[HN Gopher] The Death of the Middle-Class Musician
___________________________________________________________________
The Death of the Middle-Class Musician
Author : pseudolus
Score : 266 points
Date : 2025-06-28 22:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| ...in Canada.
|
| It's weird to call it dead because I'm not sure it was ever truly
| alive.
| parpfish wrote:
| How many financially self-sustaining musicians _should_ there be?
| Streaming has caused the number to fall, but recorded music
| before that likely made it fall as well.
|
| Should we stop thinking about music as a job and start thinking
| about it as a hobbyist art form? Nobody is out there lamenting
| that you can't make a living off of landscape painting. It's a
| fun form of self expression that people will do regardless of the
| economics, so maybe the problem was ever thinking you could make
| a profession out of it?
| Animats wrote:
| > Should we stop thinking about music as a job and start
| thinking about it as a hobbyist art form?
|
| At one point there were several million "MySpace Bands". That's
| music as a hobbyist art form. Some of them might even have been
| good.
| parpfish wrote:
| imo, it's better to have a million bands dicking around and
| having fun playing terrible shows for crowds of ten people
| than a hundred polished superstar groups playing sold out
| arenas.
| cmoski wrote:
| Those are not the only two choices. There are so many great
| bands playing shows to hundreds or a few thousand people.
|
| Maybe you don't value music or live music, but there are a
| lot of people out there that do. You not caring much for it
| doesn't change the fact or make it ok that they're getting
| stiffed by those with the upper hand in the relationship.
| Semaphor wrote:
| At least for metal, there are still tons of tiny musicians.
| Underground labels do cassette runs for the smallest of them,
| medium-tiny ones might get vinyls.
|
| Bandcamp is chock full of bands, from home produced stuff, to
| bands spending saved money on a cheap studio. It's enough
| that even in the sub-niches I like, I can listen to 10-20
| newly released albums every week.
|
| I doubt more than a small single digit percentage of them
| make money that way, but they very often really enjoy what
| they are doing.
| billy99k wrote:
| I suppose we can say the same thing about all jobs when AI gets
| good enough to take them over.
| whstl wrote:
| We will start thinking about jobs when the tech feudal lords
| find out there's no more growth, because consumers to their
| products are being replaced by AI.
|
| Some are already worried:
| https://fortune.com/europe/2025/06/09/bnpl-loans-klarna-
| ceo-...
|
| "How many jobs there should be for X" is not a question that
| can be answered by people whose main intent in the last few
| years has been to put others out of a job while claiming
| they're making the world a better place. Aka, us in tech.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > We will start thinking about jobs when the tech feudal
| lords find out there's no more growth, because consumers to
| their products are being replaced by AI.
|
| The future feudal lords will just sell to each other and
| ignore the jobless, moneyless masses. We don't like to hear
| this, but normal people will likely become less and less
| economically relevant, to the point where their total
| economic activity will one day be a rounding error next to
| the economic activity of the top 0.0N%.
|
| I worked with a founder who dealt with only a small number
| of very rich customers. He would say "We only sell to the
| rich because they have the money." The future looks like a
| more extreme version of this.
| cardanome wrote:
| Rich people selling stuff to other rich people is just
| moving wealth around, it does not generate wealth.
|
| I sell you stuff worth 5 billion, you give me 5 billion.
| Nothing happened. Maybe you even consume the product so
| there is less wealth.
|
| Only labor can generate value. Work is what transforms a
| thing into another thing that has more value than before.
| Machines and AI do not create value.
|
| You might wonder what would happen if they had an general
| AI, maybe actual autonomous robots? Would those create
| value? Well, at first whoever got the first AGI would get
| incredibly rich but if everyone had access to that tech,
| the prices for everything that can produced with it would
| plummet down until they are the cost of running the AI.
|
| Rich people get richer by employing poor people. So they
| can extract the value they produce. If they don't employ
| anyone, they are not making any profit. (Well for actual
| free markets, you can of course make profit being a
| monopolist and stuff or just do crime.)
|
| So yes, rich people are screwed. That is why they buy
| bunkers in New Zealand. That is why we see the rise of
| fascism, because they will have to tighten the screws to
| keep the ship running a little while longer.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Exactly, they are running for the haven of government to
| retain power.
| fragmede wrote:
| Why keep any ships running other than their own? kill off
| 90% of the humans, starting with the poor, using robots,
| after robots can make new robots and fix themselves and
| do all the other jobs?
|
| If we're looking at extremes, I don't think the ultra
| rich are in as bad a position as you want them to be.
| ringeryless wrote:
| a lot of ifs there, most of which aren't really in the
| cards: aka laborless robotic self reproduction?
| seriously? if we have learned one thing in the last
| decades it is that complex systems need to be rebooted
| sometimes because <state>
|
| silicone valley is grifting its own rich people with
| paper bomb shelters.
| zuminator wrote:
| That doesn't work for all industries though. iPhones and
| other mass luxury/ "masstige" goods are essentially high-
| end commodities. Apple can't stay rich just selling to
| richies, they need poor sods to line up to buy millions
| upon millions of Apple devices. And that can't happen if
| aforementioned sods have no income. Same with most
| electronics, with most travel, with autos, with apparel,
| most restaurants, videogames, furnishings and appliances,
| etc. Income inequality can only go so far without dire
| economic consequences. If the non-wealthy become a mere
| rounding error in terms of aggregate purchasing power,
| then we simply won't be able to buy enough to keep these
| lifestyle manufacturers flush.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >I worked with a founder who dealt with only a small
| number of very rich customers. He would say "We only sell
| to the rich because they have the money."
|
| So you worked with someone who you claim to be a direct
| -knowing even- participant in this trend. You presumably
| benefited from this work too. No?
|
| It's impressive how many people bemoan the dangers they
| see in a thing, while continuing to contribute to its
| growth, again and again and again, as long as the
| personal benefit keeps working their way.
| hollerith wrote:
| He's a real Adolf Eichmann, that one
| ryandrake wrote:
| This escalated quickly!
| hollerith wrote:
| I hope you realize I was using sarcasm and was trying to
| defend you against the criticism.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with working for a founder
| who has that as a philosophy, because I also don't think
| some of the arguments here about the elite of the world
| appropriating ever more wealth while crushing the masses
| into misery are realistic at all (They smell more like
| mid-20th century communist fantasies of capitalist
| decline than anything to me)
|
| But, if your central moral argument about the subject
| does revolve around thinking such a scenario is likely
| and being disgusted by it, then being paid by the people
| supposedly promoting this kind of economic inequality and
| working with them while they do it is pretty goddam
| hypocritical.
| kleiba wrote:
| _> Nobody is out there lamenting that you can't make a living
| off of landscape painting._
|
| Completely different markets, though: how much time per day do
| you spend looking at landscape paintings vs. listening to
| music?
| Den_VR wrote:
| I'd say I intentionally listen to music maybe an hour total
| per month, usually while my eyes are occupied.
|
| Meanwhile, outside of museums most landscape art is also
| advertising. But I'll spend two or three hours at an art
| museum when I get the chance.
| kleiba wrote:
| I hear music all the time, when I commute, when I drive
| kids to various clubs, friends, and events, when they put
| music on at home, when I watch a TV show or a movie - all
| that music was produced by somebody.
|
| I like art but I cannot remember the last time I went to an
| exhibition. Certainly not since my wife and I became
| parents.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "I like music but cannot remember the last time I went to
| a concert"
|
| That seems like a weird angle to take it, no? I know it's
| just an example but there is more than one type of
| artist, just as there's more than one type of musician.
| As simple as it is, someone needed to design the
| YCombinator logo. Art is everywhere as well, even on a
| site like this that doesn't host much visual media.
|
| (P.S. I do remember the last time I went to a concert.
| October).
| kleiba wrote:
| Sorry, I cannot follow. But I don't find your first
| sentence to be weird.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I was mostly just saying that your comparisons seem
| uneven. You were comparing one specific part of art
| (landscape painting) to the entire music industry. There
| more ways to art.
| fragmede wrote:
| when was the last time you saw something beautiful
| though? Or just saw something and it made you think.
| neom wrote:
| Yesterday a butterfly got stuck in my pool, I usually try
| to save them. This one was trying it's hardest to fly but
| the water on it's wings was just slightly too heavy or
| something, but it was flapping really hard and making the
| most amazing ripple in the pool, I froze and couldn't
| stop looking at the ripple it was making, the ripple
| frequency and modulation was was slow and totally
| perfect, even tho it was flapping incredibly hard...but I
| also thought it's stuck and going to die, but I was
| totally fixated on the frequency and amplitudes. I
| managed to break my gaze and got it out. That was the
| most beautiful thing that made me think recently, I'm
| still thinking about it.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Now you've got me thinking about the beauty in the
| mundane. The real butterfly effect is the friends we make
| along the way. You saved the butterfly one time, and in
| the telling, you've helped save my hope in humanity. To
| me, these moments are as genuinely human as any
| achievement. To be human is to behold, and to be
| captivated thus.
| kleiba wrote:
| Why is that relevant? We're talking about the commercial
| prospect of making music vs. that of painting landscapes.
| 11217mackem wrote:
| Everyone knows that music is the objectively superior art
| form. Perhaps excluding film, which, putting aside scant
| creative geniuses, requires music and scoring.
|
| Anyone who could live on this planet without music is a
| psycopath.
| Den_VR wrote:
| People can be so go-go-go they don't have time to think
| and reflect. Music is similar, it's a source of constant
| distraction for the mind. It's even more prominent in
| contemporary music. When listening to pieces more than a
| thousand years old and you'll sometimes find works that
| build meaning into the silence as masterfully as artists
| compose paintings with negative space. But now it seems
| any gap must be filled with a beat. Y'all can stay
| wrapped up in your noise-noise-noise. But do excuse me
| for being comfortable in the silence of my own thoughts.
| ringeryless wrote:
| yes! i still have the songs i listened to last week
| echoing around in my head. i foind out i have some kind
| of memory based perfect pitch, as when i put thr
| recording on again it's in the same key i was playing it
| in my head in. i can literally hum every note of it,
| despite having heard it twice about a week ago, because
| it was poignant and stuck with me.
|
| silence is golden and allows for reflection upon what we
| heard
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Both are there constantly in the background of my day.
|
| It's not really The Sims. You don't usually go stand in front
| of one of your paintings and emote a bunch. It's just there
| breathing life into a space.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Landscape painters were replaced by cameras.
|
| We do spend a lot of time looking at photos!
| lapcat wrote:
| The question we should be asking, as consumers of music, is how
| many musical options do we want?
|
| If musicians can't make a living, then both the quantity and
| quality of our musical options go down. Yes, hobbyists will
| always make music for themselves, but hobbyists won't
| necessarily record music for us or tour around the country for
| us to see in live venues. The issue is not that musicians
| inherently deserve to make a living; the issue is, what kind of
| musical market is available for consumers?
| DennisP wrote:
| Plenty of hobbyists record their music. A lot of the music I
| listen to is from youtubers with a handful of views.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Plenty of hobbyists record their music.
|
| That's not contrary to what I said, which was "hobbyists
| won't _necessarily_ [emphasis added] record music for us ".
| And of course you didn't respond to my point about touring.
|
| In any case, the music and recordings of hobbyists are
| likely to be inferior to the music and recordings of
| professionals, because in general, professionals are better
| than hobbyists at almost everything, music being only one
| example.
|
| > A lot of the music I listen to is from youtubers with a
| handful of views.
|
| If that's the future you want, then I guess you're in luck.
| DennisP wrote:
| Generally if a comment makes multiple points, I don't
| feel I have to refrain from replying if I only have a
| response to one of them. I'm not here to prove you wrong,
| just to make whatever point I have.
|
| There's plenty of music available even if only some
| hobbyists record. In terms of musical options, I'd say
| we're in a golden age. Used to be, we could only listen
| to whatever some record label was willing to fund. Before
| that, just local musicians. Now we can pull up all sorts
| of obscure musicians all over the world. Recently I went
| down a rabbit hole of famous rock songs played in
| medieval style on period instruments; that's not
| something I'd be likely to find at a record store.
|
| Recording isn't the barrier it used to be, and it'll keep
| getting easier to make good mixes as the software
| improves.
|
| Meanwhile, it's likely that the power law will continue
| to apply, and plenty of especially talented musicians
| will hit the big time and do live touring. In fact, as
| more music is generated by AI, I expect people seeking
| authenticity will develop more interest in live music.
| megaloblasto wrote:
| Can you recommend a YouTuber with a hand full of views that
| you think is a good musician?
| Larrikin wrote:
| There are tons of rappers and EDM DJs on Soundcloud (not
| YouTube) that have legitimately good music. They might
| not be good 5 years from now or even 1 year from now, but
| they are good now if you put the work into finding them.
| Seems like atleast in the DJ scene someone might be on
| top of the world fairly quickly even if they disappear
| soon after.
| nradov wrote:
| For SoundCloud rappers I really like Smoke Chedda Tha A$$
| Getta.
| rurban wrote:
| I find the best EDM and rappers in skate videos. They are
| booked and paid by the venue
| derektank wrote:
| I'm not sure if they're more popular on other media
| platforms, but I've really enjoyed quite a few songs by
| the Japanese band Ribettowns and their YouTube account
| has less than 1K subscribers
| megaloblasto wrote:
| That was sick. I watched one will less than 1000 views
| and it was amazing. How'd you find them?
| BabylonSysErr wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/@TheHotClams/videos
| https://www.youtube.com/@Rikmacmusic
| https://www.youtube.com/@MikeHarrisonMusic
| megaloblasto wrote:
| I find this very interesting. None of those artists were
| bad by any means. But the sound quality is really bad,
| and none of then are even close to something like Goat
| Rodeo [1] which has over a million views precisely
| because of the exceptional performances and the high
| quality video and audio. Why not just listen to that? I'm
| genuinely curious. I'm sure there could be a good reason.
| Maybe you know then personally or saw them at a memorable
| moment.I'd love to know what it is that draws you to
| those artists.
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7EcT5YzKhQ&pp=ygUeUXVh
| cnRlciB...
| DennisP wrote:
| Sure, here's a sampling with a favorite from each. I'm a
| synth fan, some of these guys are good keyboard players
| and others are just really good with synths, as far as I
| know. Some of the handfuls are bigger than others.
|
| Gabe Churray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGufuxRFqAM
|
| Pete Calandra:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUxNw2MEg0Q
|
| LtN Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qke-hC7RnXQ
|
| Johannes Winkler:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1tySFkXUUA
|
| Caught In Joy:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxM9MNau3U
|
| Jay Hosking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCLqevwWE1g
|
| Gattobus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGeAMOwW01k
|
| Dexba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3PB05qVI38
|
| Tefty & Meems:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILVIzsoc6_0
|
| Vox Mnemonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnQi3dnWrKE
|
| Oxix52: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNZPzSaYKo
|
| JP Blasco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKiB04JlQqY
|
| Kris Lennox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3GNZYcXUU
|
| Singing Circuitry:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwdxTuFosdo
|
| Winterdagen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhNfUDs6TGY
|
| Noah Lifschey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVFg-
| ZxNns0
| mlsu wrote:
| Everyone should become an engineer. Then we can spend our whole
| lives working to build stuff. That way, we can prevent anyone
| from pursuing anything creative, beautiful, or transcendental.
|
| Like, I see where you're going with this but music is one of
| those things that's actually the _whole point of being alive_.
| If all we ever do is do "useful" things ($$$) we lose our
| chance to actually live our lives.
| parpfish wrote:
| i think you're reading something into my post that i didnt
| intend. i hate the "just learn to code"/"only STEM degrees
| are worthwhile" crowd.
|
| we absolutely should be pursing things that are creative,
| beautiful, and transcendental. but.. should we expect the
| pursuit of the creative, beautiful, and transcendental to be
| a _career_? we should encourage everybody to do because it is
| inherently valuable instead of pursuing it because its a job.
| popalchemist wrote:
| We should not encourage _everybody_ to pursue the arts. But
| a society that disregards the importance of the arts (one
| symptom of which is that the pursuit of the arts as a
| career /way of life is inviable) then the society as a
| whole will -- 100% absolutely guaranteed -- suffer as a
| result. The arts are the means by which the unconscious
| comes to consciousness. Music is a means by which the
| sublime, and of course even various mundane psycho-
| spiritual-emotional states -- become accessible for the
| vast majority of people who can not access said states
| without aid.
|
| In the absence of that, neurosis is certain to flourish.
|
| So, it is not an economic matter but a matter of the
| psychodynamics of society. For the sake of the health of
| the whole, some members of the whole must be able to bring
| in certain vibes, patterns, states of mind, ideas, etc. And
| without the ability to pursue that and only that skillset,
| they won't be able to succeed at that. And it is required
| for the functioning of the whole.
|
| It's a bit akin to the way the entire body depends on the
| cells that process ATP. If you eliminate all cells that
| serve that role, the entire body dies, even though they are
| a miniscule aspect of the entire operation. That is where
| the animating spirit comes from.
| mettamage wrote:
| Well sure, but he asked "should we expect the pursuit of
| the creative, beautiful, and transcendental to be a
| career?"
|
| My answer is no not necessarily. One can pursue it in
| their free time. Whether it should be a career or not is
| honestly an invisible hand question (aka capitalism). I'm
| normally not pro invisible hand such as in the case of
| healthcare, but when it comes to stuff like this, I
| totally am.
|
| It might be beneficial to have dedicated people to do
| this, but a lot can be accomplished by free time.
| sethammons wrote:
| The US constitution says congress will pay for useful arts
| and sciences. It says this before paying for national
| defense fwiw. If career soldiers and scientists can exist
| with federal dollars, so should useful artists. Now to
| define useful art...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| "Useful art" is an old term that means what people call
| "engineering" nowadays.
| derektank wrote:
| The "useful arts" mentioned in the US constitution refers
| to the works of artisans and craftsmen, such as textile
| manufacturers, instrument* makers, and people working in
| construction.
|
| *Realizing this might be confusing in context. I meant
| e.g. navigational instruments
| ancillary wrote:
| "whole point of being alive" is maybe exaggerating for
| something that most people are demonstrably uninterested in
| paying more than a very small fraction of their income to
| consume?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Nobody is out there lamenting that you can't make a living off
| of landscape painting
|
| Plenty are. But your experience in landscape painting transfers
| to other professional crafts, so the loss is mitigated. What
| does a skilled musician have to tranfer to if the industry
| falls apart? Teaching music?
|
| I also really don't like reinforcing the idea that "the arts
| aren't meant to be a career". One of the biggest turnabouts in
| the 20th century is that you don't need to already be set for
| life in order to spend your days training your passions. The
| arts are (or were) no longer this "high class" means to
| distinguish yourself from the working class.
|
| Meanwhile so much of society is built upon and weathered
| against destruction over such artisans. Are you really going to
| have a healthy society if all kids see growing up are pencil
| pushers, hard physical labor, managing retail, or hyper-
| specializing after 20+ years of schooling? What's all that work
| building up to? To serve billionaires?
