Is It Art?

[PureX]

I appreciate art. I value art. Some people think that food is a form of art. Should the government support a restaurant if it cannot be self sufficient for some reason?

I also appreciate the right earn a living. When we work we trade our time for money. I find it impossibly arrogant that you think you have the right to take my money and use it to support discretionary spending. It is not the duty of government to make sure that I have culture. My choices in terms of art/culture are NOT Uncle Sam's business.

Oh, stop being such a baby. We have to do things all the time that we don't like. And many of them we do because our government has decided that we need to do them whether we like it or not. The very fact that you're whining like such a willful child about this only proves that you need the government to act as your parent regarding at least this issue, and probably some others, too.

And I'm not just picking on you. We're all pretty selfish and self-centered much of the time, and we often need a "power greater than ourselves" to make us do the right things for ourselves and for each other in spite of our selfish protests. Such is life.

 

[HisLight]

I am not being a baby. I do things all the time that I don't like.

You are trying to advocate theft, plain and simple. Our government is a legal entitiy, it cannot make decisions. Our elected representatives do. You live in a country where we believe in property rights (or at least we used to). I pay for lots of wasteful spending as it is. I will not support providing money to the arts via government redistribuion of wealth. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. My money is my property. GET YO HANDS OFFA MY WALLET!!!

 

[PureX]

I am not being a baby. I do things all the time that I don't like.

You are trying to advocate theft, plain and simple. Our government is a legal entitiy, it cannot make decisions. Our elected representatives do. You live in a country where we believe in property rights (or at least we used to). I pay for lots of wasteful spending as it is. I will not support providing money to the arts via government redistribuion of wealth. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. My money is my property. GET YO HANDS OFFA MY WALLET!!!

Concepts like property and power are collective. They require a collective agreement to have any practical validity. You only "own" what your collective society agrees is "yours". You only have power over those who let you have that power over them. You would be wise to keep this in mind. No one in this country acquires or holds any wealth by themselves. You are part of a collective whether you like it or not, and whether you recognize it or not. And when that collective wants to take some of "your" wealth back in the form of a tax, you would be wise to remember that you only have it in the first place because the collective society lets you.

You can move to Utah and live in a cave if you want to, but even then, you can't escape the ties of your society unless your society lets you. And when they choose to revoke that freedom, they will.

 

[PureX]

bump

 

[HisLight]

Concepts like property and power are collective. They require a collective agreement to have any practical validity. You only "own" what your collective society agrees is "yours". You only have power over those who let you have that power over them. You would be wise to keep this in mind. No one in this country acquires or holds any wealth by themselves. You are part of a collective whether you like it or not, and whether you recognize it or not. And when that collective wants to take some of "your" wealth back in the form of a tax, you would be wise to remember that you only have it in the first place because the collective society lets you.

You can move to Utah and live in a cave if you want to, but even then, you can't escape the ties of your society unless your society lets you. And when they choose to revoke that freedom, they will.

Wow, I am so sorry I missed this post.

This country was founded on the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" Those rights imply a right to one's property. My time and the money is my property. There are plenty of places in the world where these principals are not foundational to governmental rule. If I wanted to live in one of those countries I would move there. If you want to change a principal as fundamental as property rights, I suggest that you have the courage to amend the constitution.

I am willing to pay taxes for the services that are essential functions of government. For everything else the free market ought to govern.

I think we saw that in New Orleans all of the tax dollars that people thought would be available to save them from the hurricane and floods would have been far better spent on efforts to deal with the storm from a different view. I will not rely on the federal, state or local government to save my hide in the event of a disaster. In addition to the horrible decisions that were made on the bureaucratic level, the implication that the government would save anyone and everyone who refused to leave, left many of them thinking that they had no personal responsibility for dealing with the storm. That attitude cost hundreds, if not thousands, of people their lives.

If we cannot manage a coordinated effort to keep order (an essential function) in a city like New Orleans, how in the world can the government effectively and efficiently manage funding for the arts?

 

[PureX]

I am willing to pay taxes for the services that are essential functions of government. For everything else the free market ought to govern.

But the argument is what's an essential function of government, not what you're willing to pay for or not willing to pay for. There could be many essential functions of goverment that you won't want to pay for because you don't think they're essential, or because they aren't essential to you personally. And that's exactly when the goverment needs the ability to over-rule you.

If we cannot manage a coordinated effort to keep order (an essential function) in a city like New Orleans, how in the world can the government effectively and efficiently manage funding for the arts?

The two are hardly comparable. The first is an exceedingly extraordinary circumstance, the second is not.

