3 ms·

If all art is popularly funded, you'd only get pop. There are certain types of investments that are very long-term and tend to have high risk. These sort of in

by tikhonj 14y ago

If all art is popularly funded, you'd only get pop. There are certain types of investments that are very long-term and tend to have high risk. These sort of investments tend to fair poorly in a free market system--markets tend to only look at the short/medium term and shy away from certain kinds of risk. A perfect parallel is basic research. A significant amount of basic research in a bunch of fields (like cosmology and more abstract mathematics) is done on public funding. Why? It's simple: companies and individuals rarely want to invest in such ventures because there is no guarantee they will be useful in any reasonable time frame. And yet this is doubtless a good investment for the future--we are much better off thanks to mathematical developments that most people would have thought too abstract initially. If you asked the people on the street to fund research in category theory (before it got all popular :P), nobody would have done it. So basic research is exactly the same--it's funding something nobody wants. And yet it is patently useful. Basic research is exactly one of the things that I do want even a minimal government to fund. The exact same logic applies to art. After all, I certainly don't know what sort of art will have cultural significance in the future, and don't see any reason to exclusively trust the public at large either--just the same as I don't know what mathematical research will yield useful advancements and wouldn't trust the public there either.

endersshadow 14y ago
> If all art is popularly funded, you'd only get pop. I'm going to go ahead and yell, "False!" on this. Music is almost entirely popularly funded (i.e.-no government grants). Pop is not the only music that exists. There are many niches and genres of music, for good reason--there's a lot of money out there. It's not an American election--more than one party can win. Your other points are moot. Research and art are two very different things. Art is an expression, research is the seeking of knowledge. That knowledge may or may not be valuable to us in the future (and may or may not be worth the cost), but we're willing to take those risks because the reward can be fantastic. Art has its importance, but scientific research has practical and valuable applications, and there lies all the difference. I cannot think of what art could possibly require a long-term and high-risk investment (long-term being on the order of a decade) that is currently not supported by the private market.

by tikhonj 14y ago

endersshadow 14y ago

> If all art is popularly funded, you'd only get pop. I'm going to go ahead and yell, "False!" on this. Music is almost entirely popularly funded (i.e.-no government grants). Pop is not the only music that exists. There are many niches and genres of music, for good reason--there's a lot of money out there. It's not an American election--more than one party can win. Your other points are moot. Research and art are two very different things. Art is an expression, research is the seeking of knowledge. That knowledge may or may not be valuable to us in the future (and may or may not be worth the cost), but we're willing to take those risks because the reward can be fantastic. Art has its importance, but scientific research has practical and valuable applications, and there lies all the difference. I cannot think of what art could possibly require a long-term and high-risk investment (long-term being on the order of a decade) that is currently not supported by the private market.