| parpfish wrote:
| okay, well what if i had picked a different example:
|
| nobody is out there lamenting that we're not supporting a
| 'middle class' of baseball players.
|
| the top 0.001% get to the big leagues and make bank. the top
| 0.01% scrape by in the minors. nobody else makes a dime.
| yet... plenty of people are still passionate about the game
| and play it for free. the guys playing in an adult rec leauge
| aren't thinking "there's a career in this I can put together
| a good highlight reel this season". they're playing because
| they find it fun and fulfilling.
|
| so maybe musicians should view music like professional
| sports? do it because you love it. start a band with your
| friends. play gigs at your local bar every friday. but don't
| kid yourself that it's a career.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >nobody is out there lamenting that we're not supporting a
| 'middle class' of baseball players.
|
| I will cheekily argue that the "transferable skill" of
| failed athletes is charisma. It's pretty clear that being
| able to talk about sports is a cheat code for upwards
| mobility (no matter the industry) and the mentality it
| builds is of high social value (you'll never find trouble
| finding a local court or field to make a pickup game with.
| An artists Meetup, a bit harder to arrange). Certainly more
| than 99% of artists.
|
| But to properly answer your point, I don't have the full
| answer of how to balance "necessary careers" with "dream
| careers". If you want to maintain a satisfied populace
| (aka, prevent a violent coup by people who feel they have
| nothing to lose), they need to feel their dreams are
| reachable. Emphasis on "feel".
|
| You don't even need to make money off your dreams per se.
| But you need time for it, and basics safeties taken care
| of. the current atmosphere offers neither.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| Why do you think nobody is lamenting that you can't make a
| living off of landscape painting? Lot's of people want to be
| professional artists. Some percentage of them actually are able
| to make a living off of it.
|
| I think most artists would tell you that if people couldn't
| make a living as visual artists, the quality of new art in the
| world would decrease tremendously. Painting is a craft - it
| takes a lot of training to develop the skills. It also takes a
| ton of work to develop one's own style. Then there's the whole
| business part of marketing the work.
|
| Very few great artists would have been able to reach their
| level of quality just doing it as a hobby.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Streaming is only the next step of the ladder, the reality is
| that ever since recording was possible (then broadcasting, then
| the internet), music (and most of the arts for that matter) has
| increasing winner-take all effects, where a minuscule amount of
| artists reap huge gains, while the rest just scrape by.
|
| Now, with AI, all signs seem to indicate that the industry will
| finally reset to what was the norm for hundreds of years :
| Artists would be supported on their craft by patrons and
| benefactors. Most didn't make it to be wealthy, but at least,
| they got to enjoy time in their craft.
| spamizbad wrote:
| > How many financially self-sustaining musicians should there
| be?
|
| That depends, how much do you value culture (and, my extension:
| cultural power)? If it's a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing,
| then whatever the market will bear.
| troad wrote:
| I intuitively agree with this perspective, even if I'm unsure
| about the consequences, and would probably need to think more
| deeply about them.
|
| Once, when criticising the toxic effects of advertising, I got
| a response to the effect of 'but how will streamers be able to
| support themselves?!'. Which I was really struck by, because it
| presumes that streamers _should_ be able to support themselves
| by streaming. Should they? Is this actually a desirable
| outcome? Yes, the financial viability probably leads to more
| streaming, but what about the quality of the overall streaming?
| And what about the opportunity cost when someone gives up their
| job and puts their labours into the business of streaming?
|
| There will always be some level of cultural output, since there
| will always be passionate people. But has making the arts an
| industry (through an ever expanding artifice of 'intellectual
| property', and the ever expanding criminalisation of its
| subversion) actually led to better arts? Would this be a better
| or worse world if people built bridges in their day job and
| played rock gigs at night, solely for the love of it?
|
| I'm not trying to do a Socratic dialogue here, I genuinely
| don't know. But I suspect the answer is much more nuanced than
| 'more money = better art', and I am sceptical of certain legal
| or economic distortions based on that assumption (e.g. life +
| 70 copyright terms, surveillance advertising, surveillance DRM
| software, billion-dollar industries that subsist solely on
| 'IP', fines and prison terms for unauthorised sharing, or the
| reversing or bypassing of DRM, etc).
| bix6 wrote:
| A lot.
|
| Many musicians teach others. Without them how will we learn one
| of the most beautiful / coolest things to ever exist?
|
| I've tried learning from an app and it's not the same as
| spending an hour with my guitar teacher. It's not even close. I
| wish he were paid more given how talented he is and how hard he
| works.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I wish he were paid more given how talented he is and how
| hard he works.
|
| He's your guitar teacher. It would be difficult for you to
| state a wish that was more completely under your own control.
| bix6 wrote:
| I'm talking about the gigs where he gets paid in beer and
| the streaming where he makes pennies. But sure boss I'll
| throw him some extra cash when he's back from tour.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it's obviously unsustainable for a single person, I have
| dozens of people in my life that I wish were paid more
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's already happened to DJing. Used to require very expensive
| gear, crates full of expensive records, and a ton of talent.
|
| Now someone with a $400 controller, pirated music, and some
| free time can do it. Loads of people willing to play at venues
| for free just for the fun of it have crushed the viability of
| doing it as an actual job.
| vunderba wrote:
| With the advent of streaming services like Spotify, it's
| definitely getting worse, but the market has always been
| difficult from a strictly performative/sales perspective. I
| never made any real money from my compositions, but I pulled a
| decent side income teaching piano back in university.
|
| It reminds me of ex-Soviet chess players. The emigration of so
| many good grandmaster-level players diluted the market, and
| unless you were in the absolute upper echelons (like Kramnik,
| Karpov, or Kasparov), you pretty much had to supplement your
| income by teaching on the side.
| janstice wrote:
| Oddly enough this also caused similar issues in classical
| orchestras - in the 90s a bunch of top flight Eastern
| European and Russian musicians raised the bar of orchestras
| in places like NZ, with the side effect of having fewer seats
| for younger musicians to move into.
| analog31 wrote:
| The vitality of music (and probably the rest of the arts), has
| always depended on a symbiosis between professional and amateur
| musicians. Some things still need professionals, such as
| fielding a top level symphony orchestra. And high caliber
| teaching.
|
| Among other things, I play large-ensemble jazz. Over the years,
| I've played in a number of bands, and the level of quality and
| variety achieved by players with professional training is a
| noticeable step above amateur players. The material that my
| current band plays is unplayable without training. About half
| of the band members have music degrees (many teach music in the
| public schools) and the other half are dedicated amateurs with
| past training like myself.
|
| Other styles, like folk music, are essentially sustained by
| amateurs.
|
| Some things can only be done by amateurs, or professionals who
| also have a musical hobby, such as playing experimental,
| obscure, or historical music. Amateur musicians also support
| the professional scene by attending performances, taking
| lessons, buying instruments (resulting in economies of scale),
| etc.
| jleyank wrote:
| How many financially self-sustaining software developers
| _should_ there be? AI code generation has caused the number to
| fall, but FOSS before that likely made it fall as well.
|
| I can keep playing this game, as can others. Why do we need all
| that money invested in data collection and disseminating cat
| videos, political unrest, etc.
| GLdRH wrote:
| Well in this case someone seems to employ and pay these
| software developers.
|
| We can only speculate about the future having more AI-code or
| the repercussions thereof (as many do).
| Ekaros wrote:
| Answer is enough to sustainably run needs of modern society.
| And that number is probably significantly lower than we now
| have.
|
| And for me with musicians the number is zero.
| ringeryless wrote:
| ? you are suggesting that zero musicians are required by
| society in order for society to function?
| jleyank wrote:
| I would rather musicians get paid in genres that I can't
| stand than see the legion of programmers employed in
| "social media" and "on line marketing" and other things
| that keep people isolated and usually angry. Hell of a lot
| better things re personal and social interaction than
| having my phone glued to my wallet or my amygdala.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Neither musicians or social media is needed for modern
| life. Or even online marketing...
|
| You probably want digital payment systems like banking
| and warehouse management. But I am thinking those sort of
| areas are only fraction of modern software industry.
| orangecat wrote:
| _AI code generation has caused the number to fall_
|
| Not at all clear.
|
| _FOSS before that likely made it fall as well_
|
| Almost certainly false. Imagine a world where the concept of
| open source never happened, so if you want a website you have
| to pay thousands of dollars for web servers, compilers,
| databases, etc. Would the demand for software developers be
| higher or lower than in our world?
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| What is it with so many people saying art should be a hobby?
| except for the really great.
|
| But how are you going to get good if you don't get any practice
| and feedback?
|
| I remember someone lamenting people videoing comedians in small
| venues and posting the fails, that follow you forever. How are
| you going to get good at stand up if you can't fail and learn?
|
| Not everyone can be Steven King and get an advance worth 3
| years salary for their first book.
|
| Well, you know, it is kinda like how companies are replacing
| all the juniors with AI. It's cheap, for now. But then comes
| the question of what do you do in 5-10 years when you need some
| seniors with actual experience?
| mettamage wrote:
| > But how are you going to get good if you don't get any
| practice and feedback?
|
| When you do a hobby you can get practice and feedback in. It
| depends on their situation.
|
| Someone is a kid? A lot
|
| Someone is single? 4 hours per evening and 6 hours per
| weekend day. That's still a lot.
|
| Someone has kids? Don't know but doesn't seem like a lot
| wwweston wrote:
| Anyone who has something they've done out of love but can't
| figure out how to monetize knows the problem with this: you are
| limited in the amount of time you can put into doing it, both
| into the actual doing and the pre-doing practice and study.
| That means less of your best work gets done. Maybe you never
| actually reach the point where any of your best work gets done.
|
| There's lots of value in amateur engineering. What if we
| deprofessionalized engineering via making it difficult for
| anyone to make a living doing it? Some people would no doubt
| still continue to do it, to scratch their itches and exercise
| their minds. But they would spend less time doing it, less time
| sudying how to do it, more time doing whatever it takes to pay
| the bills and claw out some semblance of security. We certainly
| wouldn't fall into technical poverty immediately, and maybe we
| wouldn't miss what we don't quite invent / develop, but both
| the people who actually love it enough to pay attention and the
| professionals would know the difference between what isn't
| getting done.
|
| (And in fact, the US is standing on the precipice of a FAFO
| event with research here, having just made it more difficult to
| make a living focusing on it.)
|
| What happens to a field that can only be engaged as a
| dilettante, never as a committed investor?
| ryandrake wrote:
| This has happened to many past professions, and will continue
| to happen. Can one really make a career out of woodworking
| craftsmanship? Making custom furniture? Maybe a small number
| of people in the world can, but the rest just do woodworking
| as a hobby because it doesn't pay the bills.
|
| Software development will go this way, too, as we are all
| starting to learn.
|
| The problem is people are ok with corporate, mass-produced
| slop--whether it be music, furniture, or (soon) software.
| Fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for human
| craftsman-produced product.
| ringeryless wrote:
| the difference is this: music is always changing, and this
| change is what defines the active cutting edge of the arts,
| vs the retro/copycat/tribute/covers schlock the masses are
| ok with. the schlock itself requires constant creativity
| vampirism and sublimation or I would say sublation of soul
| spirit and new ideas merely to keep afloat.
|
| those responsible for advancement of musical boundaries
| rarely are recognized or rewarded in kind, at least since
| the dawn of the recorded music mafia.
|
| "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a
| long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and
| good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
| Hunter S. Thompson
| mettamage wrote:
| I think now that AI is here, tech CEOs will do their best to
| make it happen. That is, if AI won't be a force multiplier in
| the end but simply replacing tech people.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| 5. There should be 5 people in whole of Canada to make money
| from their music. Or 15. Kazzillion razmadillion. How are you
| supposed to calculate that?
|
| Well you don't need to. The answer is "as many as the market
| will support", as it is with any other product. However, your
| rhetorical question misses the point completely. The question
| is not should a person just make thing x as a hobby, but that
| this global multi-billion dollar industry shares very little of
| it's revenue to the people who make thump thump and bum bum
| that get's asses on the floor and people to move. All of the
| examples in this article are clearly quite successful acts that
| people are willing to pay to listen to and are quite integral
| part of the economy as a whole (not to mention softer values
| such as cultural enrichment of all human life), but are
| struggling to make the ends meet. Why.
|
| Because some else literally takes the money people pay to
| listen to them. If I want to listen rapper Yakkedi Yap's new
| single Xingabow and give him money, I would be better off to
| sending them money in an envelope than listening them from any
| streaming app (maybe Bandcamp is an exception), or even going
| to their concert or buying their merch. Because someone
| literally steals the money.
|
| At least if you buy a landscape painting from a gallery the
| gallery takes just 20-40% and artist gets the rest minus
| materials and taxes. They don't take 60%, then minus every
| possible cost from the artist, then take what is left and give
| it to Drake.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| In a world where some large fraction of the working-age
| population is employed in factories (most of those in
| automotive), maybe not so many should be musicians. In a world
| where we've shipped all those other blue collar jobs to Asia,
| every industry sub-sector that becomes unviable is a disaster.
| So asking "how many x should there be" sort of marks you as
| clueless or even callous. The answer is _as many as there can
| possibly be, plus a few extra_.
| TimByte wrote:
| But I think the key difference is scale and ubiquity... music
| isn't niche like landscape painting
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I would love to make a living off of landscape painting
| actually
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Most musicians who can make it now are only middle class, with a
| handful of superstars and a huge legion of poor artists.
|
| I've played many gigs for $20-100, which is once a month or week
| and tough work relative to typing some code from home. I played
| for 25 mins in front of 1000 people and spent 8+ hours total all-
| in to make 200 bucks. Way harder money than coding.
|
| Really, think back through history. Musicians were needed for
| dance, parties, all occasions. Now hit play on your phone
| connected to a speaker, GG musicians.
| bamboozled wrote:
| _Now hit play on your phone connected to a speaker, GG
| musicians._
|
| Not really comparable experience though.
| nine_k wrote:
| Comparable, though very much not equal. Unless you came
| specifically to listen to music (e.g. many concerts), the
| music plays a technical role: dance music, movie soundtrack,
| restaurant / bar background music. For that, a good recording
| is adequate or even superior.
| galkk wrote:
| To some extent it is much better.
|
| More reliable, no divas, no drunk musicians, always on time,
| the repertoire is literally unlimited.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Compare dating to buying onlyfans...
| kupfer wrote:
| "Strip club visit to onlyfans" is more apt
| LtWorf wrote:
| Nah in small enough venues you sit down and have a beer
| with the musicians :D
| spacemadness wrote:
| This reminds me of the guy that told me he didn't need to
| travel anywhere because the internet exists and people
| already write about it and leave pictures. This was in the
| 90s. Not the same obviously. And I agree that crowds can be
| super annoying sometimes. And it obviously depends on the
| context of the type of music created, etc. But in your
| nicely controlled environment you can miss out on
| spontaneity or energy that can't be replaced.
| LtWorf wrote:
| On the other hand busking in a street (which I regard as open
| source music, donations accepted) makes way more money than
| releasing an open source project and having tens of thousands
| use it daily.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > I played for 25 mins in front of 1000 people and spent 8+
| hours total all-in to make 200 bucks.
|
| Perhaps a bit cynical, but my thinking has long been that if I
| see a band that's playing in a venue that takes like 100-200
| people or so[1], they're doing it out of passion. And that
| immediately makes it more interesting for me to go.
|
| I've had lots of great experiences that way, including for
| bands that's normally way outside my comfort zone. And as the
| price of admission is fairly low, if it somehow is a miss it's
| not a big deal.
|
| Now, as I know they're making little or no money on the gig
| itself, I usually end up buying some merch.
|
| [1]: I'm in Norway, we don't have a ton of large venues.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Really, think back through history. Musicians were needed for
| dance, parties, all occasions. Now hit play on your phone
| connected to a speaker, GG musicians.
|
| John Philip Sousa had the right opinion on recorded music.
| blindriver wrote:
| Streaming is the biggest scam to have perpetuated the
| entertainment industry. The way the money is divided among the
| content creators is absurd and the prices are both too high and
| too low at the same time.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's not great. But the economics of selling recordings never
| worked out for artists; it's possible that most of what
| streaming does is to kill advances for artists, and royally
| fuck labels, the perennial antagonists in the stories we tell
| about the music industry.
| bluGill wrote:
| Recording worked only as merch to sell at live shows.
|
| recording also works to give a 'real job' to those who insist
| on making music for a living.
|
| Only a few have ever made a job of performing. The midevil
| bard was often a second son of a nobel supported as a way to
| ensure they kill the older brother for the throne. Everyone
| else music was a hobby they did after farming was done.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Music doesn't the buyer money, at the same time millions are
| qualified to make it and to boot millions enjoy making it.
| There is little barrier to entry and there is more than
| enough of it. Even if another song is never made. It's in the
| sweet spot for being a low paid shithole.
|
| I'd look at NFTs for similar market dynamics. Some big
| winners but mostly people not making a dime.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's even more of a scam because none of these companies were
| making such services with a way to actually profit in mind. It
| got customers spoiled on unrealistically cheap media; cheap
| media that was a result of skilled labor that only got more
| expensive over time. The bubble was going to burst one day.
|
| In some regards, the ZIRP era ending was needed; companies
| can't just make money by relying on hype for years, even
| decades before the piper needs to be paid. But of course it
| couldn't have ended in a worst time.
| owebmaster wrote:
| > In some regards, the ZIRP era ending was needed; companies
| can't just make money by relying on hype for years, even
| decades before the piper needs to be paid. But of course it
| couldn't have ended in a worst time.
|
| Maybe that is why lots of people are struggling more now
| while the economy numbers say things are better than ever.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| For now. I believe the gdp started to slightly contract
| last quarter. The government never wants to admit times are
| bad, but eventually even their massaging of the data can't
| hide the true situation.
| blindriver wrote:
| GDP contracted because of a build up of inventory. It was
| a technicality, the GDP actually grew.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I suppose we'll see if they run through all that
| inventory. Or worse, don't run through it.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| It's cheap because I can carry a terabyte in my pocket not
| because of anything else. If somehow we went back to selling
| 700 MB CDs of uncompressed music I would still fill my pocket
| with a terabyte of every song to not pay $30 a CD.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Space is cheap, talent is not cheap. That was my point.
| It's not expensive to fill your terabyte with slop, is it?
| prvc wrote:
| I assumed the article would be about orchestral musicians (for
| whom there is a high, and increasing skill threshold) or session
| musicians (whose work is increasingly being replaced by computer
| synthesis). Instead, we get a very long narrative about a rapper
| who is still struggling to "make it" as a recording artist. In
| the era of sound recordings (which began well over a century ago)
| there is little incentive for the consumer to choose one with
| middling appeal over the most popular options. This makes the
| task of becoming a star, but on a small scale, a difficult one.
