I'm an artist therefore I am automatically entitled to money

[Goldentony]

someone was telling me the other day their mates law firm pays a full living wage to someone calling themselves an entrepreneur in residence and is there to think of exciting ways to market the business to people, the business being a law firm you need when you're in the shite. The man sits in his own office all day trying to get people to not notice that the entire time he's been there he's had one idea that wasn't used. I feel like if I want to draw cocks all day and smoke pot and listen to MC5 and learn how to make GRATIN I should and if you've got an issue with it i'm going to fucking beat the fuck out of you.

[popcorn]

If you post in HS Art you are actually entitled to money though, IMO.

[Goldentony]

ala the Amazon Mechanical Turk you get 0.01c for each Versus entry

[FeederFan500]

We aren't all suddenly going to sit around demanding to be paid for paintings of our own shit if we can draw the dole for as long as we want or if Universal Basic Income is introduced.

Well no, because you get a sufficient income without even needing to produce art. At least with UBI in a capitalist society you can justify hedonic or self-indulgent creative pursuits on the basis that you don't want to generate a surplus for the undeserving owners of capital, in a truly non-capitalist society a free ride is much harder to justify imo.

[superthunderstingcar]

someone was telling me the other day their mates law firm pays a full living wage to someone calling themselves an entrepreneur in residence and is there to think of exciting ways to market the business to people, the business being a law firm you need when you're in the shite. The man sits in his own office all day trying to get people to not notice that the entire time he's been there he's had one idea that wasn't used. I feel like if I want to draw cocks all day and smoke pot and listen to MC5 and learn how to make GRATIN I should and if you've got an issue with it i'm going to fucking beat the fuck out of you.

Owner's son? Fellow mason? Went to the right school? Old Boy Network?

Since it's a law firm, it could be any of those. Probably not just somebody who did well at the interview.

[TrenterPercenter]

I do kind of agree with TrenterPercenter in that in a non-capitalist society an "artist" still has to justify their existence on some level.

In a non-capitalist society who does art belong to?

In a feudal society art belongs to the rich
In a communist society art belongs to the state
In a socialist society art belongs to the people
In a capitalist society art belongs to the individual but can be sold to the rich, state or the people (masses).

Most artists I've met are firmly in the "capitalism please" bracket when these options are laid out, a belief that seems to increases with their capital (i.e. the value of their art).

Like you can't just have everyone doing their own thing claiming they are misunderstood and expect to be supported by the rest of society.

It is the difficult question that needs answering but people don't because it instantly causes problems (this is actually a much wider problems than the arts but arts are very demonstrative example of the problem). The answer is usually well everyone gets the "opportunity" (Aka Lib Dem equal opps not rights), but what is opportunity, the opportunity to make it in the arts? - sounds like we are back to markets to me (markets are not bad imo and it is a common misunderstanding of that wmarkets are incompatible with socialism).  Then you could have UBI as PGC points out but this is nothing to do with art per se, just that UBI might allow artists to not work so they can focus on their arts - this is no different for anyone else using UBI for any other reason.  If want to monetise that art or seek rewards for it then you are back to markets and capitalism again I'm afraid.

PGC also hits on something important i.e. the need to incentivise jobs with important social values, exactly my type of socialism, currently your average NHS worker works 11 unpaid hours a week.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

you can abolish private property without abolishing personal property. personal property existed for millenia before it was morphed into private property by legal sophistry. specifically in legal positing that private property is foundational and more natural than personal property. many nonwestern people still have personal property without private property

the idea that abolishing private things entails seizing personal things has been the biggest weapon in the anti-communist arsenal for over a century. oh no don't vote to nationalise water services, otherwise Lenin is coming around to take your megadrive. its the one reactionary, US demagogue point that has successfully made its way into the brains and opinions of virtually everyone across the entire political spectrum. not even a false equivalence: its an emotive analogy that falls if you think about it for longer than three seconds. but it is just so emotionally and ideologically entwined (consumerism: i want the things i worked to get) that shifting it is next to impossible once and individual has cultivated a genuine fear that their Mondeo and Iphone are hanging in the balance should Centralisation get out of hand. 

its perfectly easy to imagine how the creative and cultural spheres could be all be various forms of non-private, public or collective or communal or state-owned or nonprofit, while individual materials and works remain subject to personal 'authorship' and 'ownership' - other stuff that makes much more sense in terms of an individual's relationship to a thing they that they made or use to make something, that it does for the relationship between a multinational corporation or entrepeneur and a collective formerly public spaces and means of participation.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i think classical liberalism failures are best evidenced by the fact that they were so sure that establishing principles of private property would ensure personal property

yet in reality we see how the private sphere has a near total disregard to for the personal and the ordinary.  private security and transport can grab or inspect your personal belongings, private baliffs can take your sole means of cooking a meal, etc. very little short of the military police and organised religion has as little respect for the personal as the private does.

