11 ms·

There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value. Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It

There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value. Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It can be, but it doesn't need to be. I am reminded of Daniel James also known as Gwyrosydd, his bardic name. He was a Welsh language poet, who wrote probably the greatest Welsh language song, Calon Lân (means 'a pure heart'). People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later. It is a proud continuation of a bardic tradition in Wales going back probably thousands of years. It also encompasses the Welsh culture of choral singing, noted in early recorded history. Daniel James spent his life slaving away in an ironworks, making crucible steel. John Hughes, who wrote the tune worked in an office there. I like to imagine what they could have done had they been at leisure to work and perform all day. Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK.

Schlagbohrer 9mo ago
When Nirvana first moved from their small Washington town to Seattle, they were able to pay their rent + everything else from working minimum wage jobs for 2 weeks a month. They had time to practice music and pursue their art. In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. Seattle successfully exterminated their entire arts, music, and culture scene by raising the cost of living sky high.
- closewith 9mo ago
  > In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation. Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?
  - jimnotgym 9mo ago
    > Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation? Isn't that a false dichotomy? We can only afford health or the arts?
    - closewith 9mo ago
      No, it’s not that we can only afford one. It’s that we’re choosing to ring fence funding for one while allowing the others to erode in real terms. Ireland already greatly subsidises health, just not to a level that keeps pace with the cost of living. That’s why nurses and doctors are emigrating, and why recruitment and retention are constant crises. The arts scheme isn’t the problem in isolation, but when the State recognises that market income alone isn’t sufficient for artists to live, but doesn’t apply the same logic to other socially critical professions, it's definitely a questionable policy.
  - kiba 9mo ago
    The problem with a UBI is not the UBI itself, but the fact that landlords could just raise their price. You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works. The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an owner's effort. By the way, the UBI is an old idea. In the 19th century, it was known as the Citizen's Dividend.
    - limagnolia 9mo ago
      If cities allowed more supply to be constructed, landlords couldn't just raise the price.
      - WesolyKubeczek 9mo ago
        I know of cities where real estate development is rampant, sometimes to the detriment of quality, and yet apartment prices are soaring.
- maccard 9mo ago
  I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills. It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.
  - ace32229 9mo ago
    That's what, £1100 per month? How can you survive on that in an expensive city?
    - maccard 9mo ago
      £1100/mo is about the minimum I could get by on in Edinburgh, yeah. It’s a room in a flat share with bills, £60/week on food, and £150/mo for “everything else”. It’s about as low as I think you could do. The person I replied to was talking about Nirvana in the 90s - when they were working part timeminimum wage jobs that’s roughly the life they’re living. If you go to Liverpool (which significantly punches for musical history), it’s actually manageable on 20hr/weeek minimum wage. You’re not talking sustaining a family or anything, but that life has been gone for 40 years at this point.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
  Citation needed. "Cobain thought Seattle was too expensive a place to live. He couldn’t even afford his Olympia apartment, and was evicted for not paying rent while he was recording Nevermind.”[1] "They supported themselves through food stamps, sleeping on porches."[2] [1]https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-moment-30-years-ago-when-nirvana-and-nevermind-forever-changed-seattle/ https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-... [2]https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php
ap99 9mo ago
You can only tax people so much before it's too much. effective tax rates 0% ... not realistic outside very unique circumstances. 25% ... feels fair to me. 33% ... still fair but yeah 1 out of every 3 days worked you start to feel that. 50% ... the border of fair and unfair. if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin. Now, when you are near that border of fair and unfair and then you see John Q Artist getting his whole list comped using tax money that pushes the somewhat fair into unfair territory real fast. Now, we already have situations similar to this in most countries either from subsidies, gov't spending you don't agree with, corruption, waste, etc. All of that should be reduced but when you see your neighbor living free while you slave away you feel that differently.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9mo ago
  It has a tendency to lead societies to do things like round up all the artists and intellectuals and against-the-wall when-the-revolution-comes them.
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  What has that got to do with my comment?
  - Xunjin 9mo ago
    Literally nothing... I'm just lost like you are, I assume he is bringing other discussions IRL without providing context.
- dgb23 9mo ago
  Ireland is a tax haven though?
  - cucumber3732842 9mo ago
    >Ireland is a tax haven though? For select megacorps that have the luxury of being in a business that lets them structure themselves that way, sure. For the laboring peasantry it's a very different story (though the actual rates vary, this goes for most "tax havens"). Ireland in particular has a high VAT so if you spend a lot of your income on consumption (which most individuals do) you will get very screwed by that.
