to try and squeeze those last few %s out probably isn't going to turn you into some gifted person.
FactKnower69 2y ago
[flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

OptionOfT 2y ago

Being from Belgium, and having gone (suffered) through high-school there, I remember going to see a theater play which was about a red square and a blue circle. That's all I remember. It was horrible.

Yeul 2y ago

The problem with the arts is that nobody really gives a shit. The vast majority of the population doesn't visit the opera or is interested in modern art. Despite a century of government funding the needle hasn't shifted. The first thing any artist should realize is that they live in a bubble. You're not going to change the world. As for market forces: our beloved Rembrandt did commission work he had a very expensive lifestyle to fund.

Gigachad 2y ago
Just make art people actually want to pay for like furry art.
- edm0nd 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  A company already has a world leadership on that. Look into Nutaku.
- egypturnash 2y ago
  I do this. http://egypt.urnash.com http://egypt.urnash.com Commissions and Patreon subscribers welcome.
sandworm101 2y ago
>> vast majority of the population doesn't visit the opera or is interested in modern art. Never in history has this been any different. "High" art has always been the domain of a narrow few and, frankly, those few want it to remain that way. But that isnt all art. Movies are art. Modern music is art. The vast majority of the population consumes an immense amount of art, i'd argue more than any time in history. It just isnt the high art of galleries and opera houses.
- posterman 2y ago
  the person you are replying to claims an artist wont "change the world". you couldn't ask for a more "hacker-brained" take on culture. what, sitting around on our computers building dinky little apps does more than movies, film and music?
  - lubujackson 2y ago
    To this day I maintain Obama wouldn't have been electable if not for the black president on "24" getting middle America used to the idea.
    - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
      Middle American checking in here. Never even heard of 24 and I find your prejudiced view of middle America to be ignorant.
    - sandworm101 2y ago
      Also Morgan Freeman.
  - NitpickLawyer 2y ago
    > you couldn't ask for a more "hacker-brained" take on culture. what, sitting around on our computers building dinky little apps does more than movies, film and music? Uhhh, yes? Can you imagine a global pandemic of 2020s magnitude happening in, say '94? Would the world at large have fared as well as we did without the "dinky little apps" like click-to-get-food and click-to-stock-warehouses and click-to-develop-rna-vaccines and click-to-work-remotely and click-to-talk-to-family and click-to-watch-anything and click-to-stay-sane? Are you seriously arguing that art is doing more for the world at large than the IT industry? Come on...
nine_k 2y ago
In 19-century Italy, opera was about as popular as pop music today. As an artist, you certainly can change (some of) the world if you do art which people care about. If you do refined academic portraits, or [adjectives expunged] postmodern art, only a bubble is going to care. If you do art like, say, Banksy, a lot more is going to care. If you sing in classical opera, only a narrow (but usually wealthy) circle of opera goers will care. If you sing like Taylor Swift or like Whitney Houston (who had a powerful, opera-worthy voice), you may have a much wider effect.
- karmonhardan 2y ago
  This isn't even necessarily true. High art is the basic research of culture. You'd be amazed at how many elements from your fave this-or-that are copped (often wholesale) from some obscure piece of media. Often, that reference lifts the latter out of obscurity, and everyone pretends that they knew it was groundbreaking and brilliant all along. "The favorite artist of your favorite artist," is a real concept. An example : Darren Aronofsky's now-famous cribbing of Satoshi Kon's work, back when anime was mostly thought of as, "Sex and violence, Pokemon, and Miyazaki (if you even knew of Miyazaki)." And even that's kind of the tip of the iceberg. Decades-old expressionist films, little-known performance and video art, paintings, music, fashion; unless you really know the landscape, how can you tell what is and isn't influencing culture down the line? How much of your experience in the world of 2024 was shaped by the proclivities of teenagers on IRC and 4chan in 2004, just trying to make each other laugh? [Insert that monologue from The Devil Wears Prada]
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Thank you, that's a nice take! As J.L.Borges aptly noted, a serious artist produces not only successors but also predecessors. (Regarding Miyazaki, I could not miss an animator who was praised so highly by Kurosawa. I learned about the rest of anime later.) But my point was more narrow: however beautiful The Magic Flute or Barber of Ceville or even Carmen may be, they are sort of stuck in a particular point of cultural space, you can't materially change them without leaving the genre that defines them. This is not specific to genres that became high-brow "refined art"; you can't play a rock-n-roll like it's 1957 either, it will only resonate among the fans of the genre / period, not very numerous now. With that, both opera and rock-n-roll were once the epitomes of wide, overwhelming popularity, each at their time. I agree about lineage. This is basically how culture grows and develops. The past is absolutely not worthless, but no cultural epoch is a final destination. Rainbow in 1970s, Jethro Tull in 1990s, and Master Boot Record in 2020s all directly quoted baroque music, but each of them did that differently, and not exactly the way an authentist ensemble would play it.
welferkj 2y ago
>The problem with the arts is that nobody really gives a shit. It'a almost as if divorcing the artist class from having to care about public opinion was a bad idea. If you want this to change, the solution is painfully obvious. End the subsidies, force them back on the open market. Remove open disdain for the audience as an option.
- scandox 2y ago
