Re: About social balances

[Paavo Parkkinen]

On Thu, 10.11.2005 at 12:08 -0500, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> We will form a large organization. This organization will extort money
> from every member of the population for a purpose that most members do
> not care about and cannot gain any benefit from. However, it is
> unsettling to call this act extortion, so we will instead refer to it as
> "tax collection." Because the population will not wish to pay, we will
> give this organization the power to legislate and to imprison, and we
> will encourage it to execute this power with only such restraint as is
> dictated, reluctantly, by the occasional public outcry. But we will call
> it "government", so it is okay.

I'm already regretting responding, but I'll take a shot anyway.

I agree that we should never promote creation of new _government_
institutions to take care of things that matter to _us_. I just
believe that using tax money to fund different kinds of art (we have
some kind of "artist pay" in Finland paid by the government, by the
way) enforces the idea that art is not something that should be
dictated by the laws of the market, but has some kind of inherent
value. It also gives off the impression that art belongs to everyone
and not just the corporations and rich people who happen to be able to
afford it. Art creates and builds a common and so should be paid for
by all. In short: art is not a commodity. (In reality it is, but it
shouldn't have to be.)

Paavo

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