Yeah, two pretty different philosophies, but these questions have been bugging me for a while, and I wasn’t sure about starting two separate threads so close to each other.
SOCIALISM
I’ve seen several times people (with varying degrees of seriousness) suggest that the quality of movies, TV, video games, and such would improve under a socialist system. The implication seems to be that they wouldn’t have to worry about making a huge profit, and could instead concentrate on quality and art and be able to take their time.
Under a socialist society, would this happen and how? I can see socialism improving the lives of those working on entertainment, but I don’t see how exactly it’d affect the quality of the entertainment itself. Is the assumption that everyone would be working for free or really cheap, because their needs are met, which would ease blockbuster budgets? Would there be some kind of subsidies or outright supply of materials and equipment?
LIBERTARIANISM
Every time I see debate about roads in libertarianism, it always seems to be about tolls and upkeep, but it seems to me there’s a LOT more to it than that. One of the major reasons why public roads work is that laws make them predictable. You know who is “supposed” to take the turn first, that you have to get out of the way of emergency vehicles, what signals exactly mean, and so on.
Under a libertarian society, with privately owned roads, how would you know how the other drivers are going to react to you on the road? Who determines such? What if nobody does? Could you be suddenly expected to drive on the left with the speed limit halved at any moment? Will emergency vehicles be expected to have contracts already in place to operate with top speed? For how far out in distance? Already states have different laws about stuff like running yellow lights, but the fundamentals seem to be pretty consistent. What happens when they aren’t, on a scale that doesn’t seem to be at all predictable?
If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, here’s Brandon Tenold’s review.
It’s roughly comparable to a Sid & Marty Krofft show from the previous decade. Better music, worse special effects.
As for the toll roads: If we assume that the owner of the road wants to make a profit, it is in his interest to have rules of the road compatible with those of the neighboring area. If he wants to avoid litigation expenses, it is in his interest to allow emergency vehicles to use it at whatever speed they deem appropriate.
I think these are both easy examples of where that philosophy doesn’t work. We’ve had plenty of debates on why private roads don’t work, although I think the emergency vehicle angle is something I don’t think has been discussed before and is a valid objection. Especially since they’d have to negotiate getting onto the road through all the other privately owned roads leading up to the accident.
Art, on the other hand, is something that works best under a capitalist system. It’s okay if artists are only trying to make a profit. I don’t agree that the monetary success of art is proof that it’s good, but who am I to say that if millions people like something enough to buy it, that it’s not a success overall for the system? And furthermore, art is lower on the hierarchy of needs, so if it is too expensive customers can simply do without, as opposed to food and medicine.
Now, the interference of big media companies into the art process is another story. There should be protections to assure that artists get enough of a slice of their art to make it worthwhile to produce it for those who are trying to make a living off of it. I’m not even talking about the struggling indie artist. Even if you are someone with a few hits under your belt you can still get jerked around by Spotify to the point where you make very little off of it.
And there will still be those auteurs who manage to make grand works of art in a commercial context, as well as those who are mainly driven by a passion for their message, who will still be able to be heard in these Internet days.
The question is, for instance, is state funding via a film commission for artistic, or culturally significant, or other non-Hollywood blockbusters that would otherwise never get produced a good thing? Because that comes down to a few commissars deciding who gets money and who does not. Then again, as long as there is zero actual censorship, it is hard to get that enraged at the existence of, say, the New Zealand Film Commission. At worst, you may safely ignore it.
As for the roads, not sure what you mean. States already have regulations that dictate things like on which side of the road you should drive, and certainly you have to switch when you cross certain international borders. In the novel Snow Crash where everything was private (and privately enforced), you had to abide by local regulations on every enclave’s own turf. The theme was one of dystopia.
Right, I don’t strenuously object to state-supported art as long as it is small-scale and non-exclusive. I just don’t think that it’s worth the money most of the time beyond a few large-scale public works of art. I think government-sponsored museums can be worth the money a lot of the time but they showcase art that has already been proven by more than a bureaucrat’s say-so.
On the other hand, a guaranteed basic income can be a boon to some artists who are driven to make their art by more than money. These days I think it would be a net plus to art (while of course being extremely expensive money-wise) because the outputs of their art would be more available, even if a few artists are driven by money and wouldn’t produce as much. Whereas if we did the same thing a few decades ago, artists would still be making art for art’s sake but we wouldn’t hear about it unless they happened upon someone who saw that it was good enough to make a profit off of by distribution.
By Socialism I take it you mean Communist rather than Democratic Socialism which often sees parties come to power in places like Scandinavia? Of course in those places the socialists bounce in and out of government depending on their election performances. Scandi cinema is pretty good.
National Film Board of Canada. Not a socialist country but this is a “socialist” program. Government supported, no censorship to speak of, no need to make a profit, free distribution. Wonderful films that would neither have been made nor aired without this program.
I have no problem with the idea of the government supporting art. There are works that have artistic merit but don’t have popular appeal; these works would not exist in a completely free enterprise system.
But I don’t think the government should be the primary support for the arts.
I don’t know. Worked pretty well for Haydn. And Leonardo. And Handel. Commercial support of the arts is relatively recent. Though our system of some government support but mostly commercial support has worked okay.