  Open disdain for audience is rarely in the mind of the artist and often in the mind of someone that doesn't like what they created and for some reason interprets this as an attack. Many artists have a small audience in mind and that is quite reasonable.
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
    > Open disdain for audience is rarely in the mind of the artist When they say "don't buy it" I take them at their word. I just wish my stolen tax money didn't also fund them.
  - welferkj 2y ago
    >Open disdain for audience is rarely in the mind of the artist Thanks to many artists being incapable of abstaining from Xitter loggorhea, we definitively know this to be false.
  - EarthBlues 2y ago
    I’m no expert, but iconoclasm is a pretty common trope in western music, and it tends to come with some amount of disdain for audiences. Mid-career, Duke Ellington chafed under the racist and unadventurous expectations of his audiences, and charted a new musical path, making music that was primarily aimed at pleasing other musicians. Many of these compositions are now jazz standards. In modern classical music, 20th Century figures like Boulez, and even earlier composers like Wagner thought their audiences were hopelessly sentimental and complacent, and worked intentionally to disturb them. A great many of the household names in modern classical music meet this description, and they certainly set the direction of classical music to follow. Now to my point: I think some of these artists made good, enduring art. But if we look at the media in which they worked — Jazz and Classical music — these forms are, I regret to say, completely culturally irrelevant. They’re dead media; the only interaction that classical music has with the culture at large is through movies and video games, and jazz is publicly perceived as a novelty genre at this point. It’s hard not to see some truth in the above post’s sense that the net result of these artists’ influence was a kind of wish granted by the monkey’s paw. They set out to destroy the idols of their day and succeeded, and the long run outcome was essentially suicidal. I wonder if we need to re-examine the trope of the iconoclast, in hopes of finding new artistic pathways that are capable of expressing new ideas and asking new questions without destroying the traditions that give rise to them.
mikojan 2y ago
What you are referring to is not intended for mass consumption. If it were you would be watching a popular music video instead. That does not mean however that it has no effect on popular culture. Popular music scenes transition seamlessly into avant-garde music circles where I live and I would assume in most metropolitan areas. And youth culture has always been experimenting of course. If you only looked at the most prestigious outlets of modern art you may well be missing the connection just like you might miss it if you looked only at the dirtiest punk venues. But that does not mean that it is not there. More boldly: Lana Del Ray would have probably not happened without Musique Concrete, Ambient, Field recordings happening first.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> The first thing any artist should realize is that they live in a bubble. It is my experience that everyone lives in bubbles. They form the lens that filter our perception of other people's existence.
- goostavos 2y ago
  Unfortunately, my bubble isnt subsidized.
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    You'd be surprised.
mapt 2y ago
That is if you define "The Arts" as specifically "Archaic forms of art too unpopular to survive without subsidies from government or the aristocracy". That's a tautology. Hip hop music isn't getting government subsidies. DeviantArt isn't getting government subsidies. Etsy isn't getting government subsidies. Youtubers aren't getting government subsidies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn't getting (many) government subsidies.
- jasondigitized 2y ago
  This. Modern music. Woodworking. Digital illustration. Pottery. All very much thriving.
- BoiledCabbage 2y ago
  > Marvel Cinematic Universe Apparently comedy is thriving as well too.
- pdonis 2y ago
  The article under discussion, though, isn't about arts that are surviving as for profit businesses--which includes all of the ones you mention. IT's about arts that aren't doing that. Those are the forms of art that the GP comment was about.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  >>The Marvel Cinematic Universe isn't getting (many) government subsidies. Maybe not US subsidies, but I'd bet that there are some Canadian film and tax credit logos at the end of most credit reels. When you film/edit/design/create on an international scale, you pick up lots of local tax credits. Also probably UK/Scotland credits too. Heck, the 2005 reboot of DrWho was backed by Canadian government money. (Just check the final credits.)
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    Those are usually granted by local governments to increase local revenue, not lower it. It's how one jurisdiction can attract more investment relative to another.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
If no one gave a shit these venues would close. Instead some of them have been lovingly maintained for a century. What does that say about your reductionist assessment of the world? Are things only valid if they are upheld by the overwhelming majority of the population? Is that a realistic expectation given the things that do in fact influence a heck of a lot more people often have to resort to psychological manipulation over standing on its own merits to do so? Take your head out of the sand and see what the arguments you are making are actually pencilling out to be.
kredd 2y ago
I generally understand this sentiment as a couple of my best friends work in theatre industry, although I have no inclination towards anything related to arts. That being said, you don’t need mass market to get second order effects. Especially for tourism industry. Not everyone who visits NYC goes to a Broadway show, but they know of the industry and how it attracts the talent. Not everyone who goes to Berlin dances their night out till 6am, but they know of it. These subsidies help to create the image of the city, and in some sense help the residents to identify with their surroundings. I understand it’s a bit lame, but I don’t mind some of my tax dollars going into an industry that I never directly benefit from.

