We've probably made it easier for people to have "half a career" in music -- getting paid a modest amount of money on weekends, evenings, etc. to do what they love. In my own circle, I've got friends who earn $5,000 to $30,000 a year playing live music -- and then round out their earnings doing some amount of teaching, bookkeeping or whatever. Ditto for actors, writers, semi-pro athletes, etc.
The more I think about these tradeoffs, the harder it is to see them as unilaterally good or evil. It's a second-best solution for dealing with the gap between what people love to do, and what pays the bills.
Not sure if there is a first-best solution. Some countries have created "artists' cartels," which provide subsidized higher incomes for people in the club. That does make it easier to make a living as an approved artist. But the jockeying about who gets into the club, who pays the subsidies and what it takes to stay in -- argh! it all gets really protracted and ugly.
I'm one of those musicians, though my day job as a scientist has produced an ever increasing share of my income. I'm a double bassist, and I play mostly jazz.
Even full time musicians need multiple income streams. Teaching classical music to children is not a half bad occupation, but you have to enjoy it and live in a fairly affluent town. A violin teacher makes more per hour than I make playing gigs.
There are things that you can't do if you're not full time, such as traveling to perform. I'm pretty much limited to a 40 mile radius around my home.
Recording is possible of course, but I don't do it. It's not something that I really enjoy, and it's not easy or free even with modern tools. And getting paid for it is difficult. The musicians I know who actually make money from their recordings, sell CD's at their performances.
I think part of the situation with music is that we face competition from non musical forms of entertainment, that are extremely sophisticated. Perhaps at the top of the food chain is televised sports. It's very hard to put together a musical performance that's as exciting or entertaining as a major league sports broadcast.
What live musicians depend on is the audience that's actually interested in the experience of live music per se. And it's no longer the music of their youth. The jazz era is 100 years old. The majority of the jazz audience grew up listening to rock 'n' roll.
It’s not a silver bullet, but an expanded social safety net would make it significantly less risky to pursue art (or open source software or whatever) as more than just a “nights and weekends” thing.
> an expanded social safety net would make it significantly less risky to pursue art
Paraphrased: workers should be taxed so that we can 100% subsidise some other people’s dreams.
Fuck that.
I accept our society should subsidise some: art (I do like the BBC, especially so because I don’t pay for it), or music (I like CreativeNZ videos), or sports, or hobbies (HAM radio spectrum), or open source (yayyy), or even subsidise sitting around doing nothing (society should not demand all our time just for us to survive).
But the idea that society should subsidise everyone to follow their dreams is simply unworkable. And if you want to start ranking which dreams are worthwhile, well, society ends up with systems such as we already have.
That’s not an accurate paraphrasing; many social programs actually cost less than the alternative.
Sounds like you live in the UK, so maybe you take the NHS for granted. It would be a vast improvement from what we have in the US, where we have amongst the most expensive health care system in the world with far from the best outcomes. Group insurance is generally negotiated by employers; access to affordable healthcare is a huge obstacle to pursuing anything other than a traditional job.
Even loftier goals like ending homelessness don’t turn out to require the financial tradeoffs you’re talking about. Study after study, we’ve seen that simply giving people homes is costs less than shelters, police raids and a Kafkaesque system of requirements to prevent people who Don’t Deserve Help from getting it.
Consider that US workers are taxed in order to subsidize the dreams of the second wealthiest man in the world, for not one but two of his businesses. Would SpaceX or Tesla have succeeded without government handouts? We’re never asked to question that, but as soon as we suggest that people be able to make art without worrying about medical bankruptcy or homelessness, people start looking at the balance sheet with a magnifying glass.
You appear to be introducing three new tangential topics, and I don’t think you are addressing the point you originally raised.
Your original comment says that we should take a system that is there to provide insurance for the unfortunate (social safety net) and use that system to fund people’s desires (art, open source, or whatever).
I very strongly disagree with that idea: different systems have different purposes and commingling a safety net with creative goals will likely lead to very unfair outcomes.
The U.S. used to in fact commingle the social safety net with creative goals during the WPA era. There would be funding provided to employ artists, musicians, writers, actors, stage hands, etc. I think this is one of the many great ideas from the progressive era that could use reinstatement today. What a shame so many of our excellent social programs were cut during WWII as we shifted to a centrally planned war economy.
That’s not really what I meant, but I suppose I can see why you’d infer it. I’m saying that a social safety net decreases the risk of pursuing art rather than a more traditional job, not that we should repurpose it to give people additional income to fund specifically artistic goals.