| Instead, a prospective "middle-class musician" must find a niche
| of some kind, perhaps by focusing on the local market. For
| example, a busker could potentially make more (than his cited
| $250k in recording revenue) over a period of 9 years with
| sufficient dedication.
| wwweston wrote:
| ~15-20 years ago, the popular wisdom was that we were entering
| the age of the long tail, where the open distribution
| opportunities of the internet combined with discovery
| technology would mean that it'd be _easier_ for many artists to
| "make it" to a point where they had 10k fans. What happened?
|
| We decimated recordings as a revenue stream (and literal
| decimation might be wildly generous, given that stream payouts
| frequently never add up to a single sale for many artists). We
| let people peddle the lie that artists can just find some other
| revenue source like merchandising or another job or anything
| else rather than paying for the thing people ostensibly value.
|
| Minor league success was never an easy proposition but we had a
| chance to give it better margins. And we let Spotify and others
| eat those, and let too many people tell comforting lies to
| consumers along the way.
|
| And without a major cultural shift, we will do the same thing
| for everyone eventually.
| chickenzzzzu wrote:
| Who is this "we" you speak of? There is no society. There is
| only individuals making decisions on how to spend their
| money, time, and comfort.
|
| If hundreds of millions of people decide to use Spotify and
| Youtube to obtain their music, and if that means most artists
| are shafted in the process, no secret organization enacted
| some conspiracy to achieve that. Instead, technology enabled
| a new form of consumption, and producers faced a new level of
| competition.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| The "secret organization" is us, via the tyranny of small
| decisions. That doesn't mean it's a good thing.
| chickenzzzzu wrote:
| There are no good or bad things. Only things that happen
| or don't happen. Anyone is welcome to fight the nature of
| reality.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| I think "what happened" was that Anderson's long tail theory
| was
|
| a) just a theory not a proven thing and
|
| b) based on flawed assumptions that were quickly disproven.
| See the 2008 paper "Should You Invest in the Long Tail?"
| finding that consumers don't like niche products and the
| bottom 80% sold $0, contrary to the theory's prediction.
|
| https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=32337
|
| Had nothing to do with merchandising or whatever. The Long
| Tail was never correct.
| tptacek wrote:
| The lede of this article, about Rollie Pemberton, is about a
| "360" deal where the label gets a cut of all revenue related to
| the act (Pemberton's "Cadence Weapon"). Unusually, in Pemberton's
| case, it appears that most of his revenue came in from prizes and
| grants, not from recording sales or touring. The structure of his
| deal thus made Upper Class Records an outsized return. The deal
| seems pretty exploitative.
|
| The problem with this as a framing device is that it doesn't
| describe very many working musical acts. 360 deals are probably
| generally gross? But Pemberton's situation is _weird_. In most
| cases, labels are in fact going to lose money from midlist acts.
|
| The more you look at these kinds of businesses the more striking
| the pattern is. It's true of most media, it's true of startups,
| it's true for pharmaceuticals. The winners pay for the losers; in
| fact, the winners are usually the only thing that matter, the
| high-order bit of returns.
|
| What's challenging about this is that you can't squeeze blood
| from a stone. The package offered to a midlist act might in fact
| be a _loss leader_ ; incentive to improve dealflow and
| optionality for the label, to get a better shot at the tiny
| number of acts whose returns will keep the label afloat. There
| may not be much more to offer to acts that aren't going to
| generate revenue.
|
| David Lowery (a mathematician and the founder/lead vocalist of
| Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker) had an article about this years
| ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850935
|
| It's worth a read (though things have probably changed in a
| number of ways since then). It's an interesting counterpoint to
| the automatic cite to Albini's piece that comes up in these
| discussions. Not that you should have sympathy for labels, just
| it's useful to have a clearer idea of what the deal was. The
| classic label deal with a mid-sized advance that never recouped
| (and which the labels never came back looking for when it didn't)
| was basically the driver for "middle-class" rock lifestyles; it's
| dead now.
| nabla9 wrote:
| > In most cases, labels are in fact going to lose money from
| midlist acts.
|
| This is almost certainly the case. The music business is the
| economics of superstars. see: Rosen, Sherwin. "The Economics of
| Superstars." The American Economic Review 71, no. 5 (1981):
| 845-58.
|
| Small personal difference translate into enormous differences
| in earnings. The income curve has only small area for middle
| incomes. Either you are below middle, or you quickly get into
| upper middle class or higher incomes. It's not a market failure
| but a predictable dynamics of this particular field.
|
| Artists low pay is driven by two things:
|
| First, an oversupply of talent willing to work below a living
| wage keeps incomes low.
|
| Second, promotion and marketing are the primary drivers of an
| artist's financial outome, leading to uneven deals where labels
| handle the heavy lifting and deserve larger piece of the cake.
| Once an artist's career reaches a certain scale, their earnings
| can grow to outweigh their direct creative input.
| woolion wrote:
| This is a very sensible analysis of the problems. On the one
| hand, people tend to ignore how many bands fail, and how much
| money and effort is spent on the process. On the other hand,
| labels have a deathgrip on the industry, using payola and other
| practices that they can afford thanks to their financial (and
| accounting) abilities.
|
| One thing that could help is transparency, but in a way the
| lack of transparency is a good part of what keeps the system
| going. Most people would not agree if they knew how little they
| would keep if they were successful; "what do you mean I have to
| pay for the losers?". They would just want to pay for what was
| necessary for their success, ignoring every expense that didn't
| work as a "stupid label decision". The thing is that nobody has
| a true recipe for success, you can just get reasonable
| estimates on your bets, but each bet will always be a biased
| coin flip.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| What has been developing for awhile is that musicians are coming
| from richer backgrounds on average. They can dally around trying
| their hand as a working musician and can fail and not be
| destitute. The age of a working class or lower class musician is
| waining.
| absurdo wrote:
| That has been the case for a very, very long time. Classical
| music is basically one big orgy of wealthy people. Musicians
| born into families of musicians that were well off. Same goes
| for other artistic pursuits such as painters etc.
|
| I found very little actual insight in this article. I think
| musicians have been struggling for decades and the parents have
| known for at least as long to tell their kids to get a degree
| regardless of their talents. Schools like Berklee are...
| questionable at best. Lots off nepo babies just taking a few
| years to fuck about, basically.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| dude grand piano maybe cost a house back then
|
| when you think about it
| analog31 wrote:
| I've played with Berklee-trained musicians. It's a mixed bag.
| They won't turn you into a great musician against your will.
| This is true of any education. And you have to already be
| **** good when you apply in order to make full use of the
| opportunities that they offer.
|
| Oddly enough Berklee is considered to be a jazz school, but
| the players from there who I consider to be real stand-outs
| (performing at an international level, or well on their way
| to doing so) have chosen to earn their livings outside of
| mainstream jazz.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Mainstream jazz really doesn't make money. Also, Berklee is
| also really strong in the broader field of "Commercial
| Music" which includes things like film scoring and pop-
| oriented genres.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| What is mainstream jazz
| chickenzzzzu wrote:
| Kenny G, of course. I saw him rummaging through the
| dumpster in Kirkland just a few days ago.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| What you get in a jazz club.
|
| The "live from Emmet's place" series that you can find on
| youtube has some of the best jazz players today playing
| mainstream jazz.
| nradov wrote:
| The odds are long but some musicians make it work. Several of
| the Imagine Dragons band members attended Berklee, and then
| grinded for years playing cover songs and touring small clubs
| until they got a recording deal. Would they have succeeded at
| the same level without that Berklee education? Hard to say.
| scns wrote:
| > grinded for years playing cover songs
|
| The Beatles and Van Halen did the same.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Dream Theater is another example of a successful band that
| was formed at Berklee.
| vintermann wrote:
| Conservatory music culture is peculiar. Yes, lots of upper
| class parents want their children to take part in it, but it
| is _not_ a good career economically speaking. (Unless you
| want to be a double-showoff and study medicine alongside
| classical piano, like one guy in my hometown did.) Especially
| classical musicians take a step down economical class-wise if
| they succeed. And this has been the case for most entertainer
| professions for a long time.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Successful musicians have way more in common with actors than
| any other profession. It's about connections, wealth, and
| nepotism over anything else.
|
| Let's say your child wants to be an actor. One way to make this
| happen is to be a successful actor yourself - require your
| children to be cast in the film in return for you starring.
| This is how famous acting families pushed their kids forwards,
| including Nicholas Cage (Coppola) and Jeff Bridges.
|
| More relevant for HN is rich people. So you are tech rich and
| your kid wants to act. _Fund the movie on the condition your
| child acts in it_. That is the way since movies began.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| > Fund the movie on the condition your child acts in it.
|
| The customer of such a movie isn't the audience but the
| wealthy patron sponsoring the movie. I suspect this self-
| promotion motivation is a large reason why so many movies are
| so bad.
| atoav wrote:
| As a film maker who studied film, the reason why so many
| movies are so bad are manyfold: - making
| movies is hard. A lot of things that require years to
| master need to go right. A *ton* of tech is involved.
| - making movies is expensive. Money alone won't make you a
| good movie, but many productions are so on the edge that
| some choice they had to make for monetary reason will cause
| the bad. - making movies is complex, that
| means making a masterful one requires multiple botched
| attempts and experiences by all people involved. These
| botched attempts are also what you see.
|
| I can't stress enough how hard making a movie is, even in
| comparison to complicated tech problems, programming etc.
| blueboo wrote:
| But it's also never been easier, cheaper, simpler. So
| it's not obvious that these dynamics relate to how the
| middle has been hollowed out
| dsign wrote:
| So many movies are bad because their customer is,
| intellectually, the minimum common denominator. It's a
| miracle that movie plots don't consist entirely of grunts,
| chest pumping and farts, but we are getting closer and
| closer every year. Most block-busters have an awful lot of
| primal violence in them, but I bet you can't remember when
| was the last time any of them had any accurate, actual
| science.
| atoav wrote:
| Yes and the fact that you grew up with e.g. actor parents
| means you know a lot about acting and the world it takes
| place in and the language used within it already, just like
| the kid of a farmer will know more than the average person
| about farm animals, tractors and crop.
|
| On top of that come the contacts and being rich. But the
| contacts are not a thing other people couldn't make as well,
| especially if they are good. One of the somewhat hidden
| benefits of higher education are the contacts you will make.
| Maybe you're not rich and your parents are roofers while you
| want to become an actor, but if you're good and well
| connected you might benefit from other peoples connections.
| This is how I started to make my living in a foreign country
| with two parents without any shared background: There were
| people who had those contacts and I benefitted of them simply
| by being the one they chose because I am accurate, reliable,
| on time, knowledgeable, patient and good at what I do.
|
| But
| slyall wrote:
| I suspect it is more likely that rich people will fund their
| actor-aspirant children more convention ways:
|
| When they are younger they could pay for acting classes,
| acting camps and help them get into local productions.
|
| Out of school they pay for livings costs, education and any
| additional classes. Living in New York or LA and being able
| to concentrate on getting parts of training rather than
| having to make money would be a huge boast.
|
| Maybe at the next stage getting their kid an agent or manager
| who has contacts and experience to get their kid the roles.
|
| Perhaps you mean throwing a few thousand dollars at student-
| level films to ensure their kid gets an important part. I
| guess maybe some will write 6 (7?) figure cheques to get
| their kid a part, but that probably doesn't happen often.
| patcon wrote:
| Science used to work this way too, didn't it? You'd be rich, or
| you'd have a wealthy benefactor.
| whatshisface wrote:
| To go back in time before university endowments for
| intellectual work you'd find yourself in a monestary, with
| endowments from the nobility for intellectual work (copying
| texts and making those great illuminated manuscripts). As far
| as I know the model you're describing did apply to ancient
| Greece.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| In the UK, the 'golden age' of the dole gave an otherwise-
| unsupported fringe of lower-class and middle-class talent time
| to mature.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/01/writers-recall...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Pretty much anything in the "creatives" industry.
|
| Want to work for the most prestigious fashion brands? You start
| with unpaid (or very low pay) internships in some of the most
| expensive cities in the world. Same goes for record labels.
| Art. Literature publishing.
|
| And these days, some of the above will filter out applicants
| that don't have big enough social media accounts.
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| > What has been developing for awhile is that musicians are
| coming from richer backgrounds on average.
|
| Same sh it is happening with basketball. More nepo babies that
| got to go through expensive camp than ballers from the streets
| rising up the ranks homie. And no person embodies dis shit more
| than Bronny James.
|
| Sad cause sports was supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy
| yo!
| boredemployee wrote:
| I left a career in music production five years ago and moved into
| programming (data science). there's no turning back.
|
| I was very aware that I was lucky. You can be the best, you can
| have a great network, but (in my experience), luck is the main
| factor. and the "luck" window in the music space is more and more
| narrow currently.
| melvinroest wrote:
| I'm currently a data analyst, used to be a software engineer.
| Weirdly enough I feel that data analysis (programming,
| visualizing, consulting and presenting) feels a lot related to
| making music. I think I just see the art of being a data
| analyst.
|
| I want to "move up" in my career, but I simply don't see the
| (performative) art of data science and data engineering. It
| feels too narrow. Music and data analysis feels broad. I could
| take a higher paycheck but it'd cost of a lot of fun.
|
| It probably helps that I on top of that get to integrate LLMs
| and create LLM flows, basically n8n but then programming it
| using the APIs of an LLM. So I'm still actually programming as
| well.
|
| It's fun being a generalist.
| boredemployee wrote:
| I totally agree, because I work with data analysis as well.
| Both feel similar because in the end you have to tell a story
| and (presumably) please the audience :)
| 627467 wrote:
| Writers have been experimenting with paywalls (substacks etc) -
| musicians aren't? Indies keep complaining about streaming and
| platforms killing their livelihood but I wonder if this is just
| because the target for "justice" seems clearer (eg. Spotify cut,
| etc)
|
| Seems to me that music has an additional challenge which is most
| revenue channels requires middlemen: streaming infrastructure,
| merch factories, venues owners, technicians, etc which artist
| can't/won't replace.
|
| At some point musicians - as product creators - need to have a
| clear biz model for their enterprise and passion to try it. Not
| just passion to create, passion to sell.
| 11217mackem wrote:
| Enjoy listening to Drake for the rest of your life.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| The death of the middle class everything. I have no idea how
| median wage statistics are possible. There is not a single
| neighborhood in my city where median income in that neighborhood
| can afford rent or a mortgage in that neighborhood. It's all non-
| wage sources of wealth and no traditional middle class lifestyle
| is possible
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Yeah it's like who can afford a specific house.
|
| 80s entry level coder
|
| 90s team lead
|
| 00s manager
|
| 10s cto
|
| 20s cto with help from parents
|
| Wage stagnation and inflation and asset inflation.
| dirtyhippiefree wrote:
| The main rehearsal space in San Francisco closed more than two
| decades ago.
|
| I venture that live music has suffered because of it.
| jdkee wrote:
| "onetheless, the state has a role to play. The government has
| long forced commercial and campus radio stations to play at least
| 35 percent CanCon--that is, music that meets two of the four
| criteria of MAPL (music, artist, performance, lyrics): that the
| music was composed by a Canadian, performed by a Canadian, and
| recorded in Canada, with lyrics written by a Canadian. But
| imposing such requirements on internationally owned streamers has
| proven challenging."
|
| When the state dictates artistic content, that is socialism.
| elevation wrote:
| I played in a cover band with some well-paid engineers. We
| enjoyed music enough to consider going full time, but even with
| four-figure bookings were were barely taking home minimum wage.
| We looked into getting a manager to find us more high-paying
| gigs, but management fees and travel costs eat up the gains.
|
| For a band, it's virtually impossible to find work outside the
| weekend. If a region had a few restaurants that were known for
| year round "live music Mondays", "live music lunches", etc, it
| would increase the number of hours that a musician could work
| during the week, and make full time performance viable for more
| musicians. Of course, people would also need to support these
| performances by patronizing the venues that host them.
|
| But until a working musician can fill their weekday calendar with
| paying gigs without excessive travel/lodging costs, you'll
| continue to see talented musicians drop out and do something
| else.
| lmm wrote:
| I've noticed post-covid there are a lot more weeknight gigs. I
| think it was accepted during the recovery period as everyone
| tried to make up for lost time, but so far it hasn't faded out.
| I hope it continues.
| mettamage wrote:
| I've come to the perhaps grim conclusion that the world doesn't
| value music enough. It seems to me that most artists are making
| music because they love to do it themselves. It's essentially a
| form of play. Wanting a career out of it implies sacrifice in
| the way we currently have our world setup.
|
| The current world we live in doesn't care enough about
| creativity. I find it a bleak thought, but here I am. Feel free
| to try to talk me out of it, because it does feel kind of
| depressing. Or feel free to validate it. I want to see the
| world for what it is, not what I like it to be.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| What would a world that cares about creativity look like?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > I've come to the perhaps grim conclusion that the world
| doesn't value music enough.
|
| What do you mean by not valuing music? Should we allocate
| more of our paycheck to music? Or should we talk more about
| how great music is?
|
| > It seems to me that most artists are making music because
| they love to do it themselves.
|
| I mean, art is ultimately an expression of emotions. If you
| don't love creating the art you create, unless you have
| another deep emotional reason to create it, it's going to
| affect the result quite significantly.
|
| > The current world we live in doesn't care enough about
| creativity.
|
| This is just human nature though I think. Most people want
| the fuzzy feeling of something familiar. And then you have
| those who go to large events for the shared experience of
| going, rather than what's actually performed.
|
| Personally I love going to smaller venues (<300 people) where
| the cost of admission is such that I feel I can take the risk
| of something unknown and outside my comfort zone. But I also
| realize I'm weird that way.
| peab wrote:
| The music industry is a multi-billion dollar market and
| growing, so it's not really fair to say that the world
| doesn't value it.
|
| The problem is that it's a bit of a winner takes all market.
| It's comparable to professional sports.
|
| Everyone loves soccer, but 99.9% of people won't get paid to
| play it. That doesn't mean it isn't valued - some of the
| highest paid people in the world are soccer players!
| pydry wrote:
| It'd probably be a bit less winner-takes-all without the
| capitalist dynamics that make it such.
| gedy wrote:
| They sort of do (or as much as they ever have), but I think
| that the modern world gives access to national and global
| stars via prerecorded entertainment and the little guys can't
| make a living like they used to.
|
| That's a drag in many ways because local circuits and
| regional music are where a lot of new styles and bands came
| from, and the wealth is more concentrated now into fewer
| people.
| spacemadness wrote:
| People do care whether they realize it or not. They will
| always care. They have to if they consume any creative media
| at all. Our government and economic system on the other hand
| might not care to offer any encouragement other than "good
| luck, you'll need it. I hope you're good at marketing." The
| article states there are more people making music than ever.
| I agree. I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of output
| coming out by bedroom musicians. The list of bands playing
| near me weekly is huge. Whether it's more quality on top of
| quantity is another discussion.
| dale_glass wrote:
| What people don't care about is seeking novelty.