nandomrumber 9mo ago
> I like to imagine what they could have done had they been at leisure to work and perform all day. Probably nothing. The idle rich and trust fund kids aren’t exactly know for producing, well, anything of value, really. Getting paid to sit around all day and do fuck-all isn’t exactly character building.
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  He was in his 40s when he wrote his most famous work, that would qualify as a portfolio in Ireland and get the grant. I reckon the 20 years as an iron puddler he had done by then had built his character already.
- eucyclos 9mo ago
  The majority of great works created by the ruling classes of Athens or London at the height of both cultures ascendency is a major counterexample. Maybe we just had bad luck as to today's ruling class.
  - nandomrumber 9mo ago
    What does the past have to do with the present quagmire we find ourselves in? Surely no one would intentionally suggest we pay people to sit around with the hope they produce something anyone will be bothered to read (or whatever) in 2000 years.
    - eucyclos 8mo ago
      Clearly Ireland does more than suggest it. If you think it's such a bad idea, maybe you can explain what salient factor is so different between the glorious past and the present quagmire.
- jodrellblank 9mo ago
  Yes they are. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientist... - "An independent scientist (formerly called a gentlemen scientist) is a scientist with a private income who can pursue scientific study independently as they wish without excessive external financial pressures." Including: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (Evolution), Ben Franklin, Robert Boyle (Boyle's gas law), Oliver Heaviside (electromagnetic theory, co-axial cables), Alexander von Humboldt (established modern Geography), Thomas Jefferson, Leopold Kronecker, Alessandro Volta (voltaic pile battery) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist - "Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the Victorian era, especially in England, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the Royal Society in London were independent scientists. " Including "Charles Babbage, Henry Cavendish (discovered Hydrogen), Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Thomas Young (Young's modulus of elasticity, eyeball focusing), Joseph Priestly (discovered oxygen) Rene Decartes "arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life." And basically any tenured professor paid to do whatever interests them, or academic or researcher, especially mathemticians, hired and paid for blue sky research, all the places like Bell Labs that HN loves.
BSDobelix 9mo ago
>Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK. It's a bad scheme, it divide's your population into people who have to create "wealth", and people who create "art". Yes creating art (or preserving rare potatoes[1]) should be supported by your government if it's not survivable in a capitalistic society, however having different rights because of your occupation is not better then the middle ages. [1] https://irishpotatofederation.ie/varieties/ https://irishpotatofederation.ie/varieties/
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth. So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?
  - BSDobelix 9mo ago
    >Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth. That's what i meant with the potatoes, the government pays for the field with the rare potatoes, and the standardized potatoes make wealth. >So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it? With free housing (art community's), tax free stuff (for small to medium sales etc) like it's done today. And to be honest i think 99.5% of artist dont do a full-time-art-job, most of them do other stuff too...and that's good. Is my friend who plays the didgeridoo in his free time now an artist if he declares it's suddenly his full-time occupation? One example, why exclude people like Geo-scientists who sometimes dont even get any money (except they work for big-oil or the state). On a base your are right, not everything that's good for societies is compatible within a capitalistic system. But this is just a complete wrong step.
    - jimnotgym 9mo ago
      But giving housing or tax breaks needs lots of admin. Isn't that less efficient? Giving housing forces people to live in certain places. What if you are a traveling musician, you might be better off with a van. It is like the Victorian view of giving charity. 'Don't give them money, give them food', like the people don't know what they need.
b112 9mo ago
All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable. Living in a one room dwelling, with a shared bathroom is unpleasant, but safe, warm, and has a bed. Having enough for basic food, but no luxuries. My point is, welfare(not disability, welfare) should sustain. Keep safe. Alive. Free from elements. But absolutely be something a normal person wants to escape from. And there will always be those happy with the above, and .. well, OK. But whether artist or whomever, basic living in hard times should be there for you.
- mjanx123 9mo ago
  Whip them to the hamster wheel...
- komali2 9mo ago
  > All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable. Why? We are well beyond the scarcity that would require this.
  - b112 9mo ago
