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> 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. |