So I’m not really introducing any tangential topics. In the US, medicine and healthcare are expensive and usually tied to employment; by providing those to everyone for free or cheap as part of a social safety net, it becomes less risky to dedicate your time to producing art.
Ahhhh, that makes more sense. I did jump to the conclusion you meant UBI, or full-time “welfare” benefits for artists (à la https://wikipedia.org/wiki/UB40 — the eight musicians formed a band, deciding on the name 'UB40' after a friend suggested it was an appropriate name given the unemployed status of all of the band members).
But you are still implying some cost to the rest of society to support creatives in their cups. And I am saying that many people who are working don’t like that. Plenty of people think artists should have to worry about their own balance sheet and society provides them plenty already, as opposed to your special-status-for-artists comment “people be able to make art without worrying about medical bankruptcy or homelessness”.
Instead, Western society’s usual deal is supposed to be: work 40 hours a week and you get your needs met, plus some disposable money to use as you wish, and the rest of your week (evenings, weekends) to do whatever you wish (art, open source, whatever). Alternatively society provides ways to monetise your interests. Those deals actually work in some countries, and don’t work in many others. I understand why you feel that the 40-hour deal might be broken in the USA. Many people from other countries look at the deal given to the median American with envy, and that is perfectly reasonable too.
I have multiple artistic and musician friends where the jobs-for-money deal seems to work for them and they mostly own their own homes (however I am a ~50 year old in New Zealand and the majority of my artistic friends are 40 or over). I also have arty friends that get government benefits!
And yeah, the USA medical system is rather perverse: hopefully you guys can fix that for all of yourselves (not just artists etcetera).
To be honest, I would support some form of UBI, but I think there are many more modest reforms we can talk about before we get there.
> But you are still implying some cost to the rest of society to support creatives in their cups. And I am saying that many people who are working don’t like that.
You’re inferring this, but I’m not implying it. Let me try to be a little clearer:
Public services do not necessarily cost taxpayers more than the alternatives. Again, with healthcare we have a concrete example of privatized systems costing more and delivering worse outcomes than universal public ones. Many people who are working might prefer the former so they don’t have to subsidize others, but ultimately they themselves receive worse care (on average) as a result of this; they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
Relatedly, a significant amount of US taxpayer money subsidizes the business ventures of billionaires like Elon Musk. There are plenty of other examples, like the almost eight trillion USD we give to the military every decade. This doesn’t directly address your point, but I do wonder why we only start talking about these tradeoffs when it’s the poorest receiving subsidies from the government, rather than the most powerful.
I feel like I am repeating myself, both those situations are irrelevant to your original point. I agree we can try to make things more efficient, and society can improve how it redistributes wealth.
You seem to be saying we should distribute any gains to artists. I am saying that we distribute those gains to working people, and let the artists do their thing in their free time.
If we start getting to the point where there is not enough “work” to go around, then we can follow the scandi practice of reducing everyone’s working hours. Although admittedly that doesn’t address the problem that there is an unlimited need for highly skilled people (the drive behind the power law of income distribution and why the more highly paid professionals have no spare time).
UBI is a lovely concept, but unfortunately in the very major examples I have already seen of UBI (retirement being the biggest example), I don’t see much return in scientific or creative output.
Yeah, I would like to have phrased it better. However I am struggling to think of a clear alternative.
If we assume that the rich get their wealth from the workers, then taxing the rich is now just indirectly taxing the workers.
If we talk about taxing everyone in society, then how do we tax an artist or anybody else spending time on their dream? How do we measure an artist’s contribution to society? Should we pay anyone highly if they contribute great artistic wealth to society? Should we pay someone whose art or hobby has no merit to society? Do we treat a rich artist like you seem to want to treat a financially rich person - tax the value of their art until they are “equal”? If someone has worldwide status or high renown, should we somehow share that wealth of status with the less fortunate? What if some high art is immensely valuable to a small number of people - how do you fairly manage that?
Our society has a huge variety of different means to deal with the conflicting goals above. One of those is money which often equalises competing unmeasurable needs so that as individuals we get to value incomparable things (catching polio vs. a Van Gogh vs. an apricot vs. playing Mario Brothers vs. reading a book vs. a massage).
We all have huge disagreements about how the wealth of society should be divided - and our society has many radically different solutions for that problem. Should the average wage of a US citizen be allowed to be radically higher than a citizen of Haiti? What about an artist in Haiti?