    What on earth are you even talking about? The person in my description would be housed, fed, safe. To this you say, we're well beyond the scarcity that would require this. Believe it or not, people still work to produce almost everything. While aided with machinery, farmers are human beings and work. People actually physically build houses. Everything that you own, is assembled or manufactured from components and parts that come from human labour. If someone is going to live off the backs of the work, and effort of other human beings, then certainly they should not live in luxury. They should, in fact, feel as if they are putting other people out, which in fact they are. I've already expressed a situation where I want nobody to starve. Where I want nobody to not have a roof over their head, if they're having a difficult time, where I want them to be safe. This is an extremely generous, extremely kind, extremely compassionate thing for me, or anyone else to do. To give some of my daily effort to help others, is laudable. To this you say, why don't you give more? To this you say, it's not enough to be housed, but why doesn't somebody get a free large screen TV too? To this you say, why doesn't somebody get more than just the basic necessities? Can't they have steak, a large home, all, provided by the efforts of others? Do you not realize how completely selfish that is? It's completely out of touch with the whole dynamic of people working to produce goods, and other people just getting those goods without effort.
Xunjin 9mo ago
> There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value. To be fair, the majority has been conditioned in thinking that only money should be your purpose, that's literally how capitalism works, even arts now is a product that need to be sold to the highest bidder, or manufactured in the millions to be sold.
badgersnake 9mo ago
What did you expect from a forum for VC fanboys?
qualitylearing 9mo ago
[flagged]
lbreakjai 9mo ago
The problem is, how do you define "art"? How do you define which art is worth subsidizing? Am I eligible if I doodle on a piece of paper once in a while? What about if I decided to expose a urinal? Or paint a can of soup?
- stemlord 9mo ago
  you can't really fake the labor that goes into mastering a craft any more significantly than one can fake labor at a white collar job, let alone some level of institutional involvement that any professional pursuit would end up with (i.e., showing a work at the gallery on main st or giving workshops at the community center), so this isn't actually that challenging of a question in practice. even with highly conceptual work there's still an involved studio/research practice to audit if your artistic practice is truly so abstract that you can't prove labor by any material means then you probably just won't get subsidized for it.
misja111 9mo ago
> People seem to think only money has value. Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here. Of course nobody thinks that only money has value. If only money had value, why would anybody exchange money for, say, a bread? What many people are wondering about, is whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. Because if it would be equal, then one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.
- picture 9mo ago
  There are many things that are valuable to people, but which they would rather not pay for. They include public goods and externalities, like infrastructure and education and a reasonable amount of military. It makes a lot of sense that people would rather enjoy art for free if they had the option, and since the majority of art experience can be easily duplicated and transmitted, why pay for it yourself? There is also another benefit of art stimulating further intellectual and creative development of a society, perhaps yielding second order benefits that are hard to quantify. Thus overall, it can make a lot of sense for government to pay for art as a society.
- ryanjshaw 9mo ago
  I also wonder why the tax payers who care can’t contribute directly to a fund, and keep government out of entirely.
  - komali2 9mo ago
    Then it would be a popularity contest and depend on the artists' ability to market themselves in a capitalist space. The one with the best TikTok channel would get the money. That doesn't lead to having diverse, interesting, and challenging art.
    - ryanjshaw 9mo ago
      How does the government solve this problem? Why can’t a private organization replicate that? How was art produced previously without the existence of these programs?
GorbachevyChase 9mo ago
There really is not an objective criteria to find who is and it’s not an artist. The proposed system makes a purely political decision out of who sits at a desk doing unsatisfying but necessary tasks, and who gets to sit at home and smoke dope all day and put out a painting or a song twice a year. Not very fair to the tax donkey fixing the plumbing.
- kiba 9mo ago
  Don't tax labor, or capital which helps assist labor with performing economic activity ,or at least tax as little as possible. Instead, focus on taxing scarce resources, especially since we cannot make more of it. If it's natural resources coming out of the grounds such as minerals and oil, it becomes a severance tax. If we're talking about occupying land, then it's a Land Value Tax. You could also tax negative externalities like pollution or traffic congestion.This is known as a Piguovian tax.
JKCalhoun 9mo ago
Plenty of people get upset if they think there is someone, somewhere getting a "handout". It's easy to channel indignation toward those people and not, say, their corporate masters that seem to hold everyone's strings.
- whywhywhywhy 9mo ago
  What’s “corporate masters” got to do with a transaction from taxes and inflation (stolen value on your savings and spending power) to a handout?
  - komali2 9mo ago
    If you think taxation is theft, wait till I show you some fat margins on labor value.
    - tt24 9mo ago
      Large margins are not what define theft believe it or not
      - komali2 9mo ago
        I'm not sure why taking away money you could spend on goods or put into savings is ok when your boss does it, but not ok when the government does it. At least the government builds you a road in return.
        tt24 9mo ago
        Because one is consensual and the other isn’t.
        komali2 9mo ago
