<< A perfect example would be a symphony orchestra or a sports stadium. If either of those can’t survive on its own, why should non-participating tax payers subsidize those who want to enjoy those experiences on the cheap? >>
Because without government sponsorship, we very soon wouldn’t have a symphony orchestra, we’d only have the most popular rock bands or rap bands or whatever.
BTW, note that the government helps sponsor the arts by allowing tax deductions to large corporations for donations. Thus, by forgoing tax, the government also encourages the enormous corporate funding that the arts require.
As I said: Agree. For the same reasons I’ll have in Week 38: No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.
If every local/state and federal subsidy were eliminated, thereby enabling taxpayers to keep more disposable income - they (as opposed to the politically connected) - would choose which organizations and charities were worthiest of financial support.
Those who continue to support public subsidies of all types put more faith in government / Those who don’t put more faith in individuals. But what do I know; I’m the same bastard who questioned the need for VHS/DVD’s at public libraries.
Actually, of course, all the arts are pure wastes of time. Entertainment, foolishness, a waste of time and efforts. You sit there on your rear end, listening to music, when you could be PRODUCTIVE! You waste time watching TV or DVDs when you could be EARNING MORE MONEY! If you bother to go to a museum, what for? When you could be working!
After all, the purpose of life is to work, to earn and accumulate more money, right?
I can’t remember what I ticked exactly, but it was either disagree or strongly so.
Commercializing such things, to me, implies that they will end up more localized to highly populated areas than they already are, and I think that is a very bad idea.
Coming from an (extremely) rural part of the US, I highly appreciated “culture” and gobbled up every last bit of it that I could get my grubby, country paws on.
That’s a very nice sentiment, but I think your faith in the generosity of mankind is a little misplaced. Most people would use that extra disposable income to buy stuff, or to pay off bills, or put it in savings.
People who wish to contribute to charity already do so, but wouldn’t necessarily increase their donations if they had extra cash. (Hubby and I give a set amount each week. If I paid less in taxes, I’d put the extra money on our mortgage. I have suspicions that a lot of people would do the same.) Those people who don’t wouldn’t be encouraged by additional funds to give if they don’t already have the inclination.
What about the Victorian Era? Tax burdens were much lower, but the citizens were not particularly generous with charity. In fact, folks were dying of hunger and cold in the streets of London.
That’s really no argument at all. Sounds to me that you are saying you like living in the country, but want other people to subsidize the entertainment activities that aren’t normally available there.
I grew up in the country. It’s not like I had much say in the matter.
And I don’t think “entertainment” does justice to the question in the OP.
With no other environment to compare it to, how would rural kids even know what culture they were missing out on in the “big city” if public funding didn’t help to give them a hands-on taste? How would rural kids be expected to expand their minds with exposure to theaters and museums if they were only located in cities that are so far away they might as well be in another state?
In an attempt to better expose the kids in my hometown to such things, our school used to pack them in a bus and ship them off to San Francisco to stay in youth hostels for a week when they got to 8th grade.
How much appreciation/attention do you think the average rural 8th grade kid would apply to a single week crammed full of sculpture and theater and fine art in such an alien and hyper-stimulating environment, especially if they’ve never/rarely encountered such things before?
Now they take day trips to the college town 2 hours away, and they can experience things that I never could, but you can be damn sure those things wouldn’t be there if the local population had to cough up sufficient entry fees to keep them there.
I took Dex’s point to be that the market is not the only thing which can legitimately place a value on something, i.e., some things are valuable, worth doing, etc, even if they will never be profitable. I should think that this is uncontroversial to any but the most rabid capitalists. The only question is then one of whether unprofitable types of artisitic endeavour fall into this category. It would seem, from his comments, that Dex believes that to be the case.
When it comes to entertainment let people vote with their dollars. There’s no reason for the government to shell out bucks to keep a symphony playing or to help the Cowboys build a new stadium. I don’t buy the arguement that without government funding the symphony would dry up. And if it did, so what?
Well I’m even more opposed to state financed sports. Incidentally in Denmark sports and arts are financed through the same state department – on the thought that sports is a kind of art and culture too.
Compared to the whole state budget, I don’t get too upset about the pittance given to museums and galleries. No, to me it’s all about somebody pulling their worldview down on others. I have it in bed with state financed and controlled religion, media and such ilk (and the perfect follow up on: #22: All authority must be questioned). As well as the negative effects on the art community. Denmark has been able to produce a few world class artists (H.C.Andersen, Karen Blixen, Kirkegård – none of whom received any state grants). Anybody care to name a single such who worked within the last 30 years where we have had massive state sponsorships? It’s terrible unfair and all, but art is an insanely competitive pursuit where only the top 0.01% of the very best ever will (and should) succeed – if they’re lucky and that most often after they’re dead. It does not make for a good candidate for democratisation or consensus agreements.
And why would you think that? It speaks of a pretty low opinion of your fellow man doesn’t it? btw. does it mean you yourself wouldn’t ever pony up for a ticket to a symphony orchestra unless it has been state sponsored, or is it just the unenlightened masses that need to be coerced – for their own good naturally? Also a prime example of imposing your tastes on others; what’s so terrible about rock/rap bands? Who knows as much as you abhor the thought, perhaps in 200 years they’ll look back on Beatles and Eminem and view them as the 20 century genius equivalent of Mozart and Beethoven.
Oh yeah. Before endowments were instituted in the 1960s, America was an arts wasteland — jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, beatnik poetry, Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway musicals, Hollywood cinema, Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare in Central Park. Thank goodness these things have been replaced by Andres Serrano and Thomas Kincade.
There will never be a symphony in my hometown, subsidized or not. It has a population of about 300. But the university in the north part of the county is able to provide community outreach programs that are relatively accessable (a couple hours drive) to many surrounding rural counties, with what I assume to be taxpayer money.
What is “the market”? It’s just people buying things. People are the only thing that can place value on something. Perhaps you were thinking that the market is not the only **mechanism ** by which people can vote for what they value.
In the case of school kids, yes. Just like the school buses that clog Peachtree Street here in Atlanta as they take kids from the surrounding area to the High Museum, rural schools where I’m from bus their kids to the “local” university so they can hear the symphony, or see a play, or experience a traveling art exhibit.
Further, people already have to drive “into town” fairly regularly (once a week or so) to do much of their shopping, to get their computers repaired, to renew their driver’s licenses, etc. These are the non-schoolaged folks who also benefit from these community outreach programs.