|
| Think of it: a lot of people listen to music as a background
| of some kind. That means they don't want to keep going "Ugh,
| this one sucks, next, next, next..."
|
| But, there's thousands of absolutely excellent songs that are
| time tested. You can play top 100 from the 80s and not be
| annoyed most of the time.
|
| But ever time somebody plays Prince or Duran Duran is a time
| they're not playing the song you just released.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Even if you play gigs 7 days a week on Broadway (Nashville),
| all year round, you'd make a pitiful salary - compared to the
| work put in.
|
| And you'd be locked to only playing certain types of music
| (country, classic rock, singer songwriter), doing multiple gigs
| a day.
|
| Truth be told, most musicians would be better off by picking a
| job, any job really, and treating music as a side hustle. And
| that really pains me, as I started out as a musician.
|
| If you're going to make a living off music, it's going to be a
| never-ending marathon of hustles and uncertainty. Cover bands,
| church bands, wedding bands, session work, lessons, roadie
| work, instrument tech, and half (of not two thirds) of that
| work is based on sheer luck, depending on what people you cross
| paths with.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| The 80s song Sultans of Swing is about this. Don't think it's
| new.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| What's the deal with always wanting to turn art into a day job,
| anyway? These things are almost antithetical, as exemplifies by
| thousands of YouTube channel that turned into soulless content-
| producers in an effort to keep a schedule.
|
| Damn, people somehow made art in 10000BC, when everyone was a
| hunter-gatherer by necessity.
| eszed wrote:
| What if you want to maximize your talent? I'm sure you're good
| at something; isn't it satisfying to get better at it? At some
| point you'll maximize the improvement you can make in your free
| time; if you get there before you reach the ceiling of your
| ability or your drive, then what else are you going to (want
| to) do?
|
| This comment makes the same point, better than I did:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44410292
| ringeryless wrote:
| quite right. i happen to be an amazing musical genius with the
| keys to the future of the art, and i will not share my hobby
| work with you or the world because you just pulled the rug out
| from under my lifes mission by reducing everything to shopping
| mall McDonald's aesthetics. enjoy your oldies and cover bands.
| ringeryless wrote:
| "as exemplifies by thousands of YouTube channel that turned
| into soulless content-producers in an effort to keep a
| schedule."
|
| This means that a former musical artist became a Youtube
| content producer in order to earn a living. This does not
| illustrate the negative effects of paying musicians to make
| music.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Has life ever been easy for musicians? Has it ever been easy to
| make money from making/playing music in the history of mankind?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Interestingly, and that may be a personal opinion - I have bought
| _more_ music from more obscure musicians in the last few years,
| mostly thanks to Bandcamp.
|
| Before that, I mostly gravitated to 'blockbuster musicians', old
| classics, 1970s psychedelic rock. Today I buy some unknown
| musician's album every few days (and I pay what I'd pay for a
| 'proper' album, even if it is pay what you want).
|
| Part of that is simply availability. The old record stores of old
| were often just "what's popular" with a side dish of "what the
| owner likes". Today? I found some Touareg rock band the other
| day. In the 1990s, that was virtually impossible even for music
| lovers.
|
| Part of it is that today, I pay for what _I_ like. Radio sucks,
| the classics are oversaturated, and often enough new releases are
| just qualitatively worse - both in composition as well as
| remasters which tend to sacrifice nuance for loudness. But indy
| bands? I don 't expect perfection, but often enough find it.
|
| Now, I understand I am a rare breed. In a Spotify world, the one
| buying FLACs is exotic. I do understand that the mid-range
| musician is not going to become a millionaire - but who ever did?
|
| The example in the article sounds a lot like the artist has been
| bent over a barrel by the record company - a pattern even
| "successful" musicians have experienced. Maybe instead of chasing
| fame, the solution is to do your own marketing.
|
| The musical middle class wasn't thinned out by the audience, but
| by labels and streaming models. If you're not topping the charts,
| you vanish between promotion costs and algorithmic obscurity -
| unless you go directly to the listener.
| taylorius wrote:
| I'm a software engineer by trade, but have played bluesy / rock
| guitar since I heard Jimi Hendrix as a teenager. I try to run a
| band, to fuel my mid-life crisis but I've come to the conclusion
| that it's essentially a hobby, not a device for making money.
| TimByte wrote:
| There's something freeing about embracing it as a passion
| instead of chasing dollars
| jmyeet wrote:
| When people use terms like "neofeudalism", this is the sort of
| thing we're talking about. It's capitalism working as intended.
| There are an increasing number of jobs that are only available to
| the children of the wealthy. There are several reasons for this:
|
| 1. Any of the creative professions have way more applicants than
| positions so nepotism dominates. It's almost shocking how many
| nepo babies there are in Hollywood. It infects every level. It
| could be that some rich person will fund your indie movie as long
| as you give a major role to their child. It can be family
| connections to studio decision-makers,. It can be currying favor
| with Hollywood heavyweights. Whatever. Either way, getting in as
| a nobody is increasingly difficult;
|
| 2. Education. First, you have legacies. Roughly a third of
| Harvard's undergrad class are legacies ie the children of wealthy
| donors. That's the real DEI. But also it's the cost. The wealthy
| can absorb the cost of an elite education.
|
| This is a real issue with medical school. Someone can often
| graduate with $300-600k in student loan debt. By the time they
| finish residency they may owe $500k-1M. The wealthy can absorb
| this. There are a few medical schools now that offer free tuition
| thanks to some large endowments. Many medical schools try and
| have people from more diverse economic backgrounds but it's
| difficult. Not having to worry about money means you caa afford
| to spend a year doing unpaid research to pad your resume. The
| free tuition schools seem to have skewed more to students from
| wealthier backgrounds because they're simply better connected and
| better able to game getting into such schools;
|
| 3. Housing costs specifically and the cost of living generally.
| 30 years ago if you were trying to make it as a musician in LA
| you could rent an apartment for $300-400/month. You could live
| cheaply. You could chase that dream. Now? The average apartment
| seems to be near or over $2000/month.;
|
| 4. The disappearance of third spaces. Higher housing costs mean
| the higher cost of businesses. If a bar or a coffee shop needs
| now absorb rent of $200,000/year where once it was $10-20k, that
| affects what busineses are viable and for those that are, it's an
| input to the cost of everything. Well, those were performance
| spaces for up and coming acts. You see this in the UK, for
| example, where the number of pubs just keeps going down as they
| sold and converted into apartments. Community spaces just cannot
| survive with the high cost of property; and
|
| 5. The freedom to fail. I saw a clip of Allison Williams recently
| who acknowledge this. For those that don't know, she was one of
| the main cast of HBO's _Girls_. She 's the daughter of Brian
| Williams, a long-time news anchor. Fun fact: the entire main cast
| of this show were all nepo babies. It cannot be overstated what
| relieving the fear of becoming homeless can do to your
| opportunities.
|
| Now some, particularly here, have long pointed to tech as their
| key to social mobility. That's been true for a long time but I
| suspect many here are in for a rude shock. We're already seeing
| it with the layoffs and how many people apply for any given job.
| AI will make this worse.
|
| And who do you think will get positions in this shirnking pool of
| opportunities? It'll be the same children of wealthy people.
| It'll be connections, access to funding and other factors that
| give you opportunities.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Housing costs specifically_
|
| This is a huge problem, and it's due almost entirely to bad
| government policies rather than "capitalism working as
| intended".
| kingstnap wrote:
| I do wonder about actual numbers, though.
|
| * Is the amount of music listened to in a day down? * Is the rate
| of music creation down? * Given some metric of diversity is music
| diversity down? * Given some metric of quality is music quality
| down? * Are there fewer artists per capita / in total? * Has the
| Gini coefficient really shifted?
|
| I assume that for almost all of these, the answer is actually no.
| Presumably, technology has made making more higher quality music
| easier and cheaper than ever, and people are listening to more
| than ever.
| jedberg wrote:
| This feel like it's related to the problem of no more mid-budget
| movies. Now that physical media (CD/VHS/DVD) isn't a thing, there
| is no long tail of fans to sustain mid-market efforts. Movies
| that cost a few tens of millions usually didn't make their budget
| back in the theater -- it was VHS and DVD sales that made up the
| difference. But now that doesn't happen, so those movies either
| don't get made, or they're made by the streamers.
|
| Same thing with music. Streaming pays so little compared to
| physical media now that artists never make up the difference.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > or they're made by the streamers.
|
| Not sure what the problem is, the streams will pay the budget
| of the movie, just like the old movie studios did. So where is
| the difference? Do they pay much less and no royalties?
| jedberg wrote:
| It's really hard to become a cult classic when it's only on
| Netflix. But also yes, until recently (and even now), it pays
| a lot less to the people involved in the movie. There weren't
| really any residuals, the streamers make a one time payment.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yes, there's just less money going around with streaming -
| think about it, rentals sustained hundreds of physical
| buildings with multiple employees
| TimByte wrote:
| Either you're part of the algorithmic elite or you're scraping
| by
| whiddershins wrote:
| all this was obvious the moment napster became popular. and for
| more than a decade anyone who explained what was happening was
| ridiculed, especially in tech circles.
|
| spotify in particular cemented a payment structure that
| disadvantages any "serious" music versus endless repeat pop
| songs, while also being completely corrupted by conflict of
| interest from record labels with an ownership stake. now they
| manufacture their own muzak and steer your playlist to it,
| draining the last bits of revenue possibility away from these
| "middle class musicians."
|
| youtube streamed music for free for years, paying no artists, and
| it was one of its core growth engines. completely asymmetrical
| outcome.
|
| the whole thing denigrated musicians, and music itself. hordes of
| early online young tech professionals making great money at their
| office jobs poo pooing the concerns of an entire industry which
| previously enabled some of the most sophisticated artistic
| endeavors our culture ever attempted.
|
| just dumb. a complete victory of lowbrow values.
|
| baffling someone is writing this article in 2025. at every fork
| in the road, the path was taken that would give less revenue to
| the musicians. and ~no one in tech felt it was a problem.
|
| talking about it like there is a revelation or an emerging
| phenomenon here mystifies, while rubbing salt in the wound.
| ringeryless wrote:
| OT, i love your username. if i walk 3 times anticlockwise
| around the local church, will i end up in fairyland?
| bradley13 wrote:
| Few people should make a living with music, or indeed any other
| form of art. Art is a hobby.
|
| Literally everyone is an artist, even if their art consists of
| bad doodles and singing in the shower. Sure, some people are more
| talented than that, but expecting to make a living with art?
| Nah...
| croes wrote:
| Most of music is craft not art. People should be able to make a
| living from their craft
| ringeryless wrote:
| is all art equal? is there no structure or history to art? is
| copying someone elses ideas the same as bringing new ideas to
| life? i contend that music is a discourse space where great
| minds show great structural concepts, and where minds with
| nothing to say merely regurgitate others ideas ad nauseum
| BrenBarn wrote:
| > I heard one answer more than any other: the government should
| introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford
| artists the security to create art, but it's also extremely
| fanciful.
|
| Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our
| problems will persist. This article is another in the long series
| of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually
| facets of a larger problem, namely that _overall economic
| inequality is way too high_. It 's not just that musicians, or
| actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever,
| can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to
| make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions
| like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market
| players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal
| tweaks to this or that industry.
| GLdRH wrote:
| Except that socialism has failed already.
|
| Universal basic income is impossible to justify morally.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| UBI is obviously a far less intensive project than Socialism
| would be.
| mantas wrote:
| If you want to provide truly livable UBI, it'd be even
| bigger than socialism. The working people would have to be
| taxed through the nose. And necessary professions like
| trash car drivers should be paid a crapton.
| eru wrote:
| What do you define to be 'truly livable'?
|
| Let's have a look at Scandinavia or Germany. They have
| reasonably generous welfare systems, but they are means
| tested. So for the sake of argument, declare them to be
| 'truly livable'. Especially by global standards.
|
| Now I claim, that you can get pretty much the same net
| payments (of means tested welfare - taxes) that these
| countries have today with a system of (UBI - taxes).
| Basically, at the moment both taxes and welfare are means
| tested; you could move to UBI by moving all the means
| testing from welfare to taxes.
|
| Because net payments would be pretty much the same, all
| incentives would stay pretty much the same as today.
|
| See also
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax which
| is one way to implement something like a UBI.
|
| Of course, if you want to go much beyond what Germany and
| Scandinavia are already paying, you'd need even higher
| taxes or a stranger economy.
|
| Btw, per capita the US is one of the world leaders of
| social welfare spending. They spend more than France.
| (Mostly because while France spends a higher proportion
| of GDP, American GDP per capita is much higher.)
| valenterry wrote:
| > Because net payments would be pretty much the same, all
| incentives would stay pretty much the same as today.
|
| Nope, in Germany you are required to work. If you can't
| find a job, you still have to try (and prove that), you
| need to stay at home / be available (and notify the state
| about your vacation or you might be punished by receiving
| less welfare) and of course you have to use up all money
| or wealth you have and state, in written, that you have
| no other sources of wealth.
|
| So UBI would absolutely change incentives here.
| eru wrote:
| Good point!
|
| Though in practice it's fairly easy to put in a token
| effort so your welfare won't be cut, but avoid actually
| getting hired.
|
| But you are very right that the token effort is still
| effort.
|
| > [...] and of course you have to use up all money or
| wealth you have and state, in written, that you have no
| other sources of wealth.
|
| That is similar to taxing that money and wealth. But you
| are right.
| mantas wrote:
| The sell-possessions-before-welfare is very very
| different from taxing.
|
| With taxes, even crazy high, you can still accumulate
| wealth. Taxes slow you down, but it's still possible.
|
| With net-worth-ceiling to receive welfare, you're forced
| you cannot accumulate wealth on welfare. And your
| previous wealth is gone before you get to earn welfare.
|
| Got a nice house and BMW and decided to slow it down and
| live on welfare? Or, more likely, work under table and
| collect welfare too? Good luck with that :)
| eru wrote:
| > With taxes, even crazy high, you can still accumulate
| wealth. Taxes slow you down, but it's still possible.
|
| That's only true for income taxes, not for wealth taxes.
| mantas wrote:
| Even wealth taxes don't force you to sell. But welfare
| with wealth threshold does.
| mantas wrote:
| And Scandinavian or German systems are in pretty bad
| shape. Both hard to finance (see Denmark raising pension
| age to 70) and lots of people getting thrown out of the
| system for minuscule reasons (German pensioners
| collecting deposit bottles to make ends meet is not
| unheard of).
|
| In euro style systems very few people receive welfare at
| a given time. Many people may receive it at some point in
| lifetime, but not at the same time. UBI would completely
| change the picture.
|
| On top of that, salaries for basic jobs would need to get
| much higher to incentivize people to work. Thus UBI would
| have to be much higher as current welfare. Unless you
| expect citizens to live on UBI but keep services cheap
| with cheap migrant labor.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| > On top of that, salaries for basic jobs would need to
| get much higher to incentivize people to work.
|
| Not true. The 'B' in UBI means 'Basic'. UBI wil pay your
| rent, utilities, and food, but not much else. Now, there
| are some people that are willing to just exist on only
| the bare minimum, but that's a significant minority. The
| vast majority of people want more. There will be plenty
| of people willing to do minimum wage jobs to top-up their
| UBI so they can afford extras like holidays, nicer
| phones, meals out, etc...
|
| The main difference would be that the security of UBI
| would give them more power to distch a job if they were
| being abused in some way, rather than being so desperate
| that even if their employer is abusing them they are
| forced to take it because they need the job to survive.
|
| I feel like too much discussion on UBI is poisoned by the
| idea that the vast majority of people are bone idle and
| are willing to just sit at home doing nothing and just
| existing with the bare minumum required to live. It's
| just not true
| hibikir wrote:
| It's not that the majority of people would prefer to be
| idle, but that right now we manage to make some really
| uncomfortable jobs pay very little. It's not that you'd
| not find people to, say, work concessions at the movie
| theater. It's that the pay for harvesting a whole lot of
| crops, or do roofing work, will not work out . It's the
| same reason few Americans do those jobs in the US
| already.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| It would be good for those jobs to be paid more while
| people like CEOs make less.
| mantas wrote:
| A lot of jobs pay only ,,basic" money. How do you make
| somebody do those jobs with UBI?
| eru wrote:
| It would be 'basic' money in addition to your UBI money.
| mantas wrote:
| Then society still ends up paying 2x basic amount - both
| in UBI and salary. So price is much bigger. Now make it
| that much bigger across many jobs....
| ryandrake wrote:
| Why would the working people necessarily need to be
| taxed? You could pay for UBI with taxes on investment, or
| wealth, or luxury taxes, or other things besides labor.
| mantas wrote:
| Working people in general. Those who keep producing and
| not sit on their asses enjoying UBI. You can tax incomes,
| wealth, whatever. Either way it'd be taxing those who
| want more than UBI. And you'll need to tax them a lot.
|
| There's no way taxing super-rich-only would cover fair
| UBI. It'll have to be much much wider. Unless 99% of jobs
| would become automatized.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Food stamps tried it too, they're plenty successful.
| eru wrote:
| Food stamps are means tested. UBI as commonly understood
| ain't.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Not "as commonly understood" - UBI isn't means tested _by
| definition_. That 's what the "U" stands for!