        Right, that's my point, unless you can work at a co-op, you have no say in how much value from your labor is extracted and given to someone else, and given the way society is designed, it's basically impossible to live without nonconsensually giving up the majority of your labor's value to someone else. Whereas with taxes, if you don't like them, you can elect a different politician. Look at the Americans, they do it all the time, their tax rates go all over the place. I want roads, libraries, firetrucks, and for my poop to vanish into oblivion when I pull the toilet handle. I don't really want my money to buy my boss a new car.
whywhywhywhy 9mo ago
Why would I ever do work if I can just do art? I mean I have worked in the creative industries so I have successfully done art for others but why would I do art to serve others if I can just do what I want and live comfortably. Or is it more of have to apply to be subsidized and the government chooses what art is worth subsidizing, which won’t result in good art, more just government building lobby bad art.
dev_l1x_be 9mo ago
> Daniel James spent his life slaving away in an ironworks, making crucible steel. John Hughes, who wrote the tune worked in an office there. Part of being an artist (at least it used to be) is struggle.
- afavour 9mo ago
  I’d say that’s correlation, not causation. Just because past artists have struggled to make ends meet doesn’t mean it’s a requirement to make art.
akudha 9mo ago
People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later I wonder how far are we from a song that is entirely generated by AI and becomes as loved as a song created by a human, and is still sung/played by people decades later? It feels weird to even think about it. If AI does get as good as humans at creating art (I think it might), what happens then? Will human generated art be still as respected/valuable? Will humans even bother creating art at that stage? On the topic of basic income - people seem to have strong opinions on both sides. I guess time will tell, but there isn't anything wrong in experimenting, at minimum. To those who strongly oppose UBI - don't we already give bailouts, huge tax breaks, subsidies to entire industries etc, to the extent of rewarding bad behavior (criminal behavior even) - like the one that caused 2008 crash? Why is corporate handouts okay but not UBI?
- matthewkayin 9mo ago
  > Will human generated art still be as respected/valuable? I would hope that humans would always value human generated art, but these days it seems that many businessmen and AI bros do not. Perhaps they are not human.
- amichal 9mo ago
  I wonder, can we not turn all threads into a "when will AI do this creative thing better than humans". Humans need basic income (or at least resources) and to have culturally valuable work to do. Art and craft esp as a form of human expression seems like we should ASSUME that humans want to do this, that we as a society value the human energy that goes into it.
  - akudha 9mo ago
    Yes, humans want to make art. But most humans would also want their art to be seen, appreciated at minimum. Would be nice if they can make a living out of it. I am not trying to turn all threads into AI debate, but AI threat to art is a legit concern. If AI mass produces art at comparable quality level to humans, it would be near impossible for humans to compete for other humans' attention. If nobody sees my art, would I still make art? Maybe some humans will, because creating art makes them happy and they don't care if anyone sees their art or not. But many humans will give up
ecshafer 9mo ago
Who gets to be an artist? I want to be an artist now. Is it people who go to certain universities with art degrees? Can any working class guy decide he wants to pursue art and get the basic income? Another question is would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks? In the 1800s most of the great literature was written by normal guys writing on the side, they need that experience to make great art. Heart of Darkness is never going to be written by an academic. Hemmingway doesn't write anything without his experiences in Italy, Spain and France in WWI, Civil War and WWII, if he was just a beat reporter forever, all of his great inspirations don't amount to much. Tolstoy and Doestoyevsky are notable exceptions.
- boston_clone 9mo ago
  Heck yeah, go be an artist! If you want to be one and aren't, what's stopping you? Perhaps the lack of financial security? ;) Here's a non-exhaustive list of eligible types: https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-and-sport/publications/basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-scheme-your-questions-answered/ https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...
- maleno 9mo ago
  Just to answer the question in this specific case: yes, a working class guy can decide he wants to pursue art (in quite a broad range of forms), and he can apply for the basic income once he can show that he is working as an artist. The artists who ultimately receive the payment will be chosen randomly once they meet the criteria to apply in the first place (which, again, is simply that you are working as an artist—exhibiting, publishing, performing, whatever "work" might mean in your case). There is a fixed number of people who can receive it in each round (I think it's 2500 people, cycling every three years), and those people are picked by lottery; if you receive it in one round, you cannot apply for the next. This, and in fact no arts funding in Ireland, has anything to do with certain universities or art degrees. This scheme is far from perfect, but these vaguely leading questions (so common to all commentary on public funding for the arts) are clearly irrelevant. As for the second question ("would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks"), well, life and art really are too varied to draw the kind of conclusions the following comment implies.
MisterTea 9mo ago
> Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It can be, but it doesn't need to be. They don't care about the art, only the clout it brings them in terms of hoarding a limited thing people value. Art is a medium that is used to convey and stir emotion in the viewer. It's not currency to anyone but shallow fools.

