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Comment by qeternity | Hacker News Reader

> I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.

Maybe it shouldn't be possible. Society is telling your friend that her work is not particularly valuable and that she should probably consider doing something else.

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> Society is telling your friend that her work is not particularly valuable and that she should probably consider doing something else.

Challenge

> I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.

^ That tax exemption _is_ from society. You may not agree with it, but clearly (at least some part of) "society" does.

There’s plenty of things that are valuable for society while still not having significant financial value.

Money is generally how we describe value.

Almost all religions, a good chunk of philosophy and even a good bit of economics would differ with you.

I hope you find out before it's too late.

Pretty patronizing, but I'll bite.

I think we as a society strive to make gp correct that money is representative of value, and rightfully so.

Anyone partaking in any activity that has value to others should be given money. That is literally what this basic income/tax break for artists is for. Someone thought producing art had value and pure capitalism wasn't correctly matching that value with monetary rewards.

There are lots of rich churches and church leaders out there. That's because they serve a human need, and those humans are willing to direct some of their finite resources towards that provider. (I'm talking about the collections plate if you didn't catch that.)

Now obviously money on its own is not value. It should represent value that you delivered to someone else in the past, and is helpful for getting whatever value your life needs. You mentioned philosophy --- that yoga retreat in the Andes isn't free, is it?

Now sometimes we muddy the waters, for example we permit lotteries where the winner takes home a good deal of money without providing any value to anyone. That debases money, and I think it has no part in society, but I'm unfortunately swimming against the tide on that one.

Love, honesty, kindness, ..., none of these have value?

So... Money is generally how we describe value for those things which can be traded for

Of course they do. I'm not saying it's the only way to measure value as individuals. But as a society, lots of things do boil down to money, as that's the medium of exchange. Society was the context of this thread, not individual.

Working a 9-5 to support one's loved ones; an honest day's work; generosity. It's quite easy to connect each of these values to money.

Yeah ok now what's the value of verisimilitude? /s

Money describes prices, not value.

What I would suggest you do is, find a loving partner to start a family with, then do everything you can for 20 years to focus primarily on earning, or otherwise acquiring, money.

Then get divorced and discover your children don’t know who you are, and neither do you. And your wife took the dog too.

It’s an almost guaranteed way to eradicate this wildly stupid idea you have.

Money describes a price, not a value. Two different concepts.

Not quite. Money is how we describe instrumental value, and occasionally allocation priority. Personal attachment and moral worth are also terms often used interchangeably with "value," though in my opinion that should stop and we should all simply never use the word "value" again because so many meanings have collapsed into it.

The most expensive vacations I took were not the most valuable ones to me

One of the really cool things about capitalism is that you can, directly or indirectly, put financial value on pretty much anything.

One of the uncool things about capitalism is that it, directly or indirectly, monetizes everything.

Indeed! e:g - looking after elderly and/or disabled people, to give their family carers respite. Which is a minimum wage job seen by many as "drain on the taxpayer", ignoring that apart from being worth providing for its own sake, it can enable the family carers to be also economic contributors and pay tax themselves.

Society told Van Gogh that nobody wants or will ever want his work. He killed (probably) himself out of depression and feeling unwanted, miserable.

Yes, this was empirically true at the time. Things change. And that does not invalidate my comment in the least.

This is a false assumption. We will only know retrospectively whether it was valuable or not.

1. She gets better all the time, and might be super popular in the future 2. Many writings became relevant only long after the death of the author

A lot of those relevant writings became relevant because of the horrible experiences the author went through forged them into an interesting writer. If we're assuming that we only know retrospectively whether the writing is important then the best course of action would be for people to write as a hobby and make choices that are likely (rather than unlikely) to lead to a comfortable life. Particularly in this current era where we might suspect that writing and publishing a book is getting much easier thanks to technology.

Are you arguing that most good writers from history were poor? This is after all the only "horrible experience" a subsidy would alleviate. I don't think that's actually supported by evidence, most great writers I can think of were relatively extremely sheltered (although they often were sensitive to the horrible experiences of others)

> Are you arguing that most good writers from history were poor?

No. If I was arguing that I'd have said that.

I'm observing that a lot of great writers had pretty miserable lives and I'm arguing that people should aim to live comfortably.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood, I thought you were still on the topic of the subsidy.

I think the argument is a) most writers have to do a lot of writing to achieve writing consumable/appreciated but sufficient to be considered successful, b) most great writers had to go through some shit in life to incorporate that in their writing to make it interesting in order to be successful.

> A lot of those relevant writings became relevant because of the horrible experiences the author went through forged them into an interesting writer.

Sometimes artists suffer, but it's mostly a legend at this point. Plenty of great artists have perfectly fine lives. Look at like, any modern fantasy or sci fi author.

You’re missing, somewhat gleefully, most of the history of western art, which you could imagine as split between patronage-based art (have you heard of the Sistine Chapel, for instance?) and vernacular art - where things like genre storytelling and family portraits come from.

Broadly speaking, vernacular artists work for a fucking living; it’s rare there (like in most pursuits) to get super rich. We can’t all be David Baldacci or Danielle Steele.

NB: Thanks to Neal Stephenson for the best essay on this. He calls genre artists “Beowulf” artists.

TIL "vernacular art". I like it.

Am noob. The phrase "folk art" never satisfied me. Is it really all that different? But I didn't have the gumption to learn more. Happily, the critics and philosophers did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_art

Thanks.

I don't think that being able to support a family of three in Ireland is particularly a sign that society doesn't value your work. If she had to pay income tax, perhaps she'd only be able to support herself -- but if you think everyone in Ireland who only makes enough money to support themselves is doing not particularly valuable work, I think it's worth considering the implications of that.

I have thoughts on how we're defining value as well, but others have covered those.

It's naive to conflate income as a clear signal of what society needs.

If you have any understanding of history, it's naive not to.

As demonstrated, crisps are more valuable to the society than art.

Her work can be valuable, in money terms, even of the value of her work is less than the money needed to support her family.

Sure, and again, she should do something else then.

She isn't entitled to have a large family and work whatever job she finds fulfilling.

Society is not telling her that - the labour market is. I guess she should get off her lazy ass and learn how to become a high frequency trader.

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