mandmandam 2y ago

> no artists will criticize the subsidizer of their lifestyle They do. Do they get attention on corporate media so you hear about them though? > You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class artists ... It does. Are they given exposure in corporate media? > so many can work unbothered by the oppressive forces of market trends Being able to afford basic necessities does not, in fact, make artists immune to the "oppressive forces" of the market. > mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Ie, Sturgeon's Law.

gillesjacobs 2y ago
Coincidentally, the "corporate" media in Belgium is also heavily subsidized (as in a significant amount of their revenue is subsidies). And we also have public media. Yet no credible evidence of the effectiveness of endless subsidies. If we're going to namedrop economic laws like it means something: Parkinson's law: the art and media sector have become part of the self-perpetuating ineffective bureaucracy.

sputr 2y ago

Slovenia is similar, but with even more intervention in the form of public grants. We also have no tax breaks for individuals who may wish to support the arts/humanitarian/ngo endeavors. It's all “systemic”. Which is "fine" as long as a certain ideology controls the government (not always the same party, just the same "network"/ideology). Now, the quality/quantity of the output is a mater of my subjective opinion, which would only muddy the water. What isn't is what happened when the opposite ideology took over the government. Suddenly the much lauded ministry of arts became the enemy who chose different artists to subsidize. There were many Pikachu faces that day.

llm_trw 2y ago
Is there some articles about this? I'd love to read more.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

> The productive middleclass is effectively squeezed. That's why I left Belgium. Getting squeezed to the bone to pay for endless leeches producing absolutely nothing that I enjoy or respect: it's not just the arts. Administrations are pathetically inefficient and arbitrary in how they treat people too. So I already left and now I'm selling everything I have there: a little apartment, one garage, a few items worth a little something. I'm fully planning on acquiring another nationality and then I'll just abandon my belgian one. > Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Totally.