Schlagbohrer 9mo ago

When Nirvana first moved from their small Washington town to Seattle, they were able to pay their rent + everything else from working minimum wage jobs for 2 weeks a month. They had time to practice music and pursue their art. In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. Seattle successfully exterminated their entire arts, music, and culture scene by raising the cost of living sky high.

closewith 9mo ago
> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation. Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?
- jimnotgym 9mo ago
  > Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation? Isn't that a false dichotomy? We can only afford health or the arts?
  - closewith 9mo ago
    No, it’s not that we can only afford one. It’s that we’re choosing to ring fence funding for one while allowing the others to erode in real terms. Ireland already greatly subsidises health, just not to a level that keeps pace with the cost of living. That’s why nurses and doctors are emigrating, and why recruitment and retention are constant crises. The arts scheme isn’t the problem in isolation, but when the State recognises that market income alone isn’t sufficient for artists to live, but doesn’t apply the same logic to other socially critical professions, it's definitely a questionable policy.
- kiba 9mo ago
  The problem with a UBI is not the UBI itself, but the fact that landlords could just raise their price. You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works. The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an owner's effort. By the way, the UBI is an old idea. In the 19th century, it was known as the Citizen's Dividend.
  - limagnolia 9mo ago
    If cities allowed more supply to be constructed, landlords couldn't just raise the price.
    - WesolyKubeczek 9mo ago
      I know of cities where real estate development is rampant, sometimes to the detriment of quality, and yet apartment prices are soaring.
maccard 9mo ago
I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills. It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.
- ace32229 9mo ago
  That's what, £1100 per month? How can you survive on that in an expensive city?
  - maccard 9mo ago
    £1100/mo is about the minimum I could get by on in Edinburgh, yeah. It’s a room in a flat share with bills, £60/week on food, and £150/mo for “everything else”. It’s about as low as I think you could do. The person I replied to was talking about Nirvana in the 90s - when they were working part timeminimum wage jobs that’s roughly the life they’re living. If you go to Liverpool (which significantly punches for musical history), it’s actually manageable on 20hr/weeek minimum wage. You’re not talking sustaining a family or anything, but that life has been gone for 40 years at this point.
CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
Citation needed. "Cobain thought Seattle was too expensive a place to live. He couldn’t even afford his Olympia apartment, and was evicted for not paying rent while he was recording Nevermind.”[1] "They supported themselves through food stamps, sleeping on porches."[2] [1]https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-moment-30-years-ago-when-nirvana-and-nevermind-forever-changed-seattle/ https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-... [2]https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php

ap99 9mo ago

You can only tax people so much before it's too much. effective tax rates 0% ... not realistic outside very unique circumstances. 25% ... feels fair to me. 33% ... still fair but yeah 1 out of every 3 days worked you start to feel that. 50% ... the border of fair and unfair. if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin. Now, when you are near that border of fair and unfair and then you see John Q Artist getting his whole list comped using tax money that pushes the somewhat fair into unfair territory real fast. Now, we already have situations similar to this in most countries either from subsidies, gov't spending you don't agree with, corruption, waste, etc. All of that should be reduced but when you see your neighbor living free while you slave away you feel that differently.

TheSpiceIsLife 9mo ago
It has a tendency to lead societies to do things like round up all the artists and intellectuals and against-the-wall when-the-revolution-comes them.
jimnotgym 9mo ago
What has that got to do with my comment?
- Xunjin 9mo ago
  Literally nothing... I'm just lost like you are, I assume he is bringing other discussions IRL without providing context.
dgb23 9mo ago
Ireland is a tax haven though?
- cucumber3732842 9mo ago
  >Ireland is a tax haven though? For select megacorps that have the luxury of being in a business that lets them structure themselves that way, sure. For the laboring peasantry it's a very different story (though the actual rates vary, this goes for most "tax havens"). Ireland in particular has a high VAT so if you spend a lot of your income on consumption (which most individuals do) you will get very screwed by that.

nandomrumber 9mo ago

> I like to imagine what they could have done had they been at leisure to work and perform all day. Probably nothing. The idle rich and trust fund kids aren’t exactly know for producing, well, anything of value, really. Getting paid to sit around all day and do fuck-all isn’t exactly character building.