It feels like lately more and more people somehow believe it's a societal/structural failure that achieving their dream life isn't easier.
Maybe it has something to do with a generation raised on endless immediate gratification via free (you're the product) digital products. FOMO, whatever.
Then again, maybe it has something to do with me getting old.
I think it's more that most current employment is awful - you're either doing something useful and paid peanuts or a cog in the machine making the (you're the product) type products. There's terribly few jobs available that are ethical, useful, and well compensated.
People aren't unwilling to do a hard days work, they're unwilling to do it for less than a living wage, which is the current offer for a lot of people right now, especially young people.
And to your first sentence _YES_, society should of course be set so that people can achieve their dreams as much as possible! That's the point! I understand that doing this via wealth redistribution is touchy but you're acting like wanting things to be easier is a stupid goal in general.
Survival has always been awful. Hunting and gathering aren't glamourous activies, they're simply necessary. Dreams are mostly just that, dreams.
I'm all for helping dreams become reality. Pursuit of happiness and all that.
But there is real injustice and inequality in the world. Real human suffering. Lets find solutions to those problems first, before we focus the resources of society on solving the problems of struggling musicians.
Almost every job right now is so far abstracted from survival that it barely makes any sense. My job (that pays very well) involves taking an existing product and shuffling the UI around so people think it's a different product.
Even people with useful jobs like baristas and janitors aren't really helping anyone survive they're just making it nice for everyone else.
So few people are in farming, or medicine, where you can really say that. This is a societal problem imo, people really want/need to feel useful and we haven't been able to come up with 8 billion useful things to do
Also, yes there is injustice around the world, sure lets solve that, it sounds great. I feel like the solution is pretty similar to how we solve what's happening to poor people in our own country
> Almost every job right now is so far abstracted from survival that it barely makes any sense
We are hyper-specialized, hyper-optimized, hyper-focused cogs in the massive survival machine that is the world economy. So much so that we can no longer see the forest for the trees. But I firmly believe the forest is still there.
Supply chain problems of the last few years continue to show us just how fragile of a world we live in. Jobs we've never heard about, performed by poor villagers from places we don't care about, are arguably more important to our survival than musicians and baristas.
It doesn't seem fair to ask the people providing goods/services necessary to our survival to support the chosen others who get to follow their dreams. Where do I sign up?
I think you're spot on with your comment about finding 8 billion useful things to do. A barista may not be helping us survive, but at least they're making the place a bit nicer for the rest of us. The musician will trade his time/music for a nice cup of coffee. It may not be survival, but it improves the overall human experience. We're all in it together.
We're going to reach a point where there isn't anything more people can do to make things nicer. Automation will eventually lead to a crisis, where people no longer have any useful value, and simply breed and consume everything around them in ever larger amounts.
A world where everyone is free to pursue their dreams doesn't seem like a utopia to me. Humans free from all constraints sounds like hell to me. Devil will find work for idle hands etc. Must be a really good sci-fi novel in here somewhere.
oh, I agree with almost everything in this ^, sorry if I came off as confrontational earlier. Your first post read to me like the typical "there is no injustice because I, a well paid software engineer, is willing to work unlike those lazy poors" which reading this was clearly not your point.
To me, the problem is exactly what you identified, that the value is created by jobs we haven't heard about and poor villagers. And also baristas and musicians who are also routinely underpaid. And that value is mostly exploited by whoever the current elite is (currently shareholders and to a lesser extent, software ppl, and lesser still anyone in 1st world countries etc. etc.)
So I think the only difference is a boring semantic problem :p
I was defining 'pursuing dreams' as what it means to me specifically - ie. my dream is to do something cool and respected and get paid well for it, which I think jives with why musicians want to be musicians. Making things nicer for people is a major part of it.
All the baristas I know say they like baristaing, the sucky part is that it's every single day and the managers suck, and you have to deal with some awful customers with a smile and you're never doing anything else. But freed from all of that they like making people nice coffee and feeling good about making things better. I hate my job because I'm fiddling with code that (to my understanding) is of no benefit to anyone and is only sustained by mooching off the government and tricking people into things they don't need. Doesn't hurt that we bought all the competition. Pay is nice though.
I think with something like UBI we will be closer to that. Free from exploitation because if the job conditions suck you can quit. But I really believe that most people really do want to be useful and respected and will continue to make value for the world for the pure joy of it. Anyone who is a teacher right now is intentionally giving up almost all possible earnings for the ability to do something directly useful. WWOOFers volunteer on farms. If farmers were respected people would like doing it more. Lots of people volunteer, edit wikipedia, make and share art, etc.