I’ve read a lot of libertarian magazines, books, and blogs. I only recall seeing the idea that roads should be privately owned popping up a couple times in extremely fringe online places. It’s not something that most libertarians believe in. Milton Friedman specifically listed roads as an example of a legitimate government project in Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose.
We may as well note that over the past generation, as government has grown larger and more powerful, roads and highways have become less free as more and more have been turned into toll roads and prices have gone up. Governments need money and will get it wherever they can.
Suppose Tarantino was a public employee, paid a modest salary to create films. Would his passion for the art remain undiminished? And would he actually create better films, because he would no longer have to include gimmicks to enhance the boxoffice appeal? Soviet film-makers regularly turned out films that are on everybody’s list of the greatest of all time. To an artist, work supercedes pay.
Making a comparison between the regulatory system in Australia vs the USA, this becomes obvious: if you can measure the speed of a vehicle, you can charge for it. And if a vehicle causes an accident, you can charge costs.
Then, do you need a government system of courts to enforce payments: not really, you can use a private system of courts (like that used for mediation of contracts in the USA)
Do you need policemen? Private security.
IMHO, when you follow it all through, you wind up with … a system of government, slightly different to other systems of government, but not hugely different in end result.
I’m reminded of a documentary I saw that touched on Sharia divorce courts. Obviously far different to our divorce system, right? But when she went and watched the process, it didn’t actually seem that different at all.
Please remember that the “Government” has no money. In fact, depending on what level you are talking about (Federal, State, County or City) they are either, thousands, millions, billions or trillions of dollars in debt. It is the citizens (of all income groups of whatever jurisdiction) that are required by law to pay taxes that fund any “government supported” art. And because these funds are limited, a “Arts Commission” is set up made of certain well connected individuals who, in turn, award these limited funds to “certain, well connected” artists. The poor and middle class who fund much of these art works through the taxes they pay, seldom if ever, see or appreciate these works because they are often not displayed in their neighborhoods.
In theory, art should be better under socialism for the reasons you stated. In practice, that doesn’t happen because socialists aren’t too tolerant of dissent. The uncivilized ones kill people and the civilized ones mobilize society to shun them or pressure the companies to squelch the offending material. If all entertainment is state-controlled, then you’re really in trouble.
As for roads, I think private roads have a lot of problems but I’m not sure how many libertarians really are into the idea. Much as some “socialists” are actually just social democrats, many libertarians are small government types or just anti-federal government and are fine with localities building public roads. Harry Browne, the 2000 LP candidate once said when asked if people could own tanks under his administration, “Of course you can own a tank. As long as you use a turn signal and stay on the right side of the road.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. As far as I know, only the federal government can run a deficit. All lower jurisdictions have to have balanced budgets. Taxes and other fees are not debt in any way, but they’re definitely real money.
And the federal government has debt only because it sells bonds that people pay money for. That means trillions of dollars of cash rolls in every year. The U.S. government has more money than any other noun in the world.
Yeah, the whole let’s privatize roads and police seems like a strawman. Only the more outlandish Libertarians who have really went down the rabbit hole advocate for that. Roads just aren’t amenable to market forces. It is impractical to have five different roads from my work to my home and I choose the best one, the prices and the rules I like, and you cannot exclude non-payers, as even people who do not drive benefit from having an infrastructure where they get goods shipped to their home or nearby. Things that first year Econ teaches you are not good for the market and only advocated by extremists should not be held as an example of the flaw in the logic.
I guess we are in need of a definition of what is “good art.” Because the underlying assumption seems to be that the vast majority of ignorant people left to their own devices will spend money on movies with people farting all of the time while otherwise timeless classics are never made because the idiocracy won’t pay money for them.
It smacks of snobbery that there is a small class of people who know what “good art” is and that instead of paying for it themselves, they want to tax the rest of the people to create this art that the people don’t want and will never view so the small class of people can enjoy their minority view of art.
So I guess the question is, “Is it really good art if most people won’t pay for it and don’t care to view it?” I mean, is there a sort of natural law about art? Isn’t “good art” simply what enough people enjoy viewing to make it profitable?
Any country, not matter what the system, will produced both great art and crap. Sergei Eisenstein was a great filmmaker while Stalin ruled. But there was also plenty of crap.
That is a problem in judging quality. Distance and time tend to filter out the crap. In the US, it’s very rare for an international film to get any notice at all, so those that do are usually quite good (in one way or another). A third-rate foreign film never gets to the US.
So socialism (and let’s be precise: a democratically elected government with individual freedoms, but with the government providing services like health care and others that benefit those without money, and which regulates business) can produce great art and can produce crap.
As for private ownership of roads, the reason the government runs the roads was because private ownership failed miserably.
Yes, a kind reminder that there are various degrees of Libertarians just as there are of Republicans and Democrats. We’re not all anarchocapitalists, or (God forbid) anarchists.
Any artist has at least two special qualities: To visualize a finished work (which may be inborn) and to handle the tools and materials (which is learned). Anyone who has both deserves an audience to judge his work.
Who decides whether this particular artist can “visualize a finished work”? Who decides whether he can “handle the tools and materials”? Who decided that these were the “two special qualities” and who decided that this person then now “deserves an audience,” presumably at taxpayer expense so he can complete the work, to judge his work?
There are a lot of bald declarations in there that seem to probably almost exactly correlate with what you believe is good art. And, with respect, why should we all pay for what you like?