Capitalism is the only system that lets you chase your dreams, if those dreams are stomping on the dreams of others through a position of privilege.
Yeah “acquire passive income through exploitation and then pursue your dreams”
Especially if by “pursuing your dreams” you mean exploiting workers, protecting capitalists, making opportunities for money laundering (for capitalists), or oppressing and killing minorities domestic and foreign (to help the capitalists).
Well yeah the key is to acquire that passive income before you’re born, through your parents, so that you can pursue your dreams as soon as you’re old enough to form them.
Ok then that’s my dream. Where do I sign up?
Since you were born, you’ve been doing exactly that! So don’t worry, the sign up already happened
Sometimes I think about how much art was never created because of capitalism. It either never got funded, or a potential artist never got the chance to make it, because just to scrape by, they had to spend too much time toiling to make some business owners money. It’s depressing.
And, just to cut off one potential counterargument: I don’t give half of a shit how “good” that art would be. I’m confident there are spectacular works of art that never came to be, but even putting it aside, it’s all subjective. Some folks would have loved it, and the artists would have found value in making it. That’s more than enough, and a hell of a lot more meaningful than breaking your back working for a living so that other people can own stuff for a living.
And how much crappy art was pushed to popularity just because it was more easily marketable. To be popular you have to somewhat sell out and there are probably thousands of marginalized artists no one ever discovered because of that :/
Thomas Kinkade, vomiter of light
40 hour workweek is excessive. This is based around units containing at least two adults, maybe multigenerational homes with grandparents doing childcare. Now that we expect dual incomes the workweek should be 20 hours at most before overtime kicks in.
What I am getting at is that just giving people time back to exist could happen with changes to the current system. Unfortunately that means smaller yachts for the people on top, so we cannot have it.
20 hours at most before overtime kicks in.
As a perpetually single guy I’m actually behind this. Most of the time I’m completely forgotten about and the conversation goes as if being married is the default position for everyone.
I was just talking about this yesterday with a friend. They’re a writer with a few small published things, but they can’t do it full time because they’re barely scraping by with work.
While I am not a fan of capitalism, there is something to say about everyone does what they do best. I am not an artist, but there is a lot of artists for me to enjoy and support on the internet, and for them it’s easier than ever to live the life off an artist.
and for them it’s easier than ever to live the life off an artist.
I am not an artist,
Very obviously
Is that a problem?
While I am not a fan of capitalism, there is something to say about everyone does what they do best.
And you think capitalism uniquely allows people to “do what they do best”?
I’ll make sure my virtuousic drummer friend who was forced to become an electrician’s apprentice in order to survive knows about this.
Andrei Tarkovsky is one of cinema’s greatest contributors, and published his works purely during the mid-late Soviet Era. George Lucas once expressed that he felt less free in Capitalist America to make art that he wanted to than Soviet filmmakers, even with government censorship.
Idk about other places, bit in Norway there’s a requirement for a % of the budget that has to be used for art on the outside areas and lobby area on public buildings.
Almost all of it is crap. So giving away money to anyone calling themselves an artist doesn’t work.
For some reason people in art believe they don’t have to compete like every other individual creating a business. I’ve bought art and have some on my walls at home. But it’s an ocean of bad or uncreative works to skim through if you want to find something you like.
Hey, that’s like every other work, and people still get paid for their shit output in other fields.
There’s no reason for any of us to compete to survive. Especially when the metric that determines whether one succeeds in competing is just how much money some rich fuck makes off of your efforts.
Creating art is a product which requires demand. Say you work as a graphic designer for a magazine or TV station. Then you make your money doing art just as a receptionist make money sitting behind the desk.
Being a receptionist as a freelance is a pretty shitty gig I believe. Working with art as a freelancer is actually possible. But it require a lot of networking and actual talent.
The demand for mediocre art is low. The demand for good art is high. Prices on popular works increase fast.
Wait. Define good and mediocre, first. Then, please, adress the most important point: why should we have to compete to just survive? Also, that kind of competition, and the inequalities that it gives birth to, benefit mostly the system and the very very very few people that are behind it, not the majority of the people.
I mean, for all you know that could be because they’re not giving enough money away to anyone calling themselves an artist.
*So, giving that exact amount of money away to anyone calling themselves an artist doesn’t work, for you personally.