And by your own logic, here, you are suggesting that since the goverment is inept at doing it's job it should not be given the job at all. So who's going to do it, then? Who will maintain social order if not the government? Who's going to defend the nation if not the government? I agree the government often does a terrible job of governing - especially the Bush administration, but that doesn't mean we can or should let no one do the job. The job of governing has to be done by someone. And if our current government is doing a lousy job, then we need to fix it so that it'll do a better job.

Anarchy is not the solution to bad government. And neither is unbridled greed. Commerce needs to be governed just like every other human endeavor. This fantasy that commerce is some sort of god that will solve all of man's problems if we just let it do whatever it pleases is idiotic. It's because of our greed that we need governed in the first place, and it's mostly greed that's making our governent so ineffective, so how is yet more unbridled greed going to solve the very problems that it's creating?

Stop listening to the corporate propagandists in the right wing media and start using your head. They're robbing you blind while they distract you with ridiculous issues like government funding of the arts.

 

[HisLight]

But the argument is what's an essential function of government, not what you're willing to pay for or not willing to pay for. There could be many essential functions of goverment that you won't want to pay for because you don't think they're essential, or because they aren't essential to you personally. And that's exactly when the goverment needs the ability to over-rule you.
The two are hardly comparable. The first is an exceedingly extraordinary circumstance, the second is not.

And by your own logic, here, you are suggesting that since the goverment is inept at doing it's job it should not be given the job at all. So who's going to do it, then? Who will maintain social order if not the government? Who's going to defend the nation if not the government? I agree the government often does a terrible job of governing - especially the Bush administration, but that doesn't mean we can or should let no one do the job. The job of governing has to be done by someone. And if our current government is doing a lousy job, then we need to fix it so that it'll do a better job.

Anarchy is not the solution to bad government. And neither is unbridled greed. Commerce needs to be governed just like every other human endeavor. This fantasy that commerce is some sort of god that will solve all of man's problems if we just let it do whatever it pleases is idiotic. It's because of our greed that we need governed in the first place, and it's mostly greed that's making our governent so ineffective, so how is yet more unbridled greed going to solve the very problems that it's creating?

Stop listening to the corporate propagandists in the right wing media and start using your head. They're robbing you blind while they distract you with ridiculous issues like government funding of the arts.

I do not need a parent. I am quite capable of managing my own affairs.

I find that people succeed when they focus on the thing that they do best. Our government should focus on essential functions so that they can perform those functions effectively and efficiently.

I am not advocating anarchy. I am merely stating that that same ineffective and inefficient process will be applied to arts funding. Graft and greed are part of the process. There is no magical purity that comes with government funding. There will be less money available for arts funding as a good portion of the money will be allocated to administrative costs. The government has adminstrative costs in allocating and distributing funds. The donee has adminstrative costs with grant writing, reporting, and frequently financial auditing.

To imagine that government funding will result in something better than what we have now is to ignore the results of the war on drugs or the war on poverty. Perhaps that is why you are in a creative field and I am not.

 

[PureX]

I do not need a parent. I am quite capable of managing my own affairs.

But you live in a society. It's not all about your affairs. It's about our collective affairs. And that's when we need the government - because most of us are too selfish, self-centered, and short-sighted to act collectively without being told how and made to.

I find that people succeed when they focus on the thing that they do best. Our government should focus on essential functions so that they can perform those functions effectively and efficiently.

That's what the government is trying to do. But again, people are selfish, self-centered, and short-sighted, including the people who run the government, and so the government often fails at it's task. The solution isn't less government, it's getting more intelligent, responsible, socially oriented people into government (and into society as a whole).

I am not advocating anarchy. I am merely stating that that same ineffective and inefficient process will be applied to arts funding. Graft and greed are part of the process. There is no magical purity that comes with government funding.

This is all true, but it's better than no funding or government oversight at all.

There will be less money available for arts funding as a good portion of the money will be allocated to administrative costs. The government has administrative costs in allocating and distributing funds. The donee has administrative costs with grant writing, reporting, and frequently financial auditing.

The arts represent such a small social endeavor and such a small amount of funding that there has never been much room for the kind of graft and waste that you're talking about.

To imagine that government funding will result in something better than what we have now is to ignore the results of the war on drugs or the war on poverty. Perhaps that is why you are in a creative field and I am not.

But we aren't talking about total government funding of the arts (I hope). That I would agree would be an all around bad idea. But being that art is not a commodity in the normal sense, yet is a very necessary social endeavor nevertheless, it does need some financial sponsorship to keep it active and healthy. That financial sponsorship needs to come from a lot of different sources to ensure freedom of expression, without which art becomes just more useless "sponsored" propaganda.

Art is a special case, I think.