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| The top 1% of people controlling more wealth and resources
| than the bottom 50% is mortally justifiable?
|
| It's funny whenever there is a comment like "hey, maybe we
| shouldn't let individual people get so rich they can
| basically become thier own country." Always get called
| socialists/communists. You can be capitalist while also
| having some care and protection for the little people.
| eru wrote:
| 'A' being morally unjustifiable (by some metric), doesn't
| mean that 'B' is morally justifiable.
|
| If there was a button that I could press that would double
| the wealth of the 99% of people and quadruple the wealth of
| the top 1%, I would keep pressing it, even though it
| technically makes inequality worse and worse every time.
|
| It would be morally reprehensible not to press that button.
|
| EDIT: just be clear, I am talking about real (i.e.
| inflation adjusted) wealth. I am not talking about how many
| zeros we add to all dollar amounts.
|
| So I am talking about the number of houses and shoes and
| cars we have, and the amount of ice cream and education we
| can enjoy.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It would be morally reprehensible to push that button,
| because the button would also cause prices of everything
| to inflate by the average increase (more than 2x). So
| you'd be making the 1% richer, relative to inflation, and
| the 99% poorer.
|
| Ironically, our society is basically continuously pushing
| that button today, much to the glee of the 1%.
| eru wrote:
| You are mixing up nominal and real prosperity.
|
| To be clear: I was talking about real prosperity.
|
| You are talking about nominal prosperity. And I agree:
| just adding a zero at the end of all dollar amounts
| wouldn't make anyone better off.
| metabagel wrote:
| If you could press another button which would shift some
| of the obscene wealth from the ultra-rich to people
| living at the margins of society, you should also be
| mashing that button over and over.
| blueboo wrote:
| Depends if socialism means the US highway system, Medicare,
| or The Great Leap Forward
| GLdRH wrote:
| I'm european, so socialism means actually socialism
| (no/no/yes).
| blueboo wrote:
| And I'm American, so socialism actually means western
| Europe in 2025!
| ElFitz wrote:
| Would you care to provide some facts to support your
| affirmations?
| scarmig wrote:
| Socialism didn't fail because of a UBI, which it never
| attempted; it failed because it couldn't calculate prices
| accurately, because it was bad at finding and processing
| information, political economy, and deeper computational
| complexity reasons.
|
| UBIs don't have these problems (or, rather, they'd have some
| of them in different ways, but in ways that are closer to
| market capitalism than socialism).
| GLdRH wrote:
| I made the socialism-remark because of the post before
| blaming everything on economic inequality. While that can
| lead to problems, I don't think it's necessarily a problem
| in itself or a sign of injustice.
|
| You're correct in that UBI is something different than
| socialism.
| scarmig wrote:
| Ironically, I suspect a UBI not only can coexist with
| inequality but might substantially increase it (not a bad
| thing in my book). The vast majority of Americans already
| have incomes above a UBI level, especially when current
| government benefits are accounted for. But post UBI, a
| substantial minority would exit entirely from market
| labor, while another substantial minority would be more
| willing to take career and entrepreneurial risks that are
| on average income increasing. There are also some very
| favorable aspects of it for marginal tax rates, which
| would encourage workers to earn more income.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| That was the trait of planned economy, not socialized
| ownership of the means of production.
|
| You could theoretically have market socialism, where the
| only difference from market capitalism would be the lack of
| distinction between workers and owners. Gig economy would
| be its kryptonite, though: if allow it you are back to
| exploiting workers, if you ban it you will also ban a whole
| lot of actual self-employed professionals.
| scarmig wrote:
| We don't need theoretical market socialism; we had actual
| existing Yugoslavia.
|
| Although it functioned better than centrally planned
| socialism, it still had lots of issues related to prices,
| particularly of capital. Who provides capital for
| enterprise? In practice, the state. And this ran into the
| same political economy issues with centrally planned
| economies. What happens when a company is about to go
| under? Unemployment is bad, so the worker-owned company
| gets a bail out. Who can start a firm? Well, better make
| sure your company satisfies the objectives of your local
| government.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Socialism is community ownership of resources. UBI is not
| socialism. It is income redistribution.
|
| Your morals are very strange if they don't include care for
| others.
| GLdRH wrote:
| UBI is not about "care". That's just the typical left-wing
| compassion framing.
|
| I don't want to abolish all taxes, I'm not a libertarian.
| But giving away the money you took from somebody else needs
| a justification (for example to pay for the roads). And I
| find "income redistribution" for the sake of it not an
| acceptable goal.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Why is paying for roads justifiable, but providing people
| a safety net not justifiable?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Because people don't treat it as a "safety net" and
| instead use it as a "living net".
|
| There is some contingent of people who will just not
| participate in society no matter what. So the question
| becomes where do we set the bar - the lower this bar, the
| smaller that contingent.
| eru wrote:
| > Universal basic income is impossible to justify morally.
|
| It's pretty easy to justify morally. I mean at least as easy
| as any other welfare.
|
| The net payments for UBI plus (income) taxes don't have to
| look to different from what many countries already do today.
| It's just the accounting that looks a bit different.
| foxglacier wrote:
| By morally, he might mean it creates a moral hazard. I know
| that when I was poor, I worked only the minimum to support
| myself. If I had UBI that covered those costs, I certainly
| wouldn't have worked, so there'd be less productivity in
| the economy.
| eru wrote:
| Well, exactly that problem already exists qualitatively
| with current tax and welfare systems.
|
| Whether UBI would make the problem quantitatively worse
| depends on the exact design of the UBI system you have in
| mind and the current system you want to compare it with.
| hn_throw2025 wrote:
| UBI means giving money to people, which means that money
| has velocity because it would be promptly spent.
|
| We did this during Covid as furlough payments, and the
| result was high inflation. Wages didn't significantly
| increase to match, so in my country anyway people feel that
| the cost if living is significantly worse post-Covid.
|
| Anywhere that implemented UBI would also have to implement
| rent controls, otherwise Landlords would just see it as
| money on the table. But you couldn't have controls for all
| prices, so inflation would still result.
| geoffmunn wrote:
| This is what most people miss when they criticise UBI -
| for most people, it will be immediately spent, taxed, and
| put back into the economy. As long as the velocity is
| there, it's not an entirely bad idea as long as inflation
| can be kept under control.
| hn_throw2025 wrote:
| > as long as inflation can be kept under control.
|
| Nice trick if you can pull it off.
|
| So for the 1GBP you print, you recoup up to 20p in VAT,
| or less for foodstuffs.
|
| And more money chasing the same goods and services
| means...?
| eru wrote:
| Are you suggesting that UBI should be paid out of freshly
| printed money?
|
| I don't think that's how people commonly understand how
| UBI should be financed.
| hn_throw2025 wrote:
| I can only speak for the UK. But given the fiscal
| headroom for the foreseeable, I don't see where else it
| would come from? If they don't have it, they either
| borrow or print it?
|
| For any meaningful scheme, you would be talking about
| hundreds of billions.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| That's were things such as wealth tax kicks in.
|
| The money that just sits untaxed on the vaults of the
| extremely wealthy should be taxed to finance this.
|
| This is trickle down economics done right. Remove money
| from the wealthy and redistribute it to benefit society.
| hn_throw2025 wrote:
| I would imagine the extremely wealthy have passports,
| global homes, and the vaults you mention might well be in
| Switzerland.
|
| The extremely wealthy will also have an army of lawyers
| and accountants to mitigate against this, not to mention
| trusts and holding companies.
|
| It's a nice idea, but the implementation is tricky.
|
| I'm not arguing for them, just being realistic.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| What they actually have is an inordinate power to lobby
| governments.
|
| No army of lawyers would save them from actually
| effective regulation.
| eru wrote:
| Voting with your feet will save you from that.
|
| Of course, if you want to do business in country X, you
| are subject to the laws of that country X.
|
| But otherwise, you can leave that country and settle down
| elsewhere and do your business there. No matter how
| 'actually effective' that regulation is. (Unless you do
| an 'East Germany' and don't allow people to leave.)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Voting with your feet will save you from that.
|
| When relevant countries act in tandem, it would work.
|
| I would really like to see a billionaire vote with their
| feet to protect their wealth by moving ro Somalia or
| something like that.
|
| A country can also limit their ability to operate from
| abroad when they move.
|
| In real life, value producing is inherently tied to the
| society which allows value to be produced.
| eru wrote:
| > The money that just sits untaxed on the vaults of the
| extremely wealthy should be taxed to finance this.
|
| Approximately no one has vaults of gold like Scrooge
| McDuck. The richest people largely hold their wealth in
| company shares.
|
| So you are suggesting to raise the cost of capital for
| companies?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Approximately no one has vaults of gold like Scrooge
| McDuck
|
| Yeah, I also like to be pedantically literal when I don't
| have good counter arguments. I feel your pain, brother.
|
| You can replace my "vaults of gold" analogy for propety,
| yachts, real estate, company shares, etc. Whatever
| someone holds in their own name that constitutes wealth
| above a certain threshold should be taxed.
|
| > So you are suggesting to raise the cost of capital for
| companies?
|
| Corporations also should contribute to society, as they
| also benefit from the common infrastructure.
|
| There's this pervasive idea that "if we tax the rich they
| will stop investing in companies and us filthy peasants
| will be out of jobs" which is the bullshit of the ages.
| If there is demand for goods and services, there will be
| those that supply them.
| eru wrote:
| But the company whose shares we are talking about is out
| there in the real world and doing stuff with its capital.
| It's not idle.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I am talking about the individual holding the shares.
|
| Are you just being obtuse to deflect from the actual
| argument?
| eru wrote:
| Tax incidence is a non-trivial topic. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
|
| Basically, the people a tax is nominally levied upon
| don't necessarily bear the economic burden, and vice
| versa.
|
| A silly example: do you think it makes a difference if
| your employer transfers your whole gross income into your
| account and you pay income taxes, or whether your
| employer pays the income tax first, and then transfers
| you the net amount?
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| No one has money "sitting in vaults"
|
| They keep money in bonds (lending money to people, corps,
| govs that need it), stocks (raise the value of companies
| that are valuable thus letting them borrow more etc) or
| they consume which pays for all the poor peoples salaries
|
| The immaturity of people when it comes to economics is a
| problem
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > They keep money in bonds (lending money to people,
| corps, govs that need it), stocks (raise the value of
| companies that are valuable thus letting them borrow more
| etc)
|
| That's wealth that should be taxed.
|
| > The immaturity of people when it comes to economics is
| a problem
|
| I agree. Just not in the way you imagine.
| eru wrote:
| > That's wealth that should be taxed.
|
| Wealth taxes are fairly controversial, and not very
| common around the world.
|
| But they have been implemented in a few places, and we
| can look at what real world effects have been observed.
| johnecheck wrote:
| You're broadly correct.
|
| Don't let the uneducated messenger distract from UBI
| itself though. Proposed seriously, it's about reducing
| asset values and high incomes to redistribute that value
| to everyone who isn't losing more value than the UBI. The
| real argument is that it would mean short-term economic
| costs to build a more robust system with a bigger pool of
| people with the safety net and risk appetite to
| start/join companies.
| eru wrote:
| The interesting question about UBI is how to finance it.
| It's far from a settled question what would be the best
| or even just a good way to do so.
|
| You seem to have something very specific in mind?
| johnecheck wrote:
| I don't really. You're right, ofc. The details about what
| taxes pay for UBI and who pays them are obviously of key
| importance.
|
| I don't claim to have the answers. My point is just that
| there are interesting benefits that are worth weighing
| against those costs.
| eru wrote:
| As you've figured out, you can't sustainably raise a lot
| of money via printing. At least not in real terms when
| adjusted for inflation. (Of course, in nominal terms you
| can raise arbitrary amounts by printing.)
|
| Now how to finance a UBI is a good question.
|
| A land value tax would be an interesting choice.
| Especially since a UBI will probably lead to higher
| rents.
| eru wrote:
| If you have an inflation targeting central bank, velocity
| of money doesn't really matter.
|
| If velocity speeds up and inflation goes up, the central
| bank will remove money from circulation to hit their
| target. If velocity goes down, the central bank will
| inject money into circulation.
|
| The fiscal multiplier is zero.
|
| (Or rather, any deviation of the fiscal multiplier from
| zero is evidence of an incompetent central bank.)
| eru wrote:
| > We did this during Covid as furlough payments, and the
| result was high inflation.
|
| No. The high inflation was a result of Fed policy, not
| fiscal tricks like furlough payments.
|
| > Anywhere that implemented UBI would also have to
| implement rent controls, otherwise Landlords would just
| see it as money on the table. But you couldn't have
| controls for all prices, so inflation would still result.
|
| You are right that UBI can lead to higher relative prices
| for rent.
|
| And that's why you would want to pair UBI with land value
| taxes, not rent control.
|
| (UBI would not lead to inflation, and would not
| necessarily lead to higher absolute rents. The overall
| level of inflation is something an inflation targeting
| central bank, like the Fed or ECB, controls.)
| hn_throw2025 wrote:
| > And that's why you would want to pair UBI with land
| value taxes, not rent control.
|
| In the last place I rented (London), the private
| landlords were unlikely to own the land. Fixed term
| leasehold was overwhelming common, not freehold.
| eru wrote:
| That doesn't make a difference to how land value tax
| works. If a landlord doesn't own the land, he leases it
| from someone who does.
|
| But to make LVT simpler to understand (and economically
| equivalent): you can imagine the government owns all the
| land, and rents out plots for eg 20 years at a time to
| the highest bidder. To help people plan better, the
| auctions can be done 5 years ahead of time. So leases for
| 2036 - 2056 will be auctioned off in 2031.
|
| You can stagger the auctions, so a few leases get
| auctioned off every week.
| hn_throw2025 wrote:
| If we step away from the realms of imagination, then in
| the UK typical leaseholds are legally valid for about 100
| years, with some going up to 999 years. Of course, many
| leaseholders - the rent seeking Landlords - may come and
| go within those lease cycles.
|
| Or are you proposing State confiscation and management of
| the land? I can't quite tell from your post.
| eru wrote:
| I was describing a simpler system for implementing UBI.
| You are right that I left out how to transition to that
| system.
|
| For example, you could do more or less the same thing
| that the UK did to abolish slavery: buy out all the
| existing land owners / lease holders.
|
| I suggested 20 years as a reasonable time frame for
| leases. In principle, 100 years might would also work.
| 999 years is probably far too long.
|
| Now, instead of auctioning off the leases, you can also
| have individuals officially owning the land, but instead
| you tax them a certain fraction of the market value of
| the land every year. Economically that's equivalent.
|
| A 999 year lease is basically economically the same as
| owning the land. So you should more or less treat it the
| same.
| metabagel wrote:
| The primary factor behind high inflation was supply chain
| disruption.
| samiv wrote:
| Thats because the state basically printed money and
| handed it out.
|
| Ask yourself when you have a normal working class person
| who roughly breaks even on their income vs. their
| spending where does all that money go?
|
| They pay rent. And then what? They pay mortgage, they car
| insurance, they utilities.
|
| One way or another the money ends up to the top of the
| pyramid, i.e. the wealthy individuals who own capital
| assets, properties, businesses etc.
|
| You had high inflation because the government essentially
| printed money. But what if instead of printing that 1
| trillion dollars (or however much it was), the state had
| actually taxed the that money off of the rich individuals
| and corporations and then handed that out.
|
| The same money would again flow through the system back
| to the same rich people where it could be taxed _again_
| and handed out and put back into the circulation. This
| would not cause inflation by itself since the monetary
| value of the money would not be devalued.
|
| It would require a government that actually gave a damn
| about its citizens and had balls to tax people and
| corporations and when the said corporations and
| individuals run the government its of course not going to
| happen.
| djmips wrote:
| People that have inherited capital have income without merit.
| Is that immoral? Randomly being born in a rich nation to an
| advantaged life. Is that immoral too?
| ascorbic wrote:
| UBI is not a socialist policy. It's supported by many across
| the political spectrum. It seems particularly popular with
| many libertarians
| tehjoker wrote:
| capitalism has failed, the economy is turning into pure
| financial speculation. our products are made in socialist
| china which delivered the largest proportion of people rising
| from poverty
| mantas wrote:
| Arts have another problem. Although I'm not even sure if it is
| a problem.
|
| Lots and lots of people can create arts. In old era when people
| would just gather together and sing. Nobody would make a living
| off that. Very very few people were making a living by
| performing to nobility.
|
| Modern recording industry with specialized instruments
| distorted this by allowing more talented people make a living.
| Yet it destroyed a lot of community singing by not-highly-
| talented people. On one hand more people could make a living,
| on the other hand much much less people were creating arts.
|
| Nowadays it feels like we're returning back to the natural
| flow. More people are creating arts since modern instruments
| are widely accessible. But fewer people can make a living.
|
| Overall, I'd say more people creating arts is preferable
| outcome. And best art is created for the sake of it as a hobby.
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, it is opposite. You coulf live off being musician,
| because people liked music. Bars and such paid live music,
| weddings, funerals, middle class birthsdays too.
|
| That stopped when we started to play from record.
| mantas wrote:
| I'm talking pre industrial society. You'd have your
| neighbors singing at funeral or weddings. Unless you're
| nobility of course. But that's a tiny portion of society.
| usrusr wrote:
| Had any of those pre-recording entertainers been even
| remotely close to making a living off it? Outside of apex
| apex courts?
|
| I guess busking has existed in many societies, but that's
| hardly making a living, and certainly not middle class.
|
| Weddings, funerals and birthdays, that's where i see
| community contribution, not full time professionals.
| _Perhaps_ community contribution involving a little side
| income, but chances are, in pre-recording days, not even
| that. Not much other entertainment possibilities to spend
| your Sunday on other than being part of the band.
|
| (it's funny how middle class is often portaied as a modern
| achievement, when the past is so full of examples of
| population that isn't the ruling elite, but economically
| still far above another layer of dropouts that would just
| move from opportunity to opportunity until an early death,
| at least unless they end up at some form of monastery)
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Most societies have professional musicians. Ancient
| Greece did, and so did Victorian England (see the music
| halls).
| decimalenough wrote:
| Absolutely. For example, Romani (gypsy) musicians are
| justly famous and many made and continue to make a living
| performing at weddings, parties, etc.
| watwut wrote:
| They lived from it, full stop. It was middle class sort
| of occupation. You was not rich nor poor, you was
| respected but not a leader.
|
| > Weddings, funerals and birthdays, that's where i see
| community contribution, not full time professionals.
|
| These were definitely professionals and these events were
| seen as important. Even if you was poor, you threw money
| on it. People in the past had ears just like we do. The
| amateur singing after 5th beer is fun for singers, but
| not fun for anyone else.
|
| > Not much other entertainment possibilities to spend
| your Sunday on other than being part of the band.
|
| They had plenty of opportunities, we did not invented
| fun. All generations before us had fun. Socializing and
| drinking would be the easy straightforward one. Listening
| to a professional band as you drink and chat.
| HocusLocus wrote:
| > You could live off being musician, because people liked
| music
|
| I like how you're turning the article around a bit. So many
| voices you hear these days are saying thing like, "My
| father was a [x]. I've been an [x] all my life. Since [y]
| it's been harder than ever to make a living. I've always
| looked up to successful [x]s as more able or refined in
| some way, but now I have stratification on the brain and I
| start to think that those [x]s are taking too big a piece
| of the pie, and they should give me some."
|
| If you approached a club owner in 1960 and said "Look, you
| don't have to hire a band. I'll set you up with one of
| those open reel mag tape gizmos and you can spend $300 on a
| tape library and spend hours nursing it." They'd look at
| you and reply "That's a crazy joke. I'll hire a band."
|
| Then in 1990 the club owner doesn't even participate in the
| music, and expects the bartender to keep the CD/cassette
| deck loaded. Or they play the radio. In 1960 that would
| result in jibes about the club owner promoting the radio
| station. In 1990 it just happens and goes unnoticed.
|
| The problem is there has never really been a mass
| expectation of original live music in all these drinking-
| places. There has only been a social demand that music be
| present, which can be fulfilled in so many other ways now.
| It's sad that it can be stated in such a simple way that is
| an assault to the ego.
|
| But it probably helps if you can allude to society changing
| in undesirable ways despite your best efforts, class
| struggles, or bad government.
| decimalenough wrote:
| > _Yet it destroyed a lot of community singing by not-highly-
| talented people._
|
| There is almost certainly a choir near you that would love to
| have more singers, especially if they're male. (Membership
| skews female and geriatric.)
