> I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.
Maybe it shouldn't be possible. Society is telling your friend that her work is not particularly valuable and that she should probably consider doing something else.
Indeed! e:g - looking after elderly and/or disabled people, to give their family carers respite. Which is a minimum wage job seen by many as "drain on the taxpayer", ignoring that apart from being worth providing for its own sake, it can enable the family carers to be also economic contributors and pay tax themselves.
I think we as a society strive to make gp correct that money is representative of value, and rightfully so.
Anyone partaking in any activity that has value to others should be given money. That is literally what this basic income/tax break for artists is for. Someone thought producing art had value and pure capitalism wasn't correctly matching that value with monetary rewards.
There are lots of rich churches and church leaders out there. That's because they serve a human need, and those humans are willing to direct some of their finite resources towards that provider. (I'm talking about the collections plate if you didn't catch that.)
Now obviously money on its own is not value. It should represent value that you delivered to someone else in the past, and is helpful for getting whatever value your life needs. You mentioned philosophy --- that yoga retreat in the Andes isn't free, is it?
Now sometimes we muddy the waters, for example we permit lotteries where the winner takes home a good deal of money without providing any value to anyone. That debases money, and I think it has no part in society, but I'm unfortunately swimming against the tide on that one.
Of course they do. I'm not saying it's the only way to measure value as individuals. But as a society, lots of things do boil down to money, as that's the medium of exchange. Society was the context of this thread, not individual.
Not quite. Money is how we describe instrumental value, and occasionally allocation priority. Personal attachment and moral worth are also terms often used interchangeably with "value," though in my opinion that should stop and we should all simply never use the word "value" again because so many meanings have collapsed into it.
What I would suggest you do is, find a loving partner to start a family with, then do everything you can for 20 years to focus primarily on earning, or otherwise acquiring, money.
Then get divorced and discover your children don’t know who you are, and neither do you. And your wife took the dog too.
It’s an almost guaranteed way to eradicate this wildly stupid idea you have.
A lot of those relevant writings became relevant because of the horrible experiences the author went through forged them into an interesting writer. If we're assuming that we only know retrospectively whether the writing is important then the best course of action would be for people to write as a hobby and make choices that are likely (rather than unlikely) to lead to a comfortable life. Particularly in this current era where we might suspect that writing and publishing a book is getting much easier thanks to technology.
Are you arguing that most good writers from history were poor? This is after all the only "horrible experience" a subsidy would alleviate. I don't think that's actually supported by evidence, most great writers I can think of were relatively extremely sheltered (although they often were sensitive to the horrible experiences of others)
I think the argument is a) most writers have to do a lot of writing to achieve writing consumable/appreciated but sufficient to be considered successful, b) most great writers had to go through some shit in life to incorporate that in their writing to make it interesting in order to be successful.
> A lot of those relevant writings became relevant because of the horrible experiences the author went through forged them into an interesting writer.
Sometimes artists suffer, but it's mostly a legend at this point. Plenty of great artists have perfectly fine lives. Look at like, any modern fantasy or sci fi author.
You’re missing, somewhat gleefully, most of the history of western art, which you could imagine as split between patronage-based art (have you heard of the Sistine Chapel, for instance?) and vernacular art - where things like genre storytelling and family portraits come from.
Broadly speaking, vernacular artists work for a fucking living; it’s rare there (like in most pursuits) to get super rich. We can’t all be David Baldacci or Danielle Steele.
NB: Thanks to Neal Stephenson for the best essay on this. He calls genre artists “Beowulf” artists.
Am noob. The phrase "folk art" never satisfied me. Is it really all that different? But I didn't have the gumption to learn more. Happily, the critics and philosophers did:
I don't think that being able to support a family of three in Ireland is particularly a sign that society doesn't value your work. If she had to pay income tax, perhaps she'd only be able to support herself -- but if you think everyone in Ireland who only makes enough money to support themselves is doing not particularly valuable work, I think it's worth considering the implications of that.
I have thoughts on how we're defining value as well, but others have covered those.
Maybe it shouldn't be possible. Society is telling your friend that her work is not particularly valuable and that she should probably consider doing something else.