And, of course, ideally this would include all the people in other countries whose sweatshop labor is funding the world economy. I'm rooting for them too. If we can't solve this is our own country it seems unlikely we can solve it for the whole world though, but no reason not to try. I think both fights can (and kinda must) be happening at the same time.
I mostly agree with everything you're saying. And share your goals. I also absolutely don't think my place in the totem pole is special, I worked hard to get here, but I'm absolutely replaceable.
I'm more pessimistic though on outcomes. I don't think UBI solves anything, just kicks the can down the road a little bit longer.
Money exists because of scarcity, there isn't enough for everyone. Money helps us decide who gets what, prices are relative and fluctuate as supply and demand change, that's a very good thing. If I think I can get a better deal elsewhere, I'll take my ball and go home. If I want it bad enough, I'll work harder (or sacrifice elsewhere) so I can afford to get it.
Baristas aren't paid well because anyone can grind and brew their own coffee. Or just buy a Keurig which costs less overall. Contrast that to say, a surgeon who is paid well precisely because most people don't want to operate on themselves.
The issue I have with UBI is that you still have the same number of people chasing the same number of scarce resources/houses/products. So prices will rise accordingly. Pretty soon it becomes "UBI doesn't let me be a musician and live the lifestyle I want/deserve". Complaints that UBI doesn't pay well enough, big business, etc.
I'm 100% for a better social net to catch those who have stumbled/fallen. But the arguments elsewhere in this thread conflate that with being able to pursue the life of your dreams free of consequence. That's the heart of the distinction I'm making here.
To me, you can't chase your dream without asking yourself "How hard am I willing to work to get what I really want?" Achievement is more satisfying when it's earned then when it's handed to you. A well lived life is about playing the hand you were dealt well, rather than complaining that you weren't dealt a better hand. I think that's the difference between having the "right to pursue happiness" versus the "right to happiness".
A lot of the stuff UBI would pay for is (imo) not that scarce or shouldn't be. Food, water, most medicine, etc. we can absolutely just provide to everyone. We have the resources to give everyone a decent life (ie. not struggling to stay alive, not made artificially awful etc.).
I am quite sure of this for America given the current level of offshore exploitation not changing. I think but am not entirely convinced this is possible globally. Certainly there is some amount of population that is simply too much for the earth to sustainably handle but I have no real idea what exactly that number is.
Stuff that is inherently not scalable then .. yea .. ubi cant fix that. Not everyone can get a mansion, or 1918 wines, or even maybe suburban houses really. Not sure exactly where the lines are but there ARE unique things and it's wrong to discount that.
But the current system is set up so that you have to grind hours doing miserable things largely unrelated to survival to get enough money to _not die_. I feel like UBI is just the simplest most reasonable safety net for that. Certainly there are other options but they add bureaucracy and complications that don't seem worth it to me. It's like everyone has a house they can crash at indefinitely if they need or want to.
But it's not the only option ofc. Just seems to me like a decent combination of simple + politically viable + solves many problems of exploitative work. Healthcare-for-all would be huge step forwards even without UBI so it's not the only goal either.
& as for "right to happiness" - I really believe that most people will still want to be useful and make cool things people like, even if given the option to not. Open Source software etc. is already run this way on weekends. Making something useful for other people will still be an achievement people strive for, and would be rewarded on top of UBI.
> you have to grind hours doing miserable things largely unrelated to survival to get enough money to _not die_.
Working to not die, isn't that the definition of survival? Or, as Rick Sanchez might say, grinding at your job is just surviving with extra steps.
> I really believe that most people will still want to be useful and make cool things people like
I really want to believe this, and it's true there are a lot of us that will do just that.
The issue is that there are a lot of traps and vices people can fall into. Alcoholism, drug use, even seemingly benign stuff like chasing digital approval are very ugly when taken to extremes. What snaps most people out of this stuff and keeps us in check is the fear of hitting rock bottom -- that is, you know that if you don't change you're likely going to lose everything / die / etc.
I've seen it in numerous lives, its only when they hit rock bottom that they decide something needs to change (that something being them). I know a former heroin user that destroyed every relationship in his life (including family) to get his hands on the stuff, and only changed when he decided that being homeless and waking up naked in a crack house was enough.
UBI takes away rock bottom. What's to stop a drug addict when there is no downside to staying high all the time?
