The NEA is basically a very esoteric and wasteful substitute for UBI which is pretty much the most fundamental endowment most artists in this country need
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If you call it that you immediately generate a -- I think, very justifiable -- response from everyone else who wants a UBI that they don't see why they shouldn't get one for just *not* making art, especially if the art that gets made isn't very popular
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
yeah like this is the real gist of the problem isn't it? it's that everyone really wants to be able to do what they want, and a lot of folks go "well why are artists special?"
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Replying to @loudpenitent @Nymphomachy and
In point of fact the NEA is mostly not very controversial at all and most of the money gets allocated to stuff like Shakespeare in the Park for kids, precisely to avoid this kind of thing
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Unfortunately then they get yelled at by serious people in the art community that "There's already SO MUCH generic Shakespeare in the Park shit that gets funded through the private sector and why is your job just to give MORE money to the people who ALREADY get money"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
So then you get a Piss Christ kind of thing once in a while where they try to prove that they are real, credible artists plugged into the art community doing stuff famous educated critics think is valuable and cool Which, inevitably, provokes exactly this backlash
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
I mean piss christ provoked a backlash because we live in a society that suffers the existence of Christianity, which, like the military and NASA, should also go away
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @arthur_affect and
fwiw, I used to be more irritated by space spending before when I thought of federal budgeting more like budgeting...but the truth is the US has tons of resources and could easily fund the space program and cure hunger in the US without too much trouble.
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Replying to @nberlat @Nymphomachy and
Yeah I think the idea that there's a Civilization-style "player" would could just click some sliders and "allocate things differently" is a massive fallacy A lot of people unconsciously make this assumption and it does not survive even a brief brush with how the government works
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
Which is why even when you get a President who explicitly comes in promising to slash and burn all the "waste" to focus on what "really matters" -- and such Presidents are uniformly turds who want to buy more jets and bombs -- they do some damage but they fail at their task
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This is also why I think the public/private distinction is misguided If a new Stalin rolled into town and did consolidate that massive universal popularity letting him dictate spending arbitarily as a tyrant Well, he wouldn't be limited to moving the existing sliders around
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
If he were powerful enough to just say "Let's defund all of NASA right now and put the money into cancer research" he could ALSO say "Let's defund the movie industry right now and put THAT money into cancer research" (via punitive taxation) It might even involve less paperwork
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
And it would be a lot more money!!!!
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