6 ms·

Art and cultural heritage may have worth outside that represented by short-term supply and demand?

arcticbull 5y ago
Indeed, which is why, in my opinion, it is a reasonable thing for the government to fund. The government funding things which are of value but would not make economic sense in a free market economy is a good use of resources.
lelanthran 5y ago
> Art and cultural heritage may have worth outside that represented by short-term supply and demand? Or it may not. We can't tell objectively, because there is no metric to measure. I suppose my point is, if you cannot tell that there is a benefit at all, why leap to the assumption that it's a large enough benefit to pay 25m euros for.
- toyg 5y ago
  Because not of bread alone you shalt live. You can't get to the moon without moonshots. There is a queue of people willing to fund for-profit moonshots, but when it comes to art and other non-monetizable human endeavours, in practice there is only the State.
  - telxosser 5y ago
    What great works of art have ever come from the State? If anything, we need the ultra rich to fund this kind of thing based on their taste. That worked well in the past with the court musician/composer and patronage. There are so many problems with this UBI idea. The medium is one that comes to mind. We have largely moved on from paint on canvas to video the way we moved on from sculpture in stone to paint on canvas. Does the artist have the artistic freedom to start a youtube channel with the money? I would suspect not. Most likely this goes to propping up outdated mediums of expression and will lack the complete freedom needed for a true artist to really express themselves. Then of course you have to contend with those gaming the system to free roll by collecting old toilets from the trash to work on their homage to Duchamp masterpiece. I suspect there is reason for the starving artist archetype.
  - danivaz 5y ago
    art is monetizable
    - neoromantique 5y ago
      Hardly. In its current form art market is looking more like tax break/deductibles market.
headmelted 5y ago
I mean, OK, but one could also argue that the reason a given artist is struggling is because their work is not highly valued in the first place. Maybe the artist is making under-appreciated contributions, or maybe their work is just not good. It's subjective, which means criticism is subjective too, but it seems a poor place to start with any UBI scheme executed in good faith. I would think it would have more value as an experiment to start with some of the poorest people in a society and then measure their quality of life and economic contribution throughout and after the programme. If you could show a net-positive economic contribution during the programme, and a net-negative contribution before and after (as unlikely as I suspect that is to achieve) it would make it substantially easier to get popular support for UBI.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > I mean, OK, but one could also argue that the reason a given artist is struggling is because their work is not highly valued in the first place. Many artists that are highly valued today weren't in their times, with many dying destitute or never selling anything of note. Current valuation isn't a predictor on later appreciation.
- toyg 5y ago
  > It's subjective, which means criticism is subjective too But that's precisely the point of the subsidy. Society as a whole already expresses value judgements, every day, through money. If an artist is valued, he is successful and accumulates money, so he doesn't need subsidies; but the fact that an artist is valued or not-valued today, we know, is a poor indication of their overall value in the long run. Maybe their art will explode in value after death, maybe he will start a movement that will generate better artists and designers... The point of universal income, surely, is exactly to remove the immediate value judgement from the equation. UBI is supposed to pay everyone, regardless of what they choose to do (except for raping and murdering, I guess; but ironically, convicts are among the first to actually "enjoy" an UBI of sorts already, although to the price of their liberty). In this sense, starting from art actually makes the most sense. > it would have more value as an experiment to start with some of the poorest people in a society and then measure their quality of life and economic contribution The minute you start measuring economic contribution, you are not really in UBI territory anymore - you are just subsidising the market at its fringes. That's already done in social democracies, in practice, through various means.

Indeed, which is why, in my opinion, it is a reasonable thing for the government to fund. The government funding things which are of value but would not make economic sense in a free market economy is a good use of resources.

lelanthran 5y ago

> Art and cultural heritage may have worth outside that represented by short-term supply and demand? Or it may not. We can't tell objectively, because there is no metric to measure. I suppose my point is, if you cannot tell that there is a benefit at all, why leap to the assumption that it's a large enough benefit to pay 25m euros for.

toyg 5y ago
Because not of bread alone you shalt live. You can't get to the moon without moonshots. There is a queue of people willing to fund for-profit moonshots, but when it comes to art and other non-monetizable human endeavours, in practice there is only the State.
- telxosser 5y ago
  What great works of art have ever come from the State? If anything, we need the ultra rich to fund this kind of thing based on their taste. That worked well in the past with the court musician/composer and patronage. There are so many problems with this UBI idea. The medium is one that comes to mind. We have largely moved on from paint on canvas to video the way we moved on from sculpture in stone to paint on canvas. Does the artist have the artistic freedom to start a youtube channel with the money? I would suspect not. Most likely this goes to propping up outdated mediums of expression and will lack the complete freedom needed for a true artist to really express themselves. Then of course you have to contend with those gaming the system to free roll by collecting old toilets from the trash to work on their homage to Duchamp masterpiece. I suspect there is reason for the starving artist archetype.
- danivaz 5y ago
  art is monetizable
  - neoromantique 5y ago
    Hardly. In its current form art market is looking more like tax break/deductibles market.

headmelted 5y ago

I mean, OK, but one could also argue that the reason a given artist is struggling is because their work is not highly valued in the first place. Maybe the artist is making under-appreciated contributions, or maybe their work is just not good. It's subjective, which means criticism is subjective too, but it seems a poor place to start with any UBI scheme executed in good faith. I would think it would have more value as an experiment to start with some of the poorest people in a society and then measure their quality of life and economic contribution throughout and after the programme. If you could show a net-positive economic contribution during the programme, and a net-negative contribution before and after (as unlikely as I suspect that is to achieve) it would make it substantially easier to get popular support for UBI.

sofixa 5y ago
> I mean, OK, but one could also argue that the reason a given artist is struggling is because their work is not highly valued in the first place. Many artists that are highly valued today weren't in their times, with many dying destitute or never selling anything of note. Current valuation isn't a predictor on later appreciation.
toyg 5y ago
> It's subjective, which means criticism is subjective too But that's precisely the point of the subsidy. Society as a whole already expresses value judgements, every day, through money. If an artist is valued, he is successful and accumulates money, so he doesn't need subsidies; but the fact that an artist is valued or not-valued today, we know, is a poor indication of their overall value in the long run. Maybe their art will explode in value after death, maybe he will start a movement that will generate better artists and designers... The point of universal income, surely, is exactly to remove the immediate value judgement from the equation. UBI is supposed to pay everyone, regardless of what they choose to do (except for raping and murdering, I guess; but ironically, convicts are among the first to actually "enjoy" an UBI of sorts already, although to the price of their liberty). In this sense, starting from art actually makes the most sense. > it would have more value as an experiment to start with some of the poorest people in a society and then measure their quality of life and economic contribution The minute you start measuring economic contribution, you are not really in UBI territory anymore - you are just subsidising the market at its fringes. That's already done in social democracies, in practice, through various means.