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by danaris
877 days ago
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We place a great cultural value on art. Bear in mind that "art" is not just "paintings and poems". Novels are art. Movies and television shows are art. Music (of all types) is art. Games, indeed, are art. Basically anything that you might turn to for entertainment and aesthetic pleasure is art, and as humans we need it in our lives—both consuming and, in a great many cases, creating. But many forms of art have always been commercially non-viable. Many if not most of the best-known painters and sculptors from times past fell into one of two categories: those who had wealthy patrons, and those who died destitute. Why should we say that only those artists whose work meets some arbitrary standard of commercial success are allowed to create art without spending most of their waking hours doing something else, or else having to constantly worry whether they'll be able to live to see another year? |
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If we want to optimize for enrichment of people's lives through art, "how many people are willing to pay for it" seems like the best proxy we have. Not to mention that people with some financial success will be less costly to subsidize.
Like, if I had to choose between subsidizing two musicians projected to make half of living wage and a single musician earning nothing, to me that's a pretty obvious choice. The musician earning nothing might be a true visionary who will be recognized in the future, but the odds are far more likely that the music they produce just doesn't hold much appeal.
Now, commercial success is of course not a perfect measure for "enrichment", but, again, what's the alternative? Currently it's some government body deciding, though this holds the quite elitist assumption that the taste of the art establishment is better.