As much as I would like to believe in UBI helping people, I would wager that there is a positive correlation between the people that UBI could help the most and people most susceptible to addiction. Maybe that's my pessimism leaking through, but I don't think UBI is a solution for them.
Again, I'm ALL for having better social safety nets etc. It's just hard to define what better is. You can meet a man's physical needs and still starve his soul.
yeah, its the unrelated to survival that gets me
i'd be fine working equally hard on something meaningful to not die. im not happy with shuffling paperwork for the same thing. maybe this is a personal problem
For me personally at least, why I really want UBI is for soul-starving needs specifically. My job I fully believe is either net-neutral or hurting the world, and after some amount of looking have not been able to find one that's both clearly positive and not exploited. If I was given UBI I would quit, maybe volunteer to teach one class a day in a high school, or help run a boardgame cafe or makerspace. There would be no worry of putting people out a job since they'd be getting UBI too.
Right now I feel souless. I'm living well but through some glitch in the system that rewards people for writing useless code on a project that I'm expecting will get canned (the last two were thrown away) and spending time on hackernews. I want to be doing the useful things that currently don't pay well enough to be live without anxiety.
I think a lot of people working exploited jobs would also benefit, for the reasons you already know if you want a general safety net. Being able to quit without fear is a lot of leverage and would make things a lot more equal between employer / employee. Current unemployment benefits don't give anything if you quit (instead of fired) and a UBI style no-questions-asked solves this.
Addictions / vices are certainly a problem, and could definitely be worse with UBI perpetually enabling. I don't really have a great answer to this. The current system does not seem very kind to addicts without external support either, so I'm not sure how much worse this would be either way but definitely something to think about. Hadn't really considered that angle before.
Either way, I'm not 100% convinced UBI is the best way to add a safety net. I do think it would have some pretty profound effects on what work people would be wiling to do, most of which would be positive. It's a pretty simple / meme-able demand the same way 'fight for 15' or 'healthcare for all' is, that's really all the pitch i have for it tbh
What sort of changes are you hoping for?
(edit: is there a comment reply limit? if this is the end im happy to give an email or phone # to continue somewhere else. legit this is the only pleasant hackernews comment thread i've been a part of on this or my alt so thank you very much <3)
Feel free to reach out to me, my email can be found on manfreda.org
In the meantime I understand the struggle. I'm on the other side of it now. My answers work for me, that's enough.
Gotta accept the world the way it is, you can't change it, but you can change you. I've found that stoicism helps a lot. [1] Absurdism helps me a lot as well. [2]
A few books I found helpful along the way
Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl [3]
Ride the Tiger by Julius Evola [4]
Finally, if you can get through all of it, I found this book extremely profound when looked at from a 10,000 ft. view. This combined with Absurdism largely explains my worldview.
I’m not really talking about achieving your dreams; I’m talking about even having a shot at them.
Let me put it this way:
I am okay with someone not getting a chance to play at Carnegie Hall because they preferred to watch TV or go out instead of dedicating themselves to their craft.
I am not okay with someone not getting that chance because, instead of being able to practice, they were forced to keep a 9–5 job so that the insurance could pay for their prohibitively expensive insulin.
The former is a personal failing, but the second is indeed a societal/structural failing.
I agree, I wish things were fairer. Trust me, you get old enough and you get your fill of injustice.
But as I said in another comment, there are much greater injustices in the world worthy of our attention. I just feel like we should start solving those first before we discuss how to help those with regular day jobs get a bit more out of life.
That's not at all what the parent said. No where did they say anything about people being 100% subsidized to follow their dreams. You are attacking a strawman.
So much so that it's actually kind of a trope in the UK music industry [1]. A lot of the most famous British musicians from the 70s and 80s were "on the dole" receiving welfare before they made it big.
This is of course not scientific, but my observation has been just the opposite. It seems like in the past it was possible to be an artist who supported themselves working 9 to 5 as a waiter. I don't see how that would be possible with the skyrocketing cost of living even before the inflation spike. Lots of people have multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
Probably, UBI is the best first solution. In the sense that it acts as a collective bargaining system for all citizens who are forced to trade their time for income.
The more I think about these tradeoffs, the harder it is to see them as unilaterally good or evil. It's a second-best solution for dealing with the gap between what people love to do, and what pays the bills.
Not sure if there is a first-best solution. Some countries have created "artists' cartels," which provide subsidized higher incomes for people in the club. That does make it easier to make a living as an approved artist. But the jockeying about who gets into the club, who pays the subsidies and what it takes to stay in -- argh! it all gets really protracted and ugly.