Supporting Artists
Here's an article about music and crowdfunding. There's a very difficult balance between creativity and survival. Too much idealism and you starve. Too much commercialism and you produce dreck. So too are there two poles of audience interaction: too low a price tag and the artist can't afford to keep working, too high a price tag and the audience either can't afford to buy or won't because they feel it's a ripoff.
Culture is an exchange. In order to continue, a society must meet the survival and social needs of its citizens. They need ways of supporting themselves, interacting, and expressing ideas. What people value tends to continue. What they do not value will be hidden or lost. So if you don't support art, then you wind up with very little art, of poorer quality. If you don't make sure people have enough to live on, then not only do they suffer, but they can't afford to buy stuff and your economy tanks. Not everything has to be a cash exchange, that's a relatively recent phenomenon historically speaking. But there must be an exchange of value and people must get their needs met.
This is a time of great challenge and great potential. A lot of people are getting into creative work because that's all they CAN do -- they aren't permitted a day job by the people who control the businesses. They still need to survive, so they scrabble for what they can do that DOESN'T require someone else's permission to have a job. That's often art, music, writing, things that are less controlled than businesses you need an expensive license even to attempt. There are business models now that help connect creators directly to the audience in ways that cut out middlemen and route more money to the people making stuff. But the audience can be a stingy bastard sometimes. That's especially true if people don't have enough to live on, or if they've had their pockets picked so much they FEEL like that don't have enough even after they've managed to scrape up more. The pervasive sense of threat, that failure and starvation are just a day's bad luck and a few weeks of unemployment away, erodes the cohesion of society as a whole.
What can you do? Think mindfully about what it costs you to make things and how much your talent is worth. Think mindfully about how much other people's work is worth to you, and whether you can afford that. If money is tight, which it often is when a few people are hogging so damn much of it, then look for alternatives. You might not have cash to pay for what you want, but you may have something the other person wants that you could trade. Money is only valuable when there's enough to get the job done. If there isn't, it's useless as a medium of exchange. But you always have your skills. You have resources. Other people have different ones. So trade.
And value each other's hard work, because somebody has to, and it's painfully clear that the people at the top of the heap care fuckall about you, art, or the sustainability of society.
Culture is an exchange. In order to continue, a society must meet the survival and social needs of its citizens. They need ways of supporting themselves, interacting, and expressing ideas. What people value tends to continue. What they do not value will be hidden or lost. So if you don't support art, then you wind up with very little art, of poorer quality. If you don't make sure people have enough to live on, then not only do they suffer, but they can't afford to buy stuff and your economy tanks. Not everything has to be a cash exchange, that's a relatively recent phenomenon historically speaking. But there must be an exchange of value and people must get their needs met.
This is a time of great challenge and great potential. A lot of people are getting into creative work because that's all they CAN do -- they aren't permitted a day job by the people who control the businesses. They still need to survive, so they scrabble for what they can do that DOESN'T require someone else's permission to have a job. That's often art, music, writing, things that are less controlled than businesses you need an expensive license even to attempt. There are business models now that help connect creators directly to the audience in ways that cut out middlemen and route more money to the people making stuff. But the audience can be a stingy bastard sometimes. That's especially true if people don't have enough to live on, or if they've had their pockets picked so much they FEEL like that don't have enough even after they've managed to scrape up more. The pervasive sense of threat, that failure and starvation are just a day's bad luck and a few weeks of unemployment away, erodes the cohesion of society as a whole.
What can you do? Think mindfully about what it costs you to make things and how much your talent is worth. Think mindfully about how much other people's work is worth to you, and whether you can afford that. If money is tight, which it often is when a few people are hogging so damn much of it, then look for alternatives. You might not have cash to pay for what you want, but you may have something the other person wants that you could trade. Money is only valuable when there's enough to get the job done. If there isn't, it's useless as a medium of exchange. But you always have your skills. You have resources. Other people have different ones. So trade.
And value each other's hard work, because somebody has to, and it's painfully clear that the people at the top of the heap care fuckall about you, art, or the sustainability of society.