gillesjacobs 2y ago
Like many I am looking for an exit too, at least fiscally. Right now I am -like many here- territorially bound by family and real-estate. But the negative economic death spiral has set in here. More people work for the public sector directly and indirectly than the private sector, and the tax burden is ever increasing while services received are dwindling.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  I've often wondered if a colony in some of the unclaimed lands of Antarctica could soak up everyone who is fed up with the death spiral of productivity in the west. You'd meet some interesting people if nothing else.
- formerly_proven 2y ago
  For an unhealthy length of time (definitely since c. 2009 and arguably since the 90s) anyone with economically interesting skills was better of emigrating to the US, and many of these "best and brightest" did. I think the ceiling where you're better off in the US (or a few other Western states) is getting lower and lower, especially since the last few years have starkly shown just how unwilling and resistant to change the central european populace truly is. Right now you can still leave without huge exit taxes (unless you happen to own a company, most don't). I'm guessing as the brain drain keeps picking up pace, we'll see hefty exit taxes targeting basically everyone starting in 5-10 years.... after all, when people leave, they won't be able to pay 70% (~50% taxes and mandatory insurance, 30-40% rent or a mortgage, whose principal directly went to some old dude) of their income into your young-to-old wealth transfer system where they don't get anything out. So when they wanna leave you, you gotta make them pay dearly! Abusive relationship? Not at all!

Eumenes 2y ago

[flagged]

Retric 2y ago

Belgium’s tax burden is close to California, they just don’t split it up into a bunch of different categories. However, look at how much a self employed single person retains from their income when doing to comparison and the situation is more clear.

gillesjacobs 2y ago
I am a self-employed freelancer and I have done all fiscal optimization possible in BE and my effective tax burden is 37%. From what I find in Google about CA's total optimized tax burden for a one-man freelance company it is about 28%. And a lot more buying power too probably, but that is hard to compare in. Of course this is personal income from labour via one-man companies ("net take-home"). This does not take into account VAT, capital gains taxes, etc.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
  > This does not take into account VAT For the viewers at home that is 6% on food, and now electricity (how kind daddy govt), and 21% on everything else. So this tax burden is in fact higher.
- Retric 2y ago
  There’s a ton of different ways to do these kinds of comparisons, but I’m unsure how you could end up with a single number here: > CA's total optimized tax burden for a one-man freelance company it is about 28% CA’s tax burden varies wildly based on a host of factors. However the simple calculation for a freelancer filing as a single person making 50k = 24.6%, 100k = 32%, 150k = 36.5%, 300k = 40% which some people actually pay. https://www.upwork.com/tools/freelance-tax-calculator https://www.upwork.com/tools/freelance-tax-calculator
  - gillesjacobs 2y ago
    According to that calculator my CA tax burden ratio would be 29.7% so seems the websites I read were not far off the mark.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

This is why I don't think that government-run UBI is a good idea. We need something to fall back on in case it becomes necessary to do away with a problematic government for a while, not something that the government can use to negatively reinforce the status quo. Safety nets are for making otherwise dangerous things practical.

gillesjacobs 2y ago
Pray tell, what enlightened incorruptible entity would enforce and organise UBI?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  What enforcement is needed? Either you opt in to accepting the UBI currency, or you don't. If there's an enforcer involved then you've got government UBI. As for issuing the tokens, there are a variety of UBI systems that handle that without a centralized authority. CirclesUBI and Idena come to mind. Admittedly some work is needed here, but the technical barriers are not the hard part. The hard part is establishing the collective political will to build a culture around accepting them, otherwise it's just meaningless numbers.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Why would you even need or want "UBI currency" for UBI? Just give people money.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      That sets up a problematic power dynamic. Whoever is doing the giving has power over whenever is doing the receiving. And you'd want it as an alternative for cases where the other money is questionably legitimate. Like if the people who control its supply have stopped acting in the best interest of the people who use it.
      - 2y ago