For some reason people in art believe they don’t have to compete like every other individual creating a business
If you think art is about selling a product, what’s the point of being alive?
Why should art then be considered a profession? It could be for the talented ones. For everyone else its a hobby.
Just like so many people doing basic woodworking at home. Its a hobby and not a profession. Even though the most skilled ones has it as one.
Seeing a guy getting government founding totaling 3 million USD for shooting paint out his ass makes me clench around my tax money.
Reminds me of George Lucas talking about how Soviet filmmakers had more creative freedom than American ones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI
While there is absolutely truth to what he’s saying there, I do think it is sort of a “grass is always greener” thing.
For example, Tarkovsky famously butted heads constantly with Soviet censors/authorities about the content of his films (though to be fair, he was making some out there shit). I believe it’s ultimately why he left the USSR.
I’ve seen so many youtube videos from conservatives where they literally just listen to someone saying what their minor/emphasis was and saying “wow, it’s so stupid that’s even offered, that’s completely useless”. The comments tend to be more unhinged, I frequently see “these universities should lose their accreditation”, “it should be illegal to offer these”, etc. Usually it’s something extremely basic, like the impact of colonialism on X, or something to do with intersectionality. Like, these aren’t even their majors, they’re just a component of their degrees that they can freely choose. I feel like many conservatives are just against any new ideas regardless of their validity.
many conservatives are just against any new ideas regardless of their validity.
You got it right there. That’s exactly what conservatives are.
Oh but they fucking love evo psych when a shitty study confirms their biases, but when they run into replication issues they just ignore it.
It’s basically in the word itself: Conserve = maintain, unchanged
guarantee I learned more about running a business trying to market a touring clown show to feed and house a team of 7 clowns than most MBAs do, because if I fucked up we all would have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat, whereas if they fuck up a PowerPoint presentation their boss-who-is-also-their-Dad might be slightly peeved in the QBR.
Also capitalism: “Lol sure, you can give us $40k per year to get this art degree”
There are capitalist countries in which tuition is free, so I don’t know if we can blame this on capitalism. Then again, most likely you’re still going to have a lot of other expenses like rent, food and possibly also books and stuff, so in that case UBI would be great.
Free public tuition, like we have in Norway, is a non-capitalist component of an otherwise capitalist society. Paid higher education, like in the US, is a capitalist component of an otherwise capitalist society.
Actually this is the result of strong and convincing left parties and the fear of conservatives that communism might get more approval. At least in Germany.
Fair point.
I’d argue that free tuition is a proper capitalist component of a democratic country. Your government is pretty much a capitalist corporation, you pay your fees to the government in the form of taxes and you demand specific services to be provided for that fee. And if the government refuses to provide some service of specific quality, you vote a different government in. That’s pure capitalism at play.
It’s just that some countries don’t have neither proper functioning democracy nor capitalism.
Only 40k?
It’s a steal!
And voluntary! That’s the best part! No one forced you to choose that one over other
Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice.
This goes hard.
Where’s the quote from?
Cheers. Sounded like Marx, but wasn’t sure if it was in Kapital and wasn’t about to wade through that beast to try to find it lol.
Neo cons unironically love all of those degrees, at least in the US. Don’t forget that student loans are a big business.
Non-occupational degrees give a steady supply of young workers with massive debt and qualifications that won’t enable them to get a job with a high enough wage to pay back the principle of that debt.
This is how the gig economy flourishes.
This is how Amazon stays in business.
This is how the hospitality industry thrives on a deliberately broken business model.
This is how landlords profit.
This is how the post-boomer generations are oppressed.
We are cannon fodder.
Rise up.
Become ungovernable.
FTP
I was with you, but I don’t think becoming “ungovernable” would help anything. Cool slogan and all but seems pretty counterproductive.
It’s really just a call to change by not playing by their rules, eg get a degree and then move to a jurisdiction where the loan people can’t get to you, or get a degree from another country where it’s less expensive.
I’m not really advocating for riots or anything.
Communists: communism is the only system that creates equality.
Also Communists: Fuck art degrees, …work the factory cogs comrade & think of the collective!
Don’t forget the few artists that do exist are forced to make state propaganda
Yeah this is a blight of communism and leftism in general, you have no real artists, just State propagandists
Capitalist: If you aren’t a simp for capitalists, you must be communist. There is literally not other choice. Trust me bro.