one of the all time biggest and best IRL instances of TheOneThingWeDidntWantToHappen dot Jpeg

[TrenterPercenter]

I'm not sure what you are talking about as personal property can still exist in all of these examples, but perhaps you can elucidate a bit more clearly what you are on about.  Using collectivist necessities reliant on mass cooperation for their production is not like for like so I wouldn't be using this as an example here.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i'm talking about the idea that private and personal property mean the same thing, and the deliberate conflation of the two for ideological purposes. not sure how much more there is to elucidate other than the words "personal" and 'private" mean different things and are used differently

[madhair60]

nice going Mollusk, now look

[Vodkafone]

nice going Mollusk, now look

Hahaha. I'm loathe to encourage, but the distinction that @Video Game Fan 2000 has referenced interests me. Where can I read more about this?

[PlanktonSideburns]

Hahaha. I'm loathe to encourage, but the distinction that @Video Game Fan 2000 has referenced interests me. Where can I read more about this?

Probably the next ten posts

[The F Bomb]

Probably the next ten PAGES 😂😂😂

[chip]

Yes the OP is absolutely correct. I would find it obscene to ever expect to receive money just in exchange for someone to merely experience my art.

Maybe my art is shit, too - and going purely by 'conventional, popular tastes', it probably is - but I don't care. I fucking love it and that's all that matters. Just an excellent post all round.

[Pink Gregory]

Hahaha. I'm loathe to encourage, but the distinction that @Video Game Fan 2000 has referenced interests me. Where can I read more about this?

it feels odd to me that more people don't make the distinction between 'personal' and 'private'.  It's like saying your ownership of the place that you live, and a private business owning a building, is the same relation.

[TrenterPercenter]

i'm talking about the idea that private and personal property mean the same thing, and the deliberate conflation of the two for ideological purposes. not sure how much more there is to elucidate other than the words "personal" and 'private" mean different things and are used differently

Yes but the socialist understanding of personal property is one that is moveable and that can obtain no private value from it itself (because its private value belongs to the state or the people), that is why I said when you put these things together most artists plump for capitalism because they can choose to obtain private value from their art, not that personal property in the form of art cannot exist it can but there is a strong incentive there for it to not to be.  Get it?

[TrenterPercenter]

Hahaha. I'm loathe to encourage, but the distinction that Video Game Fan 2000 has referenced interests me. Where can I read more about this?

Conquest of Bread - Peter Kropotkin (yes that one)

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Yes but the socialist understanding of personal property is one that is moveable and that can obtain no private value from it itself

this isnt the socialist understanding, its the common law understanding the one most shared by countries or cultures that have modern legal systems

so the distinction isn't between unnatural collectives and state-of-nature individuals, reflected in a market - but between post-industrial and post-colonial capital and everything outside and before it. the whole thing is premised on a false equivalence thats as unrespecting to the intents and innovations of liberalism as it is fearmongering about socialism and communism

most artists plump for capitalism because they can choose to obtain private value from their art,

really

Conquest of Bread - Peter Kropotkin (yes that one)

jesus read Locke first and this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature) wikipedia page before you get to the memes

[Video Game Fan 2000]

nice going Mollusk, now look

oh no people are talking on topic rather than being glib

[TrenterPercenter]

really

Yes really.

oh no people are talking on topic rather than being glib

You are right here though.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I mean, in a capitalist society where we all Must Work, I understand why artists want their labour to be compensated the same as non-artistic labour is compensated. The band you hired to play at your wedding is entitled to payment. The artist you commissioned to paint your dog's portrait is entitled to payment.

Of course, if you're creating something nobody wants to buy, under capitalism you're out of luck. You've got to find or build an audience, which usually means working for an established company, or giving your work away for free. And it's work, especially if you're trying to fit it around a day job. So yes, bring on UBI so more people can at least try to make a career of their passion.

With regard to society falling apart if everyone does their own thing, aren't we falling for the conservative trick of "If you just give people money, they'll become lazy and idle"? I have a mortgage. I have to work for at least another 20 years. UBI would have to be very, very generous for me to quit my job. I also like my job. The work is interesting and I get six weeks' holidays to take whenever I want. But someone who hates their job and has always wanted to make a go of it as a musician might quit and give it a try, if their bills were covered.

[Pink Gregory]

I mean, in a capitalist society where we all Must Work, I understand why artists want their labour to be compensated the same as non-artistic labour is compensated. The band you hired to play at your wedding is entitled to payment. The artist you commissioned to paint your dog's portrait is entitled to payment.