Arcanum-XIII 2y ago

Except that it nearly work only for people acting, dancing and working in « live » art. If you’re a painter or a sculptor, since you can’t provide proof of engagement length, you were out. That’s getting better but still not a UBI by any means. They’re poor. Do we have good contemporary art ? Yes. They’re not subsidized by the government, have to pay heavy taxes as we are and got to have lot of red tape for their enjoyment. So they move out of Belgium. With a raised middle finger… Meanwhile this same system is abused by Uber and other major.

feoren 2y ago

> You'd think Belgium would have some impressive world-class artists, since so many can work unbothered by the oppressive forces of market trends. Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. I don't really know enough to dispute this, but this statement is setting off alarm bells as a thought pattern that would be easy to fall into but hard to falsify. Most artistic output in the world is mediocre and irrelevant. Seeing the same from Belgium is not enough to say the policy is not working. Belgium has about the same population and GDP as Ohio. Genuine question: how does the "artistic output", however you want to measure it, compare between Belgium and Ohio? Note that I am not claiming this is any way "worth it", especially with your comments on the middle class which seem to be echoed by other Belgians. I'm only asking about the actual artistic output in isolation.

gillesjacobs 2y ago
You would think policy makers have an obligation to track this, but they don't. There are no studies, KPIs or attempts at tracking effectiveness of subsidy policy. The burden of proof should be on the policy maker and subsidizer to ensure the purported goals of spending tax many are met. My wife works in public procurement for research, but there too suggesting such a thing is taboo. This is of course by design: subsidies are a political tool for passivation of opposition, soft bribery and economic channeling of economic and societal outcomes. The less oversight and transparency the better. The Flanders region only got a publicly and centralised database of (some) subsidy channels in 2019, after decades of liberal and right-leaning people lobbying for transparency. There is no such initiative for our federal government.
- wpietri 2y ago
  That strikes me as likely to do more harm than good, and research is a good example. We already have major problems with research quality because publication quantity has risen as important metric. I can't think of a metric for art quality that wouldn't introduce all sorts of terrible incentives and disincentives.
  - 2y ago

s_dev 2y ago

Ireland has this as well but it's still in a pilot programme: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemployment-and-redundancy/employment-support-schemes/basic-income-arts/ https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/unemploymen... 2,000 artists were selected with prior portfolios as well as control group for comparison. It will be revised in 2025.

gpvos 2y ago

> Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Of course. 90% of everything is crap, so you are going to pay for a lot of crap art if you want any good stuff. This is the same if you have a completely commercial model, because most people have no taste.

goostavos 2y ago
Huh? In the commercial model, why would an individual still pay for "a lot of crap art". What you call "no taste" is just "taste," right? Nobody who gets to pick is going to pick the crap stuff. I've liked 100% of the art I've ever purchased (that's why I purchased it)
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  But you didn't purchase 100% of the art that was produced.

throw0101d 2y ago

> Not surprisingly, mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. And always has been: ninety percent of everything is crap. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

odiroot 2y ago

The situation you describe in the first paragraph applies to pretty much most of EU. At least the western states. The powers that be decided, the ambitious middle class has to foot the bill for everything.

ninalanyon 2y ago

> mediocrity, irrelevance and low-output are the norm. Surely that is also true of countries where it is not subsidized?

ericmcer 2y ago

Examples like that are really dispiriting because it points to us not being able to create talented people through nurture. American society is pretty focused on success, and many of us blame our mediocrity on a lack of effort, bad parenting, the government, etc. The cold truth might be that even with a perfect work-ethic, upbringing and unlimited resources most of us would fail to do anything original or interesting. If you are doing an ok job of sleeping/eating/exercising and you are relatively disciplined you are probably already performing at like ~90% of your potential. Exercising insane discipline to try and squeeze those last few %s out probably isn't going to turn you into some gifted person.

FactKnower69 2y ago

[flagged]

dang 2y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.