| anovikov wrote:
| Only problem is that it requires totalitarian world government
| to do it. There is that thing called competition. Societies
| where people aren't pushed to work by fear of hunger,
| homelessness, and social exclusion, will very quickly lose out
| and fall apart. Perhaps this is why universal basic income
| doesn't exist. I mean, Soviet Union was very close to having
| it: there was no unemployment and if you were fine living on
| the base salary you could do nothing on your job and as long as
| you didn't come there drunk or disseminated anti-Soviet jokes,
| you'd be fine. See where it ended up.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Wouldn't that argument predict that the united states and
| most of Europe should collapse any second now? Countries
| where failure to find work leads to an actual threat of
| hunger are mostly very poor and corrupt developing nations.
| anovikov wrote:
| Indeed this is the big reason of why economic growth rates
| in rich countries and especially those of them with low
| inequality, is slower. Because the primary factor that
| pushes people to work, is much weaker. It's not the only
| reason (another big reason is that poorer countries are
| playing a catch-up adopting technology invented by rich
| ones which is always easier than inventing it first), but
| yes, one of the big reasons.
| simonask wrote:
| I don't think there is any evidence that people are
| motivated to work because of the threat of starvation.
|
| The most economically productive nations on the planet
| are well outside any risk of starvation, by a huge
| margin. This line of thinking is not a part of serious
| economic theory, it just comes from an extremely
| primitive high school level understanding of economics.
| atoav wrote:
| That is what you would think. Yet scandinavian countries
| which many US observers would (wrongly) call "socialist"
| countries fare quite well, while the US is currently falling
| apart in a fractal fashion where even the big issues have
| smaller issues attached to them.
|
| It is maybe time for people like you to realize that the
| current crisis in the US is a direct result of this zero-sum
| worldview, where you think you can only win if someone else
| loses. Some turned that around and infer someone else losing
| will make them win, which is where a lot of the worse-than-
| soviet cruelty in US society comes from. Where producing win-
| win outcomes should be prefered, part of the US seems to be
| craving for lose-lose.
|
| It is hard for the fish to perceive the nature of the water
| they have been swimming in their whole lives, but trust me:
| from an European standpoint the frequency soviet-style
| stories emerging from the US is rising.
|
| People don't call ambulances because they're afraid of the
| cost, they die in the back of rideshares or sit bleeding out
| waiting for someone to Google the cheapest ER.
|
| People drink poisoned water in one of the richest countries
| in the world, not as a one-time scandal but as a structural
| outcome, in Flint, in Jackson, in places the cameras moved on
| from.
|
| Housing is a market, not a right, and so entire cities now
| feature tent villages under highways while luxury units sit
| empty, protected not by need but by capital.
|
| In parts of Louisiana, California and Iowa, the air you
| breathe and the water you touch can kill you, but only if
| you're poor enough or Black or unlucky enough to live near a
| chemical plant, a battery smelter, a lake no one bothers to
| save. In these sacrifice zones, life expectancy drops like
| it's wartime. In urban centres people film others burning
| alive on the subway (NYC) and call it content.
|
| There are cemeteries of Black Americans being paved over for
| parking garages, with courts hesitating to intervene. These
| aren't edge cases--they're the shape of the thing. This is
| not the freedom that was promised. This is the bureaucracy of
| cruelty operating not as failure, but as design. And the
| worst part is: many still think this is the price of success.
| foxglacier wrote:
| No because the whole first world has protections against
| starvation and homelessness, while social exclusion is
| usually for social behaviors rather than not working.
| However, what does drive people to be productive in those
| countries is the unbounded upward mobility offered by doing
| productive work. People strive to be richer than each other
| in a virtuous cycle that has the side effect of benefiting
| everyone. People, especially men, love and often need to be
| better than their peers to attract better partners, and
| that's a powerful driving force for many. For others, it's
| just feeling successful or gaining the power to by what you
| want. You can't do that if you're not rewarded for higher
| performance than your competitors (socialism).
|
| Homelessness in the west is mostly not because people can't
| afford a house but because they'd rather spend their money on
| other things (drugs) or don't want a house at any price, or
| can't avoid losing their house because of their behavior.
| eru wrote:
| > [...] a larger problem, namely that overall economic
| inequality is way too high.
|
| What economic inequality would you deem small enough?
|
| And why do you care about inequality, and not eg the absolute
| livings standards of the least well off? We can 'solve'
| inequality by just destroying everything the rich have, but
| that won't make anyone better off.
|
| Btw, the absolute living standards of all members of society,
| including the least well off, have never been better. And
| that's true for almost any society you care to look at on our
| globe. (Removing eg those currently at war, that weren't at war
| earlier.)
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > What economic inequality would you deem small enough?
|
| Economic inequality small enough to not be the root cause of
| the particular problem you are interested in.
| eru wrote:
| Well, that definition only makes sense to someone who
| thinks that economic inequality is a root cause of any
| problems.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| There is so much research on the problems of inequality. "The
| Spirit Level" is one book. (e.g.
| https://equalitytrust.org.uk/the-spirit-level/)
|
| The problems of inequality go well beyond living standards.
| E.g. political control in a very unequal society gets
| concentrated in a few people.
| eru wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level_(Wilkins
| on_an...
|
| Especially the failures to replicate.
| anon_e-moose wrote:
| Good points, he seems to be in to something in the health
| field, but the analysis was incomplete and flawed. Given
| the importance of the health results, perhaps someone
| could build on top of that and build an improved study?
| vixen99 wrote:
| See also 'The Spirit Level Delusion' by Christopher
| Snowdon. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolutio
| n/2019/03/th...
| noelwelsh wrote:
| 1. Any research of any note will get criticism. (E.g. see
| responses to Picketty.)
|
| 2. From Wikipedia it appears they responded to all the
| substantial criticism. It also mentions an independent
| study largely agreeing with the results.
|
| 3. This is one book amongst a mountain of research, and
| there are problems with inequality that go beyond those
| the book mentions.
| eru wrote:
| I agree that Wikipedia wasn't the best source to go for
| criticism: Wikipedia is very sympathetic to the claims
| like in the book, so the criticism section is very weak
| sauce.
|
| It is indeed noble that the authors responded to the
| criticism, but unlike what Wikipedia seems to imply, they
| didn't manage to rescue their argument.
|
| See https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/201
| 9/03/th... from another comment.
| trust_bt_verify wrote:
| A blog post referencing another blog post doesn't seem to
| rise to the level of total disregard for the original
| study. But maybe we can try Wikipedia again.
| bluGill wrote:
| a book is not a study a either.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > What economic inequality would you deem small enough?
|
| I'd like the one small enough that I won't die from my
| (treatable) first major medical event due to being unable to
| fund 100% of treatment costs.
|
| I'd also like one small enough that me and the kids didn't
| spend most of the 2010s in hunger-level poverty.
|
| That'd be a start.
| eru wrote:
| Nothing of what you said has anything to do with equality
| at all. It's about the absolute level of prosperity of
| yourself (and presumably everyone else).
|
| So if everyone got 10x richer overnight, but the top 1% got
| 1000x richer, that would increase inequality by any
| reasonable metric, but it would help with the benchmarks
| you mentioned.
| ascorbic wrote:
| If absolute prosperity is what matters, how is the US the
| richest country in the world, while being pretty much the
| only one where medical bankruptcy is a thing?
| eru wrote:
| The US isn't the richest country in the world (per
| capita). What makes you think so? However, Americans are
| on _average_ pretty rich per capita.
|
| And in any case, I'm saying absolute prosperity of
| individual people matters. Not the average per capita
| absolute prosperity of a country.
|
| So people who go into medical bankruptcy in the US are
| obviously not individually rich. And I hope you and me
| agree, that if you could find a way to make them better
| off, that would be a good thing?
|
| Whereas if you found a way to make them worse off by 20%,
| but make Mr Zuckerberg worse off by 50%, that would not
| be advisable, even if it technically decreases
| inequality.
| ascorbic wrote:
| It's the richest country in absolute terms, and the
| richest per-capita if you exclude small countries.
|
| As a side note, it really shouldn't be possible to edit
| comments two hours after they've been posted and after
| they've had replies. Particularly without showing any
| indication of that.
| voidhorse wrote:
| No one is suggesting to "make Mr Zuckerberg worse off".
|
| The inequality problem is about _access to material
| resources_. Money is just an abstraction. No one is
| seriously suggesting to refuse zuckerberg access to good
| things on principle or to just diminish and not
| redistribute his wealth, that 's preposterous.
|
| The point is that access to capital _is access to
| resources_. The people that hoard capital necessarily end
| up hoarding important resources and they use this
| imbalance to then extract further capital from others and
| further their position, thus in turn gives them power.
| The problem is all about bringing more balance to this
| situation so that we avoid a return to feudalism in which
| a handful of people have control over all the resources
| and power and everyone is is basically just beholden to
| their whims.
| eru wrote:
| How does 'hoarding' capital look like? What do you mean
| by that?
| metabagel wrote:
| > However, Americans are on _average_ pretty rich per
| capita.
|
| Better to use the median, because the average is heavily
| skewed by the ultra-rich.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| In poorer countries, instead of medical bankruptcy, there
| just isn't medicine available. The poor in sub-saharan
| africa are not receiving first class government funded
| medical care.
| simonask wrote:
| This is a total red herring. We're not talking about sub-
| Saharan Africa. As Americans who want to fix your
| country, you should be looking at countries with similar
| standards of living, such as every single European
| country. You can even pick the rich ones, like the
| Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, or Germany.
|
| The alternative to the current situation in the US is not
| abject poverty.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| No it wouldn't. Inflation would skyrocket and baseline
| prices would be at least 10x higher. And that's not how
| UBI works, no one is some multiplier richer because it
| exists.
|
| The top 1% getting 1000x richer is a problem, because
| trickle down economics is bullshit. Money that exists as
| part of a pile of gold in a dragon's den does not move
| the economy.
| eru wrote:
| I was not making a statement about UBI. I was purely
| talking about inequality.
|
| The price level is driven by what the central bank does
| with the money printer. UBI wouldn't raise prices, if the
| central bank does their job even halfway competently.
| (Even the mediocre real world performance of the Fed or
| ECB would suffice to _not_ have prices raise by 10x in eg
| a year of UBI.)
|
| > And that's not how UBI works, no one is some multiplier
| richer because it exists.
|
| I was not meaning to imply that UBI would make people
| richer on average. My comment was purely about inequality
| being a bad measure.
|
| UBI plus the taxes that finance it are a redistribution
| scheme. It doesn't make people richer on average. At best
| you can hope that the tax is very efficient and has low
| or no deadweight losses (like land value taxes), so that
| on average UBI doesn't make your society worse off.
|
| > The top 1% getting 1000x richer is a problem, because
| trickle down economics is bullshit. Money that exists as
| part of a pile of gold in a dragon's den does not move
| the economy.
|
| Huh? If what you said were true, the top 1% getting 1000x
| richer would merely not do anything, but it wouldn't be a
| problem per se.
|
| Btw, it's not a problem if someone just hoard some money:
| the central bank will notice that inflation is below
| target, and print more. (Later, when you spend from your
| hoard, the central bank will notice that, and
| correspondingly shrink the money supply.) Sticking money
| in a hoard is equivalent to giving an interest free loan
| to the central bank, because they can temporarily emit
| more money, while yours is out of circulation.
|
| However, rich people don't tend to keep cash in a vault.
| Most of them own companies or land etc.
| voidhorse wrote:
| > However, rich people don't tend to keep cash in a
| vault. Most of them own companies or land etc.
|
| _exactly_. Which is the problem. You seem to actually
| have all the ingredients to be able to understand _why_
| this is a problem, but some kind of sympathy for the rich
| (lol) seems to prevent you from actually using logic to
| see the problem.
| eru wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand what problem you are seeing
| from people owning shares in eg publicly traded
| companies.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Not a problem. But above a certain threshold it should be
| considered taxable wealth too.
| voidhorse wrote:
| Don't be silly. Smoking one cigarette is generally not
| problematic. Smoking thousands will tend to give you lung
| cancer.
|
| Nobody is arguing that people shouldn't own stocks.
| People are arguing that asset concentration taken to
| extremes is like smoking too many cigs: so enough and you
| force bad outcomes on society and the economic system.
| johnecheck wrote:
| Your analysis is spot on. UBI funded by taxes is
| redistribution.
|
| Is that a bad thing? It would obviously have some
| negative effects. We'd immediately see damage to luxury
| brands and yacht sales. The art markets would crash.
| Stock markets would feel some pain.
|
| The upside though? My hunch is that making most people
| feel secure enough to risk starting/joining businesses is
| fuel for a strong and innovative economy. The fact that
| so few of us are able to take those risks is a constraint
| on growth.
| eru wrote:
| > We'd immediately see damage to luxury brands and yacht
| sales. The art markets would crash. Stock markets would
| feel some pain.
|
| How do you make these confident predictions?
|
| I think it would depend a lot on how the UBI is, and
| exactly how you design the taxes to finance it (and how
| high those taxes are going to be).
| johnecheck wrote:
| My assumption is that UBI is a significant transfer of
| wealth from the richest to the rest. Isn't that the whole
| point? Exactly how to structure the taxes that pay for it
| is naturally a key question.
|
| Given that, it's pretty safe to assume markets that cater
| exclusively to the ultra-wealthy will be harmed by
| reduced demand as their customer base shrinks. Higher tax
| rates will also exert downward pressure ob stock values
| as companies make less profit and investors tighten their
| belts. (Especially if there's a wealth tax.)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > UBI plus the taxes that finance it are a redistribution
| scheme.
|
| Yes. That is desirable.
|
| > However, rich people don't tend to keep cash in a
| vault. Most of them own companies or land etc.
|
| And those too should be taxed. If it is wealth, it should
| be taxed.
| eru wrote:
| I keep significant fraction of my wealth in eg my kidneys
| and healthy organs. Should they be taxed?
|
| How about taxing Brad Pitt for his good looks?
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| The top 1% aren't sitting on a pile of gold in a dragon's
| den, their wealth is mostly invested. The amount of money
| Jeff Bezos owns in houses and boats is small in
| comparison to the amount of his wealth that is
| represented by stock in amazon; that money in amazon's
| hands is absolutely cycling through the economy.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > small in comparison to the amount of his wealth that is
| represented by stock in amazon
|
| That wealth should also be taxed.
|
| What makes stock ownership somehow holy that should be
| protected from taxation?
|
| We should stop conflating what a company generates as a
| consequence of their activity with the glorified gambling
| of the stock market.
| eru wrote:
| Stock ownership isn't protected from taxation: there's
| capital gains tax to be paid (in many countries).
|
| > We should stop conflating what a company generates as a
| consequence of their activity with the glorified gambling
| of the stock market.
|
| Well, that might be a valid point for some people, but
| it's pointless for Zuckerberg or Bezos or Bill Gates or
| even Musk: those guys have been mostly holding their
| companies' stocks for ages. They don't buy and sell all
| the time. No 'glorified gambling the stock market' there.
|
| In any case, I brought up stock ownership as a concrete
| example of wealth that doesn't just site 'idle' in a
| vault somewhere. It's a claim on a productive enterprise
| that is only worth something because it serves customers
| and employs people etc.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Jeff Bezos can spend 50 million dollars on his wedding.
| Since that's a small amount of money compared to the
| amount of his stock in amazon, I think Jeff can actually
| afford to have his taxes raised on whatever he has on
| hand.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| the healthcare situation sucks. provide universal healthcare
| and you might have a point
| eru wrote:
| I don't live in the US. We have a very different helthcare
| system where I live, and it's working well.
|
| But again: providing universal healthcare is all about
| giving (poor) people more prosperity. It has nothing to do
| with inequality by itself.
|
| If tomorrow Mr Zuckerberg got 100x better healthcare, but
| everyone else only got 10x better healthcare, that would
| fix the problem you mentioned, but would technically make
| inequality worse.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| > If tomorrow Mr Zuckerberg got 100x better healthcare,
| but everyone else only got 10x better healthcare, that
| would fix the problem you mentioned, but would
| technically make inequality worse.
|
| No, because we outnumber Mark Zuckerberg by more than 10
| fold
|
| Anyway, I would argue that having guaranteed healthcare
| is 10293762397697x better than not having guaranteed
| healthcare
| eru wrote:
| > Anyway, I would argue that having guaranteed healthcare
| is 10293762397697x better than not having guaranteed
| healthcare
|
| Sure, healthcare is nice. I see no disagreement.
|
| > > If tomorrow Mr Zuckerberg got 100x better healthcare,
| but everyone else only got 10x better healthcare, that
| would fix the problem you mentioned, but would
| technically make inequality worse.
|
| > No, because we outnumber Mark Zuckerberg by more than
| 10 fold
|
| Well, fix the numbers any way you feel like. Eg say Mr
| Zuckerberg gets better off by whatever amount the rest of
| us together get better (eg in terms of healthcare) plus
| 10% extra.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Mark Zuckerberg would in fact need to have 8 billion
| times better healthcare than me for your argument to
| matter
|
| I don't know anyone who really thinks that absolute
| inequality is the problem. people need a high floor -
| there is no inherent reason to want to lower the ceiling
| of wealth/benefits. but since there's no such thing as
| free lunch, we need to calculate by how much each % of
| ceiling that is lowered raises the floor. If we can
| reduce the ceiling by 10% and raise the floor by 100%,
| then that's worthwhile.
|
| The hard part is calculating the benefits. There are non-
| linear effects when you try to predict the benefits of
| having a healthy and educated population, although the
| benefit should be enormous.
|
| On the other hand it is very easy to calculate the
| downside of people not being wage-slaves: not needing to
| accept bottom wages, having time to understand what's
| actually going on in the world, organizing for or against
| particular causes, etc..
| eru wrote:
| I'm saying that we need to be careful that our obsession
| to obstruct the rich doesn't leave the masses worse off.
|
| > If we can reduce the ceiling by 10% and raise the floor
| by 100%, then that's worthwhile.
|
| I'm afraid that lowering the ceiling by 10% might lower
| the floor by 10%, too.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| > the absolute living standards of all members of
| society, including the least well off, have never been
| better
|
| that is completely wrong. purchasing power is at an all
| time low in real dollar terms
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SA0R
|
| > we need to be careful that our obsession to obstruct
| the rich doesn't leave the masses worse off
|
| we need to be careful that the obsession with being mega
| rich doesn't leave the masses worse off
|
| you're not proposing anything. you don't even seem to
| think there's a problem. let me guess, the best thing to
| do is just keep things the way they are? what are you
| talking about?
| weatherlite wrote:
| > And why do you care about inequality, and not eg the
| absolute livings standards of the least well off?
|
| The two are connected. You can either transfer more wealth to
| the poorer people without taxing the rich (lets say by
| helicopter money), or transfer it from the rich to the poor.
| In both cases the rich become less rich in relative terms. It
| should also make intuitive sense - if the rich (lets say top
| 5%) hold 95% of wealth it means there is less for everyone
| else - less wealth that is because the resources like land,
| apartments and good education are finite and not abundant.