The difference is you can still get those degrees if you want to. In communism, you cant.
Colleges didn’t exist in communism?
They did, but you got training in whatever the state wanted, not the individual.
This is not true. At least here in Romania, the issue with colleges under communism was that there were VERY limited slots, so you had to either be the best of the best or have a high up party member in the family or as a close personal friend.
So you are basically agreeing? Not true on paper but in practice you couldn’t just get into college, which is what OP claimed.
No, I’m disagreeing. You could study anything you wanted, not what the state wanted. It was just hard to get a slot.
I guess it’s similar to how it’s incredibly hard to get a scholarship at a great university today. You’d hardly say that the modern scholarship system “forces you to study what the state wants”.
Not as different as recent past in Brazil. Federal and State universities where free and the top of the country, but the slots were few and the competition high. And because class disparities were reinforced on school education, even if the universities were free, only rich and middle income families were able to get in. Since the first Lula’s government, there have been policies in place to ensure that public schools and black students have exclusive slots. Brazillian middle class hate it, but they can eat it. This year was the first time in history that USP (best university in Brazil) had more admission from public schools that for private ones.
Yeah, that does sound very comparable to what I was talking about. Your example and mine both do not have the state deciding what university you apply to though, which is what I understood from “the state decides what you’ll study”.
Spherical cow in a vacuum argument…
Can you provide historical references that prove this statement? I’ve only seen this idea presented in anti-communist propaganda, speculation, and works of fiction.
Do you know that political systems are a spectrum and hard socialism or communism are not eh only alternatives to rampant capitalism? Have you heard of Scandinavian countries like Sweden or Norway? If not, I strongly recommend reading about their political systems.
This is true! Socialism is a spectrum of different political expressions of the idea of socially held wealth. The term was coined by Marx to a wider already existant school of thought regarding how basic human needs should be handled through copious economic planning. The slogan we hear about workers and means of production isn’t quite accurate as it is kind of a short quippy way to summerize passages that uses terms like “use-value”.
There were other promenant thinkers who served as and creditied as predecessors on that school of thought. We tend to use the term “proto socialists” to that group because many of them predeceased the term but Socialism is an umbrella term. If you believe on any form distribution of resources required to meet basic needs then you fall under the umbrella.
A lot of the Socialist movers and shakers of the past saw variable amounts and expressions of success in integration of Socialist principles inside democratic systems.
Communism has somewhat less shades of grey and while technically under the umbrella term socialism in some ways it is unique. It refers in practice of the supposed handover of power to a system that is supposed to have a diminishing need for a state while also prohibiting privately held property. It sometimes aims for a currency free situation. As such it is incompatible with current models of liberal-socialist spectrums of representitive democracies. It has also never technically succeeded in that handoff… Which is sometimes veiwed as a critical failure point inate to the attempted implementation of the ideology - or as a set of individual failures of the movements who attempted to adopt the ideology in name and fumbled the landing.
There is a lot of interesting history on different forms of socialism!
Yes because Scandinavian countries aren’t capitalist societies.
Too bad the scandinavian model still has the inherent unsustainability of Capitalism, rampant exploitation, and hyper-exploitation of the Global South.
The difference is you can still get those degrees if you want to.
If you come from a family of means you can, and no one will bat an eye.
If you get those degrees on student loans because it’s your passion, you wind up in massive debt and poverty, usually with capitalism defenders (and the owner’s for profit media) running to point and yell that you deserve it for not picking a passion that will maximize your utility at providing capital value to the owners.
Self-actualization for nepo babies all day. Preparation to be one of those nepo baby’s batteries for the rest.
Why not?
Gulag
For what?
What are you genuinely talking about?
Go on
The problem is it doesn’t let you catch them.
Capitalism is the only system that lets you chase your dreams as long as you can sell them
You are free to chase those dreams. You are free to also struggle to find employment like the rest of us. Why hamper yourself? Do things that aren’t profitable but you enjoy as hobbies Stop trying to find fulfillment at work.
Reading this comment has made me measurably stupider.
Art is hugely profitable.
The arts are a significant contributor to the UK economy. Here’s a quick breakdown of their impact:
- Economic output: The creative industries, which include the arts, are estimated to generate £126 billion in gross value added (GVA) to the UK economy. This represents around 5.6% of the total economy.
