[ryanjshaw]

I didn’t really follow your argument about non-profits.

Clearly the artists somehow managed to convince government to support the scheme, why can’t the same people form a non—profit and convince ordinary members of the public to support the same scheme in a non-profit structure?

That way we have a smaller government, lower taxes, and the people who care can directly spend their money on addressing this problem - rather than have their money going to taxes where it might be spent somewhere they don’t agree with!

Nobody has to argue about money being spent on things they don’t care about. Everybody is happy.

[komali2]

> I didn’t really follow your argument about non-profits.

I assumed that was an angle people were going for: charities and non profits rather than governments.

I'm not convinced the artist fund happened because artists were good lobbyists with transferrable sales skills, just socket in either Big Government, Big Church, or Big Nonprofit and they'll happily churn away art. Seems it's more a government initiative, sourced by the public out of a desire for more art, or to live in a society where artists can focus on making arts.

Personally I thought the whole point of improving automation and increasing productivity was so that we could all just hang out and paint or make music or whatever.

> That way we have a smaller government, lower taxes, and the people who care can directly spend their money on addressing this problem - rather than have their money going to taxes where it might be spent somewhere they don’t agree with!

It doesn't make sense to only privatize art, then, because all things that taxes are spent on are things some people don't care about. What you're arguing for is a total privatization of everything, and functionally the elimination of government (since some people won't want their taxes to go to, for example, the police or military or even the president's burger budget). So, an anarcho-capitalist argument.

Some people would be very happy in that world. Most wouldn't.

If you specifically want to single out art and ok with, idk, roads and fire departments being funded by taxes, then that just means you disagree with your neighbor about the kind of society you want to live in, since the only way to build a society based on your values in a liberal democracy is through government - private markets are concerned only with profitability, which is often negatively correlated with having a fair and comfortable society.