| Kinrany wrote:
| You can of course create wealth in such a way that
| inequality stays the same. Not all types of wealth are
| finite for practical purposes.
| psb217 wrote:
| But, if empirically our current system for net wealth
| creation tends to also produce wealth concentration, it
| makes sense to consider ways of modifying the system to
| mitigate some of the wealth concentration while
| maintaining as much of the wealth creation as possible.
| eru wrote:
| The target you should look for is how much wealth gets
| created for the least well-off (or for some low
| percentile representative person). Just don't worry about
| what the rich people doing at all. No need to punish
| them.
| voidhorse wrote:
| Where is the "wealth created for the least well off"
| going to come from?
|
| Necessarily, that must be wealth that _did '_ go to the
| rich instead (it could have!). So, necessarily, you are
| "punishing" them by doing so.
|
| You mainly seem to be against some kind of hypothetical
| robinhoodesque style redistribution because you worry
| it's unfair to the rich. Any solution, though, will have
| to take this shape, whether it targets the existing
| wealth or wealth generated going forward. It's all about
| redistribution of access no matter how you slice
|
| You don't need to be so protective of the rich. They are
| doing just fine and they have plenty of resource and
| mechanisms in place to protect themselves. If the world's
| wealthiest people were made even just a tiny bit less
| wealth by redistribution of assets they would still be
| living like absolute kings.
| eru wrote:
| > Where is the "wealth created for the least well off"
| going to come from?
|
| Well, mostly where everyone's wealth is coming from: from
| the fruits of their own labour.
|
| > You mainly seem to be against some kind of hypothetical
| robinhoodesque style redistribution because you worry
| it's unfair to the rich.
|
| No, I haven't started worrying about fairness, yet. No,
| I'm afraid that a tax system designed by what sounds good
| instead of what works will leave the poor even worse off.
|
| Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence for
| an example: who you officially levy the taxes on isn't
| necessarily the person shouldering the economic burden.
| johnecheck wrote:
| Only tiny fraction of a billionaire's wealth tends to be
| the fruit of their personal labor. It's the labor of
| their employees and machines that create the wealth. To
| my understanding, this is broadly accepted.
|
| Now, billionaires do supply a different key ingredient to
| the wealth creation - _risk_. Without investment and
| risk, wealth cannot be created. In terms of $ investment,
| billionaires take on the vast majority of the risk and
| deserve the bulk of the rewards, the argument goes.
| Workers take on far less risk with their guaranteed*
| paycheck .
|
| But which is the bigger risk? A billionaire's
| $100,000,000? Or your home, your health, and your
| retirement savings were you to lose your job in a bad
| market?
|
| I'm interested in company structures that incentivize
| distributing risk, profit, and power across a larger
| group than we tend to see in modern companies.
| eru wrote:
| > I'm interested in company structures that incentivize
| distributing risk, profit, and power across a larger
| group than we tend to see in modern companies.
|
| Please feel free to start your own company or
| cooperative.
| johnecheck wrote:
| Working on it ;)
| danans wrote:
| > But which is the bigger risk? A billionaire's
| $100,000,000? Or your home, your health, and your
| retirement savings were you to lose your job in a bad
| market?
|
| This parallels the diminishing marginal utility of
| wealth, which states that with extreme wealth, you can't
| buy any more to get more utility or happiness.
|
| In a way, the risk phenomenon picks up where that
| phenomenon leaves off, where the need for normal
| "utility" gives way to the desire for amassing power over
| society at large.
|
| The mistake they make is not realizing how much of their
| wealth and welfare relies on the welfare of the masses.
|
| > I'm interested in company structures that incentivize
| distributing risk, profit, and power across a larger
| group than we tend to see in modern companies.
|
| Ironically this is a tiny bit of what we saw with
| employee stock options in the early days of the internet
| industry, reflected in the historically outsized power
| and voice of workers. Arguably, that is a part of the
| rationale behind the big tech layoffs - to put labor back
| in its place.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The bigger relative risk is precisely why the billionaire
| is so rich - their surplus wealth may be wagered against
| longer odds when it would be suicidally reckless to yolo
| your life's savings into a start-up. Those sorts of bets
| are the Venture Capital strategy.
|
| The relative value of money being lower is what enables
| riskier investments and essentially what 'justifies'
| inequality in a bloodless utilitarian sort of way. You
| know how in economics trades may be net positives due to
| different valuations between individuals? The same
| applies in current certain money vs future risky unbound
| returns. That taking such bets is consistently a
| successful strategy breeds inequity even without any
| winner-takes-all effects or high barriers to entry.
|
| Hypothetically if the VCs kept on 'gambling' on failed
| start-ups and always losing without any offsetting huge
| wins, not quitting because they think a win is just
| around the corner, it would be a trend that reduces
| inequity. As it puts money into the pockets of employees
| and smaller suppliers of neccessary capital production
| goods.
|
| I am afraid you would find it harder to get larger groups
| of people to agree to the high growth potential, high
| risk enterprises because they tend to lack the spare
| capital to be able to afford to risk it. I think
| ironically the most probable tolerable risk profile for
| larger groups (who are presumably more precarious) is
| something big and secure being sold out of by larger
| players. (Small traders panic buying and selling and
| doing worse is its own separate problem.)
|
| One form of company structure that technically does
| paying labor well better are partnetships typically used
| by law firms. It works for them because they have no real
| capital requirements and have high per hour productivity
| and labor expenses as the lion's share of profits go to
| the lawyers whose names are in the company name.
| andrepd wrote:
| You clearly believe you're very objective and applying
| very "rational" thinking to the problem. It's about the
| dollar value of the income of the least well-off, so what
| are these stupid people even talking about inequality?
| Don't they realise making a poor person 10% worse off and
| Bezos 11% worse off reduces inequality but lowers the
| floor (the pedestrian argument you've made several times
| in this thread)?
|
| But please consider that the problem is _slightly_ (i.e.
| a lot) more complicated than you think. Economics is a
| very very hard discipline and perhaps more closely
| related to philosophy than the natural sciences. There
| have been countless books written on the topic of
| inequality by people smarter than you or me, so it 's
| highly it's all so simple as your dismissive "just do X"
| line imagines it to be.
|
| A simple, almost trivial observation: very high
| inequality of wealth also means very high inequality of
| power, meaning the rich elite can and will influence the
| political process to enrich themselves further at the
| expense of the "low percentile" less well-off, which will
| be denied political power. This is one example of why you
| should care about inequality.
| eru wrote:
| > But please consider that the problem is slightly (i.e.
| a lot) more complicated than you think. Economics is a
| very very hard discipline [...]
|
| Yes, and that's why I am saying that it's far from an
| obvious conclusion that making rich people worse off is a
| good thing for poor people.
|
| And once you admit that this ain't trivial, you can look
| at topics like deadweight losses or tax incidence.
|
| Different tax and redistribution system have different
| effects. It's not just 'more tax = more revenue to
| redistribute'.
|
| For example, I actually think you can drive overall tax
| rates (eg as percentage of GDP) a lot higher than they
| are today in most countries without harming the economy,
| _if_ you switch to something as efficient as land value
| taxes for the vast majority of your government revenue
| (and lower other taxes). Property taxes are a second best
| approximation.
|
| In contrast, capital gains taxes and income taxes are
| less efficient. Tariffs are even worse (by a large
| margin!), even if they could theoretically raise some
| revenue. Stamp duties or other taxes on transactions are
| also pretty bad. And silly things like price controls
| just hurt the economy without raising any revenue at all.
|
| But that's all vastly simplified. As you suggest, there's
| lots of theory and practice you can investigate for the
| actual effects. They might also differ in different times
| and places.
|
| > There have been countless books written on the topic of
| inequality by people smarter than you or me, so it's
| highly it's all so simple as your dismissive "just do X"
| line imagines it to be.
|
| That's why I'm saying exactly the opposite: I'm arguing
| against the naive 'just tax the rich'.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| It seems pretty straightforward to me.
|
| Wealth redistribution has this positive effect: If you
| take $1000 from a billionaire and give it to a very poor
| person, total happiness increases.
|
| It also has a negative effect, high level of
| redistribution can inhibit production.
|
| The optimal level of redistribution depends on what
| you're optimizing, it's usually a mix of societal
| happiness and some notion of fairness. (I personally
| would want to optimize happiness and prosperity.)
| eru wrote:
| > You can either transfer more wealth to the poorer people
| without taxing the rich (lets say by helicopter money),
| [...]
|
| Helicopter money transfers real wealth from the people who
| previously held cash.
|
| It creates nominal wealth, but not real wealth.
|
| > It should also make intuitive sense - if the rich (lets
| say top 5%) hold 95% of wealth it means there is less for
| everyone else - less wealth that is because the resources
| like land, apartments and good education are finite and not
| abundant.
|
| Let's invert that: if I make everyone's lives 10% more
| miserable, but the lives of the richest 1% a whopping 20%
| more miserable, that will have decreased inequality. But
| it's not a good idea.
|
| That's basically just the idea from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44411538 inverted.
| Many people have a hard time seeing that wealth can
| increase, but it's pretty easy to see that total wealth can
| decrease: I can set fire to my piano, and no one else gets
| any better because of it.
| voidhorse wrote:
| > Let's invert that: if I make everyone's lives 10% more
| miserable, but the lives of the richest 1% a whopping 20%
| more miserable, that will have decreased inequality. But
| it's not a good idea.
|
| You are conflating two different things, wealth and
| misery.
|
| Wealth is about _material resources_ not misery or
| happiness. This is about _giving more people access to
| more material resources by taking away some of the
| exclusive access to those resource by the rich_. Will
| preventing the uber rich families from buying their
| seventeenth fleet of housing complexes and their
| twentieth estate make them "more miserable" sure,
| probably, but it also secures the independence of the
| people you make that house available to (rather than make
| them permanent wage slaves to the landed class that just
| scoops up homes that they don't _materially need_ need to
| extract rents etc).
| xienze wrote:
| > This is about giving more people access to more
| material resources by taking away some of the exclusive
| access to those resource by the rich.
|
| You realize most of this wealth is tied up in stocks and
| other assets that anyone can purchase, right?
|
| > Will preventing the uber rich families from buying
| their seventeenth fleet of housing complexes
|
| But ARE the likes of Bezos and Musk actually buying
| housing complexes in the first place, nevermind ones that
| anyone who isn't already rich are able to afford?
|
| > and their twentieth estate
|
| And who but the extremely rich would be able to buy these
| estates in the first place?
| voidhorse wrote:
| Certain forms of stock are effectively liquid. This means
| that you can turn around and leverage them to buy
| _material resources_ quite easily.
|
| It doesn't matter that "anyone can purchase them". If you
| have N dollars and I have Nx1000I can buy more stock than
| you. I can also diversify better than you, I simply have
| more options, more power, etc. Unless I am a total idiot
| or you get absurdly lucky and effectively win the lotto,
| my greater amount of initial capital will go further than
| your small amount.
|
| > But ARE the likes of Bezos and Musk actually buying
| housing complexes in the first place, nevermind ones that
| anyone who isn't already rich are able to afford?
|
| I didn't mention either of these people. There are plenty
| of people not in the limelight that do precisely the
| things I'm talking about, often through banks and
| companies that they run--I can have my investment firm
| buy property and increase my salary off the extracted
| rents and it achieves the same thing.
|
| > And who but the extremely rich would be able to buy
| these estates in the first place?
|
| Exactly. You just restated the problem with inequality.
| It gives a small class of people exclusive access to
| important material resources. Further they can they use
| this exclusivity to further entrench their positions.
| xienze wrote:
| > If you have N dollars and I have Nx1000I can buy more
| stock than you. I can also diversify better than you, I
| simply have more options, more power, etc. Unless I am a
| total idiot or you get absurdly lucky and effectively win
| the lotto, my greater amount of initial capital will go
| further than your small amount.
|
| And, so what? This just sounds like whining that people
| in this world who have more money than you exist. I'm
| sure there's a lot of people in this world who would hold
| this exactly same argument against you ("you have N
| dollars, but I have N/1000"). You're not denied the
| opportunity to build wealth with what money you DO have
| just because Bezos and Musk et al exist.
|
| > Certain forms of stock are effectively liquid. This
| means that you can turn around and leverage them to buy
| material resources quite easily.
|
| Sure, but this isn't the infinite money glitch people
| seem to think it is. The loan and its interest have to
| get repaid with... money! That's first taxed! And
| anything purchased is... subject to taxation!
|
| > It gives a small class of people exclusive access to
| important material resources.
|
| Look, no matter how little income inequality is, you're
| gonna have to be rich to say, buy a building in Manhattan
| or a house in some similarly coveted area.
| eru wrote:
| I broadly agree with everything you say.
|
| > Sure, but this isn't the infinite money glitch people
| seem to think it is. The loan and its interest have to
| get repaid with... money! That's first taxed! And
| anything purchased is... subject to taxation!
|
| Interestingly, my broker lets me just pile up the
| interest and doesn't expect me to pay anything back, but
| only as long as my overall portfolio is worth comfortably
| more than my debt.
|
| Of course, if I ever want to actually get at all my
| money, I'll need to pay the debt off.
|
| Btw, leveraging your stock portfolio isn't all that
| different from a mortgage on your house. But people seem
| to be much more confused about the effects of the former
| than the latter. It seems to be easier for people to
| understand that a mortgage ain't an infinite money
| machine.
| voidhorse wrote:
| > And, so what? This just sounds like whining that people
| in this world who have more money than you exist. I'm
| sure there's a lot of people in this world who would hold
| this exactly same argument against you ("you have N
| dollars, but I have N/1000"). You're not denied the
| opportunity to build wealth with what money you DO have
| just because Bezos and Musk et al exist.
|
| I don't have a problem with differences in wealth. My
| problem is with (a) differences so extreme that they
| border on the inhumane (we arguably have enough resources
| amassed to end world hunger, yet people still starve.
| Why?) (b) People are fed the lie that this system is
| purely meritocratic. That is plainly untrue. That was my
| point about the relative "distance" your money can go. If
| you are born into a wealthy family, you can basically
| live a zero-labor life and continue to reap rewards,
| generate more income, gather more resources for yourself,
| concentrate capital. When your origin is the greatest
| determining factor in wealth, it's a gross lie to suggest
| to day laborers that if they just "work hard" they too
| can strike it rich.
|
| Sure, I would agree that _under the current system_
| manhattan remains unaffordable. But this is not an
| essential property of manhattan, as you seem to think. It
| is a side effect of the current economic structure we
| have. Alternative structures would lead to significantly
| more affordable living in the city. In fact the NYC dems
| just voted for a mayoral candidate who wants to establish
| such an alternative. People who think like you are
| increasingly becoming the minority, and it 's because
| it's glaringly and exceedingly obvious that there are
| massive problems of wealth distribution in the current
| system. You can honestly identify that there are issues
| and ask for solutions without being anti capitalist.
|
| People get so caught up in morality when it comes to
| wealth, which is absurd. As if somehow wanting some of
| Bezos money to be redistributed so that it can feed
| people instead of paying for 500mil dollar yatchs is a
| moral affront. How about we instead focus on the moral
| affront of underpaying workers, having them the piss in
| bottles in warehouses, gaming the system by incorporating
| offshore, the list is endless. It's hilarious that anyone
| would defend the rights of these robber barons. You've
| got to be either seriously brainwashed or an extreme
| ideologue to think that there are _no_ issues with
| inequality today. Even staunch capitalists are starting
| to admit there are problems. Its simple systems dynamics.
| Any system that maximizes singular variables is
| necessarily unstable and heading toward collapse.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| > But ARE the likes of Bezos and Musk actually buying
| housing complexes in the first place, nevermind ones that
| anyone who isn't already rich are able to afford?...
|
| One of the bigger ways this plays out as opposed to your
| example is: Tons of property is locked up as short term
| vacation rentals that are only used a tiny percent of the
| time and only by the rich. There's a spectrum of how rich
| but we know the bottom 50% almost never use them for
| example
|
| Similarly the amount of resources locked up in industries
| that 99% of the time only cater to the very rich is quite
| a lot and more importantly the trajectory is going more
| and more that direction.
|
| You could have a world where the work is done mostly by
| robots and a few million rich people use the world as
| their playground and then what happens to everyone else?
| eru wrote:
| > Similarly the amount of resources locked up in
| industries that 99% of the time only cater to the very
| rich is quite a lot and more importantly the trajectory
| is going more and more that direction.
|
| Sources?
|
| In any case, what you say seems to suggest that
| consumption taxes would be the way to go.
| xienze wrote:
| > Tons of property is locked up as short term vacation
| rentals
|
| You might not want to dig too closely into who exactly
| owns all these short term vacation rentals. There's a
| non-trivial number of people who aren't conventionally
| what we picture as being "wealthy" who own a lot of them.
| It was a very popular Covid-era life hack to buy a house
| at an absurdly low interest rate and rent it out. And
| that's not getting into people who just managed to buy a
| house at the right time. For example, I'm just a software
| engineer in a MCOL area but I bought my first house in
| the early 2000s and paid it off a little under 20 years
| later. I sold to fund the next house, but I could've
| easily bought something more modest and rented the old
| one out. This is not an uncommon occurrence.
|
| > that are only used a tiny percent of the time and only
| by the rich. There's a spectrum of how rich but we know
| the bottom 50% almost never use them for example
|
| Are you under the impression that you have to be
| fabulously wealthy to rent an AirBNB for the weekend?
| woah wrote:
| > Tons of property is locked up as short term vacation
| rentals that are only used a tiny percent of the time and
| only by the rich.
|
| Im guessing you don't know how much property this is.
| It's probably under 5% and so has very little effect on
| the market.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I'm guessing neither knows. So 5% is just another WAG.
|
| Here in my college town, the new townhouses in
| prestigious locations are dominated by football-game-day
| occupation by the rich. So there's that.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| How does taking some ones second mansion away to help
| feed struggling family decrease happiness? If there is a
| net decrease, the rich person needs to examine their
| priorities.
| eru wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss
| voidhorse wrote:
| The reason inequality is a problem is very simple.
|
| As inequality increases at scale it means that an
| increasingly concentrated group has more and more capital.
| What do they do with that capital? They buy assets, they are
| basically forced to do so by design.
|
| What happens when they buy assets? They capitalize those
| assets. An apartment unit now becomes a home others can
| _rent_ but not purchase.
|
| Rinse and repeat until eventually wealth is so concentrated
| that the ability for any other individuals to access _assets_
| is basically zero. This means those individuals _cannot_
| build capital or ultimately wealth and it also means that,
| even if more resource become readily available, more people
| cannot afford them. They have to do 2x today what they did
| yesterday to an achieve the same amount of stability even if
| their "standard of living" has increased because of a wider
| swath of goods and services.
|
| Honestly at this point I think that anyone who _doesn 't_ see
| inequality as a major driver of contemporary problems is
| simply not paying attention to the USA or must not live
| there. Countries in which it is less of a problem basically
| only mitigate it by having a state that can provide
| essentials to effectively prevent the capitaled class from
| taking them away from people (eg healthcare, as you mention).
