[misja111]

> People seem to think only money has value.

Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here. Of course nobody thinks that only money has value. If only money had value, why would anybody exchange money for, say, a bread?

What many people are wondering about, is whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. Because if it would be equal, then one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

[AdamConwayIE]

You don't have to wonder whether or not it returns value to the tax payer. The Irish government already monitored the pilot program for two years, publishing all of the details and findings. [1]

"The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"

This came about as a mixture of greater economic activity from participants, cultural impacts that saw public-facing artist activities increase, and improvements to wellbeing of participants that reduced their requirement for psychological interventions by the state. The state also predicts that the further roll-out of this program will benefit consumers with lower prices for artistic works, as there will be more supply overall.

The scheme has been quite popular here in Ireland. Given the history of Ireland when it comes to art (both in the sense of spoken and written word, and in other mediums), it makes sense to introduce a scheme like this to safeguard and uplift those who produce art.

[1] https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...

[closewith]

Thanks for linking the CBA. I hadn't seen that before

> "The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"

Okay, so if you read the CBA, the net fiscal cost of the pilot was:

* Gross pilot cost (2021–2025): ~€114 MM

* Tax revenue: ~€36 MM

* Social protection savings: ~€6.5 MM

* Net fiscal cost: ~€72 MM

So for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received 37¢ in fiscal return. So it's an unambiguous fiscal cost, a net loss.

Of the "Total monetised benefits", €80 MM of the benefit was in "wellbeing gains", as measured by the WELLBY test, which is calculated based on a single survey question:

> “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?

The €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", which is the sole decided of whether this pilot was a net positive or a net negative to society, is because on average, the 2,000 pilot scheme participants had a very approximate 0.7–1.1 increase in score when asked the above question during the pilot as compared to before the pilot. Each 1 point is deemed to be worth €15,340.

That's it. There's no economic return - it's a proven economic cost. There's no proven social benefit. No demonstrated effect on art prices or availability.

The pilot was successful - if you consider it to have been - solely because the artists who received payments as part of the pilot had an improvement in Wellby satisfaction score when they were asked via survey. If you remove this factor, the pilot was an abject failure.

[lucideer]

> Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here.

From reading your comment I think this observation applies to your own understanding, not the gp's.

> whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. [...] one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

You might not see it but this is effectively equivalent to thinking only money has value, because you're describing a system whereby value is defined by money. Your dichotomy assumes anything that cannot be sold has no value, & anything that is sold is only as valuable as its price. The emergent conclusion from that formula is that only money has value.

It's worth noting that it also follows from this that value is defined by people with purchasing power. If for example the only cohort who value any given piece of art cannot afford to financially support the artist creating said art, not only is the art & the artist's work without value, but by extension so too are the perspectives, autonomy & - ultimately - the lives of that cohort without value.

[EQmWgw87pw]

You’re making a logical leap, how can you say only money has value when things are worth money? That item has value equivalent to the money given for it, therefore that item has value. It’s likely you’d be able to find people who are willing to trade some electronic device you have for another equivalent one (some iPhone for some Android) without exchanging any money. Money is just the measure of value, it’s like saying something cannot be 5ft tall without the existence of a measuring tape. Societies have existed before money they were just inefficient.

[ryanjshaw]

I also wonder why the tax payers who care can’t contribute directly to a fund, and keep government out of entirely.

[jmye]

Because we use taxes as a process to crowdsource funding more effectively. That's literally the entire basis for it. Might as well ask why "only the taxpayers who care about a new highway can raise funds to buy it" and then we're back in some weird, system of no central government because someone can always claim "why not just like, let people donate money" because it's a simplistic cliche that appeals deeply to people who aren't quite clever enough to work out just how much they've benefitted from the system as it's been constructed.

[komali2]

Then it would be a popularity contest and depend on the artists' ability to market themselves in a capitalist space. The one with the best TikTok channel would get the money. That doesn't lead to having diverse, interesting, and challenging art.

[TomasBM]

> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

Because the skills and effort needed to market and sell your art to an audience are not equal to the skills and effort needed to produce good art [1].

I agree that there could be other complementary or better solutions compared to this scheme. But as long as the above premise is true, not every good artist will want or be able to sell well.

[1] However you define this. Supposedly, Van Gogh was a lousy salesman, but a good artist.

[multiplegeorges]

Art is often only appreciated in retrospect, so it is typically undervalued at the time of its creation.

> equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return

This seems incredibly shortsighted.

[komali2]

Nobody pays to view a mural, but a lot of people view it, and property values go up as a result. It cost the artist time, effort, and money to make it, and if you hire an artist specifically to make a mural, it's prohibitively expensive for an individual.

Better to amortize the cost across the population and have public works. Like we do for infrastructure. Seems to work just fine.

[philipallstar]

Isn't this arguing indirectly for national taxpayers to prop up the value of certain properties? Why not just have a local collaboration with a local artist and people pay directly?

[picture]

There are many things that are valuable to people, but which they would rather not pay for. They include public goods and externalities, like infrastructure and education and a reasonable amount of military. It makes a lot of sense that people would rather enjoy art for free if they had the option, and since the majority of art experience can be easily duplicated and transmitted, why pay for it yourself? There is also another benefit of art stimulating further intellectual and creative development of a society, perhaps yielding second order benefits that are hard to quantify. Thus overall, it can make a lot of sense for government to pay for art as a society.

[angiolillo]

> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money

"Public goods" like parks, museums, bridges, roadways, transit, nature preserves, community spaces, and public safety services produce both direct value to their immediate users as well as substantial diffuse value to their community. Direct value can be captured by user fees, tolls, subscriptions, etc but capturing diffuse value is challenging. A park raises surrounding property values even for people who do not visit the park. Good transportation infrastructure increases the value of surrounding land and and productivity per capita even for nonusers. Relying solely on user fees may force some of these entities to close or fall into disrepair, thereby reducing overall value by substantially more than it would have cost to maintain them. And in some cases shifting the cost burden to direct users substantially lowers the diffuse value, for example back when fire fighting companies would let houses burn unless their owners paid them, ultimately resulting in more overall community fire damage.

In these cases, subsidizing these public services with taxes (optimally Georgist land-value taxes) is an economically rational decision.

One could plausibly argue that artists similarly produce diffuse value e.g., raising the profile of their nation or culture, making their neighborhood a more desirable place for people with money. Not only do artists typically struggle to collect a share of this diffuse value, as renters the very value they create often ends up pricing out of their community. I could imagine cases where it is a net benefit for a government to subsidize such entities if such subsidy is less than the fraction of the diffuse benefit that ends up being collected by taxes.

I have no insight as to whether this scheme in particular is net positive, please see sibling posts for that. I'm just explaining that such arrangements are both economically rational and extremely common in high-functioning societies.

[EQmWgw87pw]

Your argument makes sense, but a park has a measurable scope. We all want it to be X sqft, with Y trees, and it will cost Z dollars. Are you going to force artists to make the specific art that the community is in need of, or can they just do nothing?

[YesBox]

Unlike baking bread, It can take decades for an artist to become experienced enough to create something of value.

Some art, like classical music composition, is and has been propped up by grants and wealthy donors since forever.

Whether that’s a good allocation of resources is of course entirely subjective :)