jimnotgym 9mo ago
He was in his 40s when he wrote his most famous work, that would qualify as a portfolio in Ireland and get the grant. I reckon the 20 years as an iron puddler he had done by then had built his character already.
eucyclos 9mo ago
The majority of great works created by the ruling classes of Athens or London at the height of both cultures ascendency is a major counterexample. Maybe we just had bad luck as to today's ruling class.
- nandomrumber 9mo ago
  What does the past have to do with the present quagmire we find ourselves in? Surely no one would intentionally suggest we pay people to sit around with the hope they produce something anyone will be bothered to read (or whatever) in 2000 years.
  - eucyclos 8mo ago
    Clearly Ireland does more than suggest it. If you think it's such a bad idea, maybe you can explain what salient factor is so different between the glorious past and the present quagmire.
jodrellblank 9mo ago
Yes they are. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientist... - "An independent scientist (formerly called a gentlemen scientist) is a scientist with a private income who can pursue scientific study independently as they wish without excessive external financial pressures." Including: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (Evolution), Ben Franklin, Robert Boyle (Boyle's gas law), Oliver Heaviside (electromagnetic theory, co-axial cables), Alexander von Humboldt (established modern Geography), Thomas Jefferson, Leopold Kronecker, Alessandro Volta (voltaic pile battery) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist - "Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the Victorian era, especially in England, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the Royal Society in London were independent scientists. " Including "Charles Babbage, Henry Cavendish (discovered Hydrogen), Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Thomas Young (Young's modulus of elasticity, eyeball focusing), Joseph Priestly (discovered oxygen) Rene Decartes "arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life." And basically any tenured professor paid to do whatever interests them, or academic or researcher, especially mathemticians, hired and paid for blue sky research, all the places like Bell Labs that HN loves.

BSDobelix 9mo ago

>Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK. It's a bad scheme, it divide's your population into people who have to create "wealth", and people who create "art". Yes creating art (or preserving rare potatoes[1]) should be supported by your government if it's not survivable in a capitalistic society, however having different rights because of your occupation is not better then the middle ages. [1] https://irishpotatofederation.ie/varieties/ https://irishpotatofederation.ie/varieties/

jimnotgym 9mo ago
Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth. So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?
- BSDobelix 9mo ago
  >Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth. That's what i meant with the potatoes, the government pays for the field with the rare potatoes, and the standardized potatoes make wealth. >So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it? With free housing (art community's), tax free stuff (for small to medium sales etc) like it's done today. And to be honest i think 99.5% of artist dont do a full-time-art-job, most of them do other stuff too...and that's good. Is my friend who plays the didgeridoo in his free time now an artist if he declares it's suddenly his full-time occupation? One example, why exclude people like Geo-scientists who sometimes dont even get any money (except they work for big-oil or the state). On a base your are right, not everything that's good for societies is compatible within a capitalistic system. But this is just a complete wrong step.
  - jimnotgym 9mo ago
    But giving housing or tax breaks needs lots of admin. Isn't that less efficient? Giving housing forces people to live in certain places. What if you are a traveling musician, you might be better off with a van. It is like the Victorian view of giving charity. 'Don't give them money, give them food', like the people don't know what they need.

b112 9mo ago

All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable. Living in a one room dwelling, with a shared bathroom is unpleasant, but safe, warm, and has a bed. Having enough for basic food, but no luxuries. My point is, welfare(not disability, welfare) should sustain. Keep safe. Alive. Free from elements. But absolutely be something a normal person wants to escape from. And there will always be those happy with the above, and .. well, OK. But whether artist or whomever, basic living in hard times should be there for you.

mjanx123 9mo ago
Whip them to the hamster wheel...
komali2 9mo ago
> All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable. Why? We are well beyond the scarcity that would require this.
- b112 9mo ago
  What on earth are you even talking about? The person in my description would be housed, fed, safe. To this you say, we're well beyond the scarcity that would require this. Believe it or not, people still work to produce almost everything. While aided with machinery, farmers are human beings and work. People actually physically build houses. Everything that you own, is assembled or manufactured from components and parts that come from human labour. If someone is going to live off the backs of the work, and effort of other human beings, then certainly they should not live in luxury. They should, in fact, feel as if they are putting other people out, which in fact they are. I've already expressed a situation where I want nobody to starve. Where I want nobody to not have a roof over their head, if they're having a difficult time, where I want them to be safe. This is an extremely generous, extremely kind, extremely compassionate thing for me, or anyone else to do. To give some of my daily effort to help others, is laudable. To this you say, why don't you give more? To this you say, it's not enough to be housed, but why doesn't somebody get a free large screen TV too? To this you say, why doesn't somebody get more than just the basic necessities? Can't they have steak, a large home, all, provided by the efforts of others? Do you not realize how completely selfish that is? It's completely out of touch with the whole dynamic of people working to produce goods, and other people just getting those goods without effort.