Those two examples are distinct in the same way.  They both engage in a transaction between someone who wants, for lack of a better term, a specific, somewhat personalised cultural product, and someone who has entered the marketplace with a cultural product to sell.  In a way it recreates patronage, which, pre-20th century and excepting folk art, was the primary facilitator of high art.

Art, again for lack of a better term, for more passive (?) public consumption is more like your second example, but at the same time freeing art from the grip of the patronage of the wealthy is a desirable outcome, and is pretty much the model for platforms like Patreon (which only really pretends towards a democratised 'patronage' relationship because it is a profit making enterprise that extracts rents, more or less).

I think we also, perhaps mistakenly, lionise the 'artist' in a way that reduces it to an item in the marketplace.

[TrenterPercenter]

I mean, in a capitalist society where we all Must Work, I understand why artists want their labour to be compensated the same as non-artistic labour is compensated.

It is though? If I create a presentation for my employer but they didn't ask me to do it and has no value to them I'm not paid for that work, I'm compensated for the labour I am contracted to do.  Lots of employed artists work under this envelope also.  This is what I mean why is uncompensated non-art work that could be just for me and my pleasure seen differently from uncompensated work that is art?

With regard to society falling apart if everyone does their own thing, aren't we falling for the conservative trick of "If you just give people money, they'll become lazy and idle"? I have a mortgage. I have to work for at least another 20 years. UBI would have to be very, very generous for me to quit my job.

I think the field experiment on UBI found that people remained in work but stayed in college longer and took longer maternity leave (these are good things imo).  I don't think it is about become lazy and idle (well yes that is the Tories trick) it is about people gravitating towards easier more personally enjoyable work - you've already cited the solution here incentives for jobs with high social value - but these jobs do not currently have high social value, we in fact, value artists higher than we do care workers.  Arts, media and entertainment are literally the most aspirational work (I don't know maybe astronaut) out there and as a culture we are obsessed with the industry to an unhealthy degree.

PS - I have a mortgage - if UBI was circa 19k pa I could easily pay it and not work.  This isn't a reason for not doing it and the opposite of enforced work to maintain a roof over one's head isn't a good solution either.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I don't think it is about become lazy and idle (well yes that is the Tories trick) it is about people gravitating towards easier more personally enjoyable work - you've already cited the solution here incentives for jobs with high social value - but these jobs do not currently have high social value, we in fact, value artists higher than we do care workers.  Arts, media and entertainment are literally the most aspirational work (I don't know maybe astronaut) out there and as a culture we are obsessed with the industry to an unhealthy degree.

True. Until we get robots sorted out, we still need people to flip burgers and clean toilets too. Not alone do we need to properly compensate all workers (a living minimum wage, to be adjusted in line with the cost of living regularly, would be a start), but as a culture we need to eliminate the "shamefulness" of flipping burgers and cleaning toilets for a living.

PS - I have a mortgage - if UBI was circa 19k pa I could easily pay it and not work. This isn't a reason for not doing it and the opposite of enforced work to maintain a roof over one's head isn't a good solution either.

I'm not quite sure what you mean there, but in my ideal world there would be free housing for all.

[TrenterPercenter]

but as a culture we need to eliminate the "shamefulness" of flipping burgers and cleaning toilets for a living.

100% agree.  I'm just pointing out that artistry is no different here.  Also I think all work being respected equally is problematic for art which has a long historical past with elitism and hierarchies of value.  Not saying all art or artists think this way but that is the history of that the area belongs to and one it needs to deal with.

I'm not quite sure what you mean there, but in my ideal world there would be free housing for all.

Probably moving away from the OP now but I mean UBI would effectively make my housing free (and anyone with a mortgage up to £1600 pcm), this would of course be highly advantageous to anyone already with capital and would like inflate house prices.  You could remedy this with saying all housing is free but how would this actually work in practice? I'm not against it per say but I've not really seen anyone working through the actual practical aspects of this that would come into play (note I'm talking about free housing for all here, which is different from a kind of means tested free housing for those that need it approach that we currently provide very badly).

[PlanktonSideburns]

oh no people are talking on topic rather than being glib

To be fair, he has us bang to rights here mads

[The Mollusk]

Tbh much like anything else I ever express an interest in I had mentally checked out of this discussion about 5 mins after starting it so youse can do whatever the hell you want in here

[Goldentony]

In my honestly seriousj non glib way, here's how free housing should go -

hello, im the house nonce, free house here john,keys, on you go

I want to do drugs and smear shit up the walls in this house and spend my UBI on kebabs

well it doesnt affect anything whatsoever now there's free housing and UBI other than it'll smell of shit but enjoy yourself yeah

but what about

listen fuck off and do drugs OK

[TrenterPercenter]

What if the tenants are the cheeky girls tho?