- Employment: The creative industries employ around 2.4 million people in the UK, accounting for 7% of all filled jobs. This sector has also seen a faster recovery in employment after the pandemic compared to the rest of the economy.
So your argument is… Yay capitalism?
No, I was simply refuting the claim that art isn’t profitable. If it was up to me, art as a recreation would be what people were encouraged to do with their days instead of working for corporations.
But people are encouraged to do art as recreation. There are plenty of groups and courses to paint, write or dance in your free time.
The caveat was instead of working. As the OP said people should stop trying to find fulfillment at work.
Who are we to gatekeep where people find fulfillment?
Exactly!
Ok, so your meme is wrong then…it sounds like the few artists that can’t make it are just to shit at marketing themselves then.
Yeah. You should be miserable most of the time. That’s humanity’s natural state.
Dude, capitalism has been taking advantages of those degree, or rather, the whole education system!
To be fair, how many historians etc do you need to qualify every year?
What’s the point of studying something for years, getting in to dozens of thousands in student debt, potentially getting near the top of your field and then having to go work in a Starbucks because there are so few vacancies in your field?
I agree that these degrees are nice to have, but we should be honest with students in regards to the sort of lifestyle they can expect after they qualify.
Yeah, exactly. Capitalism sucks. Your example is perfect. It kills the future of anyone interested in learning from the past. Learning from the past is key to a functional humanity.
No system of government, with a capitalist economy or otherwise, is inherently incompatible with, or inherently supportive of people being employed by or receiving grants from national institutes for arts/sciences or other similar organizations, public or private.
If a country is lacking in that regard it’s not the fault of their economic system. It’s due to the values of the people in power. And in the case of a democracy, it’s partially due to the values of the voters as well.
In my country, public and private funding for arts and sciences without a profit motive has been on the decline for decades and I would love to see huge increases. But no matter what the system is, there are limits. Everybody can’t be an artist, scientist, or philosopher. A large portion of people are going to have to produce necessities.
Being able to chase your dreams is no guarantee you will be good enough to catch one of the limited slots, even if the number of slots is high.
If a country is lacking in that regard it’s not the fault of their economic system. It’s due to the values of the people in power. And in the case of a democracy, it’s partially due to the values of the voters as well.
This is idealism, and I don’t mean the concept of having ideals. I am referring to the branch of philosophy that believes thoughts shape matter, rather than matter shaping thoughts.
The problem here is that you seem to believe that society is driven by “great men” rather than material conditions. The issue is not because of random cultural values or politicians, but the underlying material reality as shaped by the economic system.
Reading theory would help you a lot.
That’s a lot of word salad for “nuh uh”.
Don’t put words in my mouth to make me fit one of your cookie cutter fake opponents, dealing with whom seems to be the only thing your theory reading has prepared you for.
There is nothing stopping funding levels from returning to the level they once were other than the will of the people with the power to do so and the will of the people that put them there and allow them to remain. We know this because we’ve already done it, in many places with a variety of underlying systems. We did it where I live for quite a while before the last few decades of reversals.
Relying on “the will of the people” is idealism and ignores material reality.
That’s a nonsensical thing to say. Everything that’s ever been done by anyone has been done because the person(s) doing so had the will to do it. From making lunch to toppling a government.
If your world view is some kind of circular human centipede of tautological alternate definitions that doesn’t allow for any discussions that don’t accept your conclusions a priori then talking to you isn’t likely to be any more fruitful than a discussion with a Qultist or a MAGAt.
The will did not come before the Material Conditions.
Again, reading Leftist Theory would help you quite a lot. We are on Lefty Memes, after all.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but whether you live in a capitalist, socialist, communist or what ever other types of economic systems are available, you need to be intellectually honest about what types of workers the society needs to be able thrive.
How many historians do you want qualified before you would say, “maybe we should incentivise people in to things like medicine or engineering”, a hundred thousand, a million?
Of course history is important, but there’s clearly a sensible limit to how many job opportunities there are for curators, archeologists, researchers, teachers etc.
In the UK, more or less fifty percent of young people have a uni level of education but there are not fifty percent of vacant jobs that require a degree level education. It might be absolute lovely that my barista has a history degree, but they could have joined the workforce several years earlier, have dozens of thousands pounds less in debt and still had the opportunity to study history in their own time.
It assumes one only dreams of making money.