Xunjin 9mo ago

> There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value. To be fair, the majority has been conditioned in thinking that only money should be your purpose, that's literally how capitalism works, even arts now is a product that need to be sold to the highest bidder, or manufactured in the millions to be sold.

badgersnake 9mo ago

What did you expect from a forum for VC fanboys?

qualitylearing 9mo ago

[flagged]

lbreakjai 9mo ago

The problem is, how do you define "art"? How do you define which art is worth subsidizing? Am I eligible if I doodle on a piece of paper once in a while? What about if I decided to expose a urinal? Or paint a can of soup?

stemlord 9mo ago
you can't really fake the labor that goes into mastering a craft any more significantly than one can fake labor at a white collar job, let alone some level of institutional involvement that any professional pursuit would end up with (i.e., showing a work at the gallery on main st or giving workshops at the community center), so this isn't actually that challenging of a question in practice. even with highly conceptual work there's still an involved studio/research practice to audit if your artistic practice is truly so abstract that you can't prove labor by any material means then you probably just won't get subsidized for it.

misja111 9mo ago

> People seem to think only money has value. Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here. Of course nobody thinks that only money has value. If only money had value, why would anybody exchange money for, say, a bread? What many people are wondering about, is whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. Because if it would be equal, then one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

picture 9mo ago
There are many things that are valuable to people, but which they would rather not pay for. They include public goods and externalities, like infrastructure and education and a reasonable amount of military. It makes a lot of sense that people would rather enjoy art for free if they had the option, and since the majority of art experience can be easily duplicated and transmitted, why pay for it yourself? There is also another benefit of art stimulating further intellectual and creative development of a society, perhaps yielding second order benefits that are hard to quantify. Thus overall, it can make a lot of sense for government to pay for art as a society.
ryanjshaw 9mo ago
I also wonder why the tax payers who care can’t contribute directly to a fund, and keep government out of entirely.
- komali2 9mo ago
  Then it would be a popularity contest and depend on the artists' ability to market themselves in a capitalist space. The one with the best TikTok channel would get the money. That doesn't lead to having diverse, interesting, and challenging art.
  - ryanjshaw 9mo ago
    How does the government solve this problem? Why can’t a private organization replicate that? How was art produced previously without the existence of these programs?

GorbachevyChase 9mo ago

There really is not an objective criteria to find who is and it’s not an artist. The proposed system makes a purely political decision out of who sits at a desk doing unsatisfying but necessary tasks, and who gets to sit at home and smoke dope all day and put out a painting or a song twice a year. Not very fair to the tax donkey fixing the plumbing.

kiba 9mo ago
Don't tax labor, or capital which helps assist labor with performing economic activity ,or at least tax as little as possible. Instead, focus on taxing scarce resources, especially since we cannot make more of it. If it's natural resources coming out of the grounds such as minerals and oil, it becomes a severance tax. If we're talking about occupying land, then it's a Land Value Tax. You could also tax negative externalities like pollution or traffic congestion.This is known as a Piguovian tax.

JKCalhoun 9mo ago

Plenty of people get upset if they think there is someone, somewhere getting a "handout". It's easy to channel indignation toward those people and not, say, their corporate masters that seem to hold everyone's strings.

whywhywhywhy 9mo ago
What’s “corporate masters” got to do with a transaction from taxes and inflation (stolen value on your savings and spending power) to a handout?
- komali2 9mo ago
  If you think taxation is theft, wait till I show you some fat margins on labor value.
  - tt24 9mo ago
    Large margins are not what define theft believe it or not
    - komali2 9mo ago
      I'm not sure why taking away money you could spend on goods or put into savings is ok when your boss does it, but not ok when the government does it. At least the government builds you a road in return.
      - tt24 9mo ago
        Because one is consensual and the other isn’t.
        komali2 9mo ago
        Right, that's my point, unless you can work at a co-op, you have no say in how much value from your labor is extracted and given to someone else, and given the way society is designed, it's basically impossible to live without nonconsensually giving up the majority of your labor's value to someone else. Whereas with taxes, if you don't like them, you can elect a different politician. Look at the Americans, they do it all the time, their tax rates go all over the place. I want roads, libraries, firetrucks, and for my poop to vanish into oblivion when I pull the toilet handle. I don't really want my money to buy my boss a new car.

whywhywhywhy 9mo ago

Why would I ever do work if I can just do art? I mean I have worked in the creative industries so I have successfully done art for others but why would I do art to serve others if I can just do what I want and live comfortably. Or is it more of have to apply to be subsidized and the government chooses what art is worth subsidizing, which won’t result in good art, more just government building lobby bad art.

dev_l1x_be 9mo ago

> Daniel James spent his life slaving away in an ironworks, making crucible steel. John Hughes, who wrote the tune worked in an office there. Part of being an artist (at least it used to be) is struggle.

afavour 9mo ago
I’d say that’s correlation, not causation. Just because past artists have struggled to make ends meet doesn’t mean it’s a requirement to make art.

akudha 9mo ago

People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later I wonder how far are we from a song that is entirely generated by AI and becomes as loved as a song created by a human, and is still sung/played by people decades later? It feels weird to even think about it. If AI does get as good as humans at creating art (I think it might), what happens then? Will human generated art be still as respected/valuable? Will humans even bother creating art at that stage? On the topic of basic income - people seem to have strong opinions on both sides. I guess time will tell, but there isn't anything wrong in experimenting, at minimum. To those who strongly oppose UBI - don't we already give bailouts, huge tax breaks, subsidies to entire industries etc, to the extent of rewarding bad behavior (criminal behavior even) - like the one that caused 2008 crash? Why is corporate handouts okay but not UBI?

matthewkayin 9mo ago
> Will human generated art still be as respected/valuable? I would hope that humans would always value human generated art, but these days it seems that many businessmen and AI bros do not. Perhaps they are not human.
amichal 9mo ago
I wonder, can we not turn all threads into a "when will AI do this creative thing better than humans". Humans need basic income (or at least resources) and to have culturally valuable work to do. Art and craft esp as a form of human expression seems like we should ASSUME that humans want to do this, that we as a society value the human energy that goes into it.
- akudha 9mo ago
  Yes, humans want to make art. But most humans would also want their art to be seen, appreciated at minimum. Would be nice if they can make a living out of it. I am not trying to turn all threads into AI debate, but AI threat to art is a legit concern. If AI mass produces art at comparable quality level to humans, it would be near impossible for humans to compete for other humans' attention. If nobody sees my art, would I still make art? Maybe some humans will, because creating art makes them happy and they don't care if anyone sees their art or not. But many humans will give up

ecshafer 9mo ago

Who gets to be an artist? I want to be an artist now. Is it people who go to certain universities with art degrees? Can any working class guy decide he wants to pursue art and get the basic income? Another question is would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks? In the 1800s most of the great literature was written by normal guys writing on the side, they need that experience to make great art. Heart of Darkness is never going to be written by an academic. Hemmingway doesn't write anything without his experiences in Italy, Spain and France in WWI, Civil War and WWII, if he was just a beat reporter forever, all of his great inspirations don't amount to much. Tolstoy and Doestoyevsky are notable exceptions.

boston_clone 9mo ago
Heck yeah, go be an artist! If you want to be one and aren't, what's stopping you? Perhaps the lack of financial security? ;) Here's a non-exhaustive list of eligible types: https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-and-sport/publications/basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-scheme-your-questions-answered/ https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...
maleno 9mo ago
Just to answer the question in this specific case: yes, a working class guy can decide he wants to pursue art (in quite a broad range of forms), and he can apply for the basic income once he can show that he is working as an artist. The artists who ultimately receive the payment will be chosen randomly once they meet the criteria to apply in the first place (which, again, is simply that you are working as an artist—exhibiting, publishing, performing, whatever "work" might mean in your case). There is a fixed number of people who can receive it in each round (I think it's 2500 people, cycling every three years), and those people are picked by lottery; if you receive it in one round, you cannot apply for the next. This, and in fact no arts funding in Ireland, has anything to do with certain universities or art degrees. This scheme is far from perfect, but these vaguely leading questions (so common to all commentary on public funding for the arts) are clearly irrelevant. As for the second question ("would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks"), well, life and art really are too varied to draw the kind of conclusions the following comment implies.

MisterTea 9mo ago

> Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It can be, but it doesn't need to be. They don't care about the art, only the clout it brings them in terms of hoarding a limited thing people value. Art is a medium that is used to convey and stir emotion in the viewer. It's not currency to anyone but shallow fools.