|
| Economics is all about the balance of who has access to what
| resources. We cannot just generate resources and capital out
| of thin air. One person getting more necessarily means
| another gets less. Period.
| eru wrote:
| Compare and contrast
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/26/compound-interest-
| is-t...
| voidhorse wrote:
| lol. Like many of Scott Alexander's essays, this is bad
| argumentation in nice window dressing, as well as a
| slight apologia for racism.
|
| There are so many problems with this essay that it's hard
| to know where to begin, but two major ones are that (1)
| his reading comprehension sucks, (2) the major flaw in
| his line of argument is merely hand waved away--it relies
| on a fundamental premise that mobility of people in the
| south was zero after the civil war and that the civil war
| destroying an entire industry would have had zero effect
| (this is the part he hand waves away at the end of the
| article after making his idiotic apology for continued
| racism based on one solitary citation) As usual, it's an
| article making people unschooled in the actual practice
| of rigorous academic research to buy into bad ideas .
|
| Anyway, that's all beside the point. A specific article
| countering a single claim against reparations has
| basically very little to do with the topic at hand unless
| you can prove the very specific set of dynamics that is
| analyzed in that case (a) applies globally, and (b) still
| applies _today_.
|
| This style of argument is equivalent to saying "look i
| found one rock that was purple so all rocks must be
| purple". It has basically no relevance as far as I'm
| concerned.
| Devasta wrote:
| To be clear, confiscating everything Musk, Theil, Zuckerberg
| and Bezos have absolutely would make my life better off.
| Think about the amount of political meddling by Musk in the
| past year alone, things he could never do if he weren't so
| rich.
| eru wrote:
| Trump isn't rich (or at least wasn't rich before he became
| president for the first time), and managed to do lots of
| meddling just fine.
|
| If anything, I'd like rich people (in general) to play more
| of a role. I'd take Bloomberg or Romney over the popular
| candidates any day.
| vunderba wrote:
| You might need a refresher in history. Trump has _ALWAYS_
| been wealthy.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/weve
| -be...
| andrepd wrote:
| > What economic inequality would you deem small enough?
|
| > And why do you care about inequality, and not eg the
| absolute livings standards of the least well off?
|
| Answer to both those questions, simplifying massively: the
| most prosperous period of capitalism in the past 200 years
| was also that where there was the smallest levels of
| inequality.
|
| The point of view that you must only look at the overall
| floor is terribly short-sighted (and even then, the lower and
| middle classes have become WORSE off in the past 40 years!).
| The massive increases in wealth have been going
| overwhelmingly to the pockets of the very rich; this is bad
| in itself, irrespective of the overall GDP growth or
| whatever.
|
| Read Pikkety's books and you will understand.
| eru wrote:
| > Answer to both those questions, simplifying massively:
| the most prosperous period of capitalism in the past 200
| years was also that where there was the smallest levels of
| inequality.
|
| You mean today? Today is the most prosperous period of all
| of world history. Or what period are you talking about?
|
| Global inequality is also near all-time lows, thanks to
| China, India and the rest of Asia mostly catching up to the
| rich western countries. Alas, Africa is still quite poor,
| but they are working on it.
|
| > The point of view that you must only look at the overall
| floor is terribly short-sighted (and even then, the lower
| and middle classes have become WORSE off in the past 40
| years!).
|
| In what sense?
|
| > The massive increases in wealth have been going
| overwhelmingly to the pockets of the very rich; this is bad
| in itself, irrespective of the overall GDP growth or
| whatever.
|
| Why?
|
| > Read Pikkety's books and you will understand.
|
| See eg https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/20
| 19/03/th...
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| The economy is not a static thing in which the same goods and
| services are offered independent of the wealth distribution.
| The same work is not done.
|
| When wealth is concentrated, prices cease to aggregate
| information and preferences from across the whole society.
| Instead they represent whatever stupid whim some clique of
| investors has developed. As a result you get massive
| malinvestments in speculative bullshit while basic things
| decay. It's the Politburo but dumber.
|
| This determines the physical environment you live in, the
| services offered on your street, and the stuff you do at your
| job.
| eru wrote:
| Has Bill Gates bought up all avocados on the market so far?
| Or anything ridiculous like what you seem to imply would
| happen with concentrated wealth?
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| Have you seen how much money we are shoveling into 'AI'
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| absolute living standards are very unequal
| metabagel wrote:
| > We can 'solve' inequality by just destroying everything the
| rich have
|
| This is "all or nothing" fallacy thinking.
| iechoz6H wrote:
| But we've had a way of addressing that since the year dot, it's
| called progressive taxation but no, that appears beyond the
| pale nowadays.
| huijzer wrote:
| > it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is
| narrowing more and more.
|
| Or, instead of handing out more and more money from the state,
| try to introduce dynamism again. Try to reduce the amount of
| times that YouTube takes videos or accounts down for example.
| dmje wrote:
| 100% this. I don't know how long we have to go on pushing at
| the "wealth will trickle down" door to discover it's utter
| bullshit and always has been. The answer isn't private
| companies, because they're continuing to take the piss and make
| a small number of people incredibly wealthy at the expense of
| the majority.
|
| It's never a popular thing to say on HN but the country the
| typifies inequality most starkly is the US - and it's also the
| one with the biggest set of problems: huge issues with drug
| use, obesity, widespread unhappiness, simmering resentment, a
| divided nation. The countries that are getting this right (and
| by right I mean GDP, happiness, heath, pretty much any
| meaningful index of "a good life") are the ones that fund
| public services, healthcare, education, etc through higher
| taxes.
|
| ~ braces for downvotes ~
| somedude895 wrote:
| And yet everyone wants to move to the US. Weird, isn't it?
| push0ret wrote:
| This is far from the truth in Europe.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| UBI was first piloted by Richard Nixon. These ideas are not
| fanciful. America has moved so hard to the right that anything
| slightly left of center seems radical and communist.
| 127 wrote:
| ...in America. There are countries that actually fight the
| oligarchs and tax them until the wealth inequality becomes
| lesser.
|
| Of course there's no silver bullet and high progressive taxes
| for the mega-wealthy do have other negative effects. Like
| people being less motivated to strive. Less capital to invest
| and less competitive companies born.
|
| But billionaires paying less taxes than the guy sweeping floors
| at the local mall is absurd. Once you reach a certain threshold
| of wealth, _your taxes actually start going down_.
| ponector wrote:
| There is actually no sense to put high taxes on ultra wealthy
| people. They have all means to avoid payment of income/profit
| taxes at all, no matter of the current tax rate.
|
| That's why poor people pay the highest percentage of their
| income: they have no choice, no ways to do tax evasion.
| xienze wrote:
| > That's why poor people pay the highest percentage of
| their income
|
| The key word here is income. "Wealth" and "income" tend to
| be conflated by ostensibly intelligent people who should
| know better. If I'm granted a million dollars in stock but
| draw a $20K salary, I'm "wealthy" but not "paying my fair
| share" because I've hardly earned any income for the year.
| ponector wrote:
| Is it right? From my knowledge stock compensation is
| considered as income and is taxed.
|
| But I got your point. There are ways to be wealthy, have
| a rich lifestyle but report no taxable income/profit.
|
| What you actually want is to have a wealth tax like in
| Switzerland. 0.05-0.3% annual tax based on net assets.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| _Realizing_ stock value (selling stock) is considered
| income.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Is it right? From my knowledge stock compensation is
| considered as income and is taxed.
|
| Unless you have enough stock that you can take a zero or
| low interest loan against that stock as collateral and
| kick that can down the road until you die and there's a
| huge threshold for estate tax, that is if you've not got
| it structured so that the stock is owned by a trust.
| badpun wrote:
| You're essentially saying that rich people are above the
| law. If that's the case, we should fix that first.
| ponector wrote:
| That's right. Look at Trump and his friends.
|
| Also you have no means to change the law. But ultra rich
| people can push/promote "correct" people to the
| government or to be elected. Like Musk did.
| adammarples wrote:
| They're not above the law, but they have the choice of
| which legal jurisdiction they reside in.
| simonask wrote:
| And so we arrive at the old insight that the fight
| against inequality needs to be global.
|
| But I think you underestimate the possibilities. You can
| just design the law to make taxation a prerequisite for
| doing business. That's what the EU is (trying to) do, and
| it seems to work well.
|
| Doing business in the EU and the US is a lot more
| profitable than not doing business there, even if you pay
| taxes. That's kind of the point.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If people don't want billionaires, they should quit their
| addiction to billionaires products.
|
| "I hate Jeff Bezos, by I'll be damned if I have to give
| up same day delivery $6 Chinese mugs. The local made ones
| are $40!"
| vunderba wrote:
| I'd go a step further and say that (particularly if you
| are in the IT industry) and are also ideologically
| opposed to megacorps like Facebook, Amazon, etc. that you
| should deny them the power of your labor.
| simonask wrote:
| This is such a weird take. When choosing what to buy,
| it's impossible to factor in whether or not you believe
| the seller is already too rich. How could such a market
| ever determine the price of goods?
|
| No, free markets work reasonably well. What doesn't work
| is extremely disproportionate wealth, which is a result
| of neoliberal policies from the 80s. Revert those
| policies (i.e., actually tax the wealthy), and get back
| to medium healthy economy of the 60s and 70s.
| badpun wrote:
| US taxes incomes of their citizens globally, so, no
| matter where you reside, you're still subject to US tax
| legislation. The only way to get away from it is to
| renounciate US citizenship, which I imagine the rich may
| not be ready to do.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| In theory, yes, but in practice the US doesn't have
| robust enforcement and it's easy for rich people to find
| loopholes to dodge taxes.
| hibikir wrote:
| In fact, note how some European countries tax wealth from
| pretty low amounts: Sometimes under a million euros
| worth.Often around 2% of wealth after you get to 2 or 3
| million, in practice making self-funded early retirement
| almost unheard of. Those wealth taxes raise more money from
| professionals that save instead of spend than from anyone
| rich enough to seem like an oligarch.
| xienze wrote:
| This is what everyone forgets when they label anyone
| against a wealth tax as "temporarily embarrassed
| billionaires." Even if the government could convert 100% of
| a billionaire's wealth into cash (they can't) and
| confiscated it all, great, what are you going to do for
| revenue next year?
|
| Taxes always START by targeting the wealthy but have this
| funny habit of applying to more and more people as time
| goes on. The US income tax was a whopping 1% percent until
| you made the equivalent of $400K. How'd that work out?
| ponector wrote:
| > actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or
| whatever, can't make a living
|
| Until they are dying on the streets, they are actually make a
| living.
|
| If they cannot make a decent living with their low income - UBI
| wouldn't help. UBI is a safety net, a minimal salary payment.
| You are never going to have a decent life on minimal salary.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| Capitalism seems to be an optimizer for this type of
| "efficiency". How far can we squeeze people for their labour
| before they are dying in the streets or rioting?
| weatherlite wrote:
| I totally agree. There's the inequality side of things were
| many working people are still in a precarious position. Then
| there's also the burnout / job conditions side of things where
| people can't persist in their roles without slowly losing their
| mental health. Think about nurses, police officers, teachers
| etc. It can be solvable by making their work weeks shorter
| and/or by increasing the numbers of staff per student and many
| other things we can do - that are deemed too expensive now but
| can become realistic if we distribute the wealth in a more
| equal way.
| TimByte wrote:
| This isn't about any one industry failing, it's about a system
| designed to funnel value upwards while pretending the rest of
| us are just not hustling hard enough
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I would argue the system is designed for efficiency. Economic
| solutions to this problem are about introducing legally-
| mandated inefficiencies, like limiting competition or
| artificially increasing labor costs
| westmeal wrote:
| Efficiency for extracting money from poor people to mega
| corporations? Seems to me there isn't really a lot of
| competition left since theres a handful of main players
| that just buy out smaller competitors.
| bluGill wrote:
| The poor are richer than ever under the system. They have
| clean running water and not just light but televisions.
| lapcat wrote:
| > They have clean running water
|
| They actually don't. Water is contaminated at various
| levels in many places.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis
| bluGill wrote:
| Nothing to do with rich or poor - they share the same
| water.
| lapcat wrote:
| The rich tend to avoid living in poor communities.
| bluGill wrote:
| Water systems generelly cover the whole city, often more
| than one city in a MSA, not just a community. There are
| community water systems but most are bigger.
| astrange wrote:
| Flint's water has been fixed for more than five years
| now.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Most of them don't even own homes.
| bluGill wrote:
| there are rich who don't own their own homes either.
| Often renting is the choice a mythical rational ecconomic
| actor would choose.
| plemer wrote:
| But minimal determination over their own lives. Thank God
| for cheap LCDs, though.
| bluGill wrote:
| A lot more than ever before. There are no slaves. they
| have many options - not alwasy good options but there are
| options.
| wyre wrote:
| Having to point out that the middle and lower class
| aren't slaves isn't the win you think it is.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| They have clean running water because of the ordinary
| people who work to provide it and maintain the pipes.
|
| They have light and television because of the ordinary
| working people who work at and maintain electricity
| plants and design, sell, assemble electrical products.
|
| These things exist _despite_ the billionaire leeches not
| because of them.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| > like limiting competition
|
| I didn't get your point, but we certainly need more
| competition, not less.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think "design" is the wrong word. Many systems are unjust
| by default, and that's certainly true of hit-driven
| businesses like music. Justice doesn't happen unless people
| make it happen, and often, most people don't care.
|
| For example, lotteries are inherently unjust, making random
| people wealthy for no reason, and hardly anyone cares. They
| just hope to win themselves.
|
| Taylor Swift fans don't care that she makes far more money
| than other talented musicians who languish in obscurity.
| They're going to keep giving her more money. If you told them
| they shouldn't because it perpetuates inequality, they
| wouldn't get it.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| How are lotteries inherently unjust? A bad idea maybe, but
| I see no reason that people shouldn't be allowed to gamble
| on a die roll or whatever...
| smallnamespace wrote:
| It's unjust in the same sense that some people complain
| about capitalism being unjust: some people are wealthy
| who didn't cosmically deserve it, but just got lucky.
| There is disagreement over in which way they were lucky
| (random luck, or lucky to have the right parents,
| education, genes, etc.)
| skybrian wrote:
| Do you think inequality is unjust? They increase
| inequality, and there's no possible argument that a
| lottery winner did anything to deserve their good
| fortune.
|
| It's the opposite effect of insurance, where society
| works to undo the results of bad luck.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Maybe that's what insurance should be. It doesn't seem to
| be that way now. People build large fancy homes or fancy
| cars and then off load the risk to insurance. The problem
| with this is that it tends to increase costs for other in
| the pool and disincentivizes risk mitigating behavior. If
| I know that insurance will pay out for my car, then I can
| drive more aggressively. I want my home to look fancy and
| be huge instead of being built to survive local natural
| disasters, but that preference might change if I didn't
| have insurance.
| wavemode wrote:
| I get what you're saying, though it is nuanced. For
| example, no insurance company in its right mind would
| insure a home in San Francisco against earthquake damage
| if the home isn't actually built to code in terms of its
| ability to withstand earthquakes. Similarly, car
| insurance companies charge way higher premiums for
| drivers with a history of accidents and tickets for
| reckless driving.
|
| My point being, yes insurance obviously decreases risk
| for owners, but since insurance companies are the ones
| inheriting that financial risk, they also inherit the
| incentive to ensure that things are being done the right
| way.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not really. It does when it comes to stuff like code. But
| none of that address the larger and fancier homes than if
| they were not insured. Similarly, if other people are
| buying much more expensive cars, your liability insurance
| will increase even if your risk stays the same - the
| likelihood of occurrence is the same but the cost per
| occurrence is higher.
| skybrian wrote:
| Consider life insurance. It's about providing for widows
| and orphans. Before there was insurance, there were
| mutual aid societies, because it was very important to
| society to hedge that risk so that people aren't
| destitute after an accident.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There's social security as well.
| mrec wrote:
| Yes, I think this is broadly following the lines of
| Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain" example in his response to
| Rawls' _A Theory of Justice_. If Wilt doesn 't want to play
| for less than $N but is happy to play for $N, and his fans
| are happy to collectively pay $N to see him play, it's
| arguably a bit weird for the state to step in and say they
| shouldn't be allowed to or that Wilt should be compelled to
| play for free.
|
| They're very different visions of what "justice" means: one
| focused on snapshots of distribution, one focused on
| processes.
| bjourne wrote:
| I think lottery is a great analogy to contemporary society.
| Although those with the winning tickets have done their
| darndest to convince others that it was skill and hard work
| that got them the tickets.
| analog31 wrote:
| Interestingly, music wasn't hit-driven in 1920. A person
| could earn a decent but not lavish middle class living as a
| musician, through things like performance, teaching,
| theaters, and so forth.
|
| An example was that Miles Davis grew up in a middle class
| family -- his dad was a dentist -- who thought that
| becoming a musician was an OK career.
|
| Sure, there were stars -- for instance in sheet music
| publishing -- but since then the working-class musician
| jobs have nearly vanished.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is true in some urban settings agree. Rural people
| had barter and fell into patterns of farm labor. A wild
| guess is that the bar and the church were social magnets
| where cultural arts and entertainment could be done
| professionally to some extent. A very large base factor
| is "humans do culture, how to include monetary
| compensation for things that people do already" ?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >I think "design" is the wrong word.
|
| it's exactly the right word. Taylor Swift herself is a
| product. No less artificial than Boy bands and Kpop idol
| groups. These aren't hit or miss businesses, they're
| scientifically engineered performances, the music industry
| is literally that, an industry. Taylor Swift doesn't wake
| up in her bedroom with disheveled hair writing songs and
| people just flock around her, every piece of song writing,
| merch, marketing, and performance is micro-managed by an
| entire team of people.
|
| And for that reason you can actually design the opposite.
| You can break up platforms that produce megastars, you can
| promote local music, local venues and artists, you can make
| people care and design what kind of artistic culture you
| want to be in.
| skybrian wrote:
| Well yes, but isn't it also a search process that
| _discovers_ new trends? When another kind of performer
| attracts fans, the music industry will latch onto that
| trend instead. And that 's a function of the music, the
| promotion, and the audience.
|
| It's true that when they find something that works, it
| will be exploited.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| > It's easier than ever to make music, and harder than ever
| to make a living from it
|
| The subhed spells it out. It's a supply and demand world. If
| it's easy to do things, the supply increases. It's that
| simple.
|
| That's not to say that the larger system isn't doing what you
| claim. Just that music is just too easy to make to be
| valuable.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I'd describe it more as a system designed to enable capital
| to better purchase assets built by persons without. Taylor
| Swift sold her early work to someone with capital, who then
| owned her as the labels owned the artists in the article.
|
| The answer might be then to disallow capital from buying
| artists so easily. One option, which Canada does partially
| have on the books, is a concept of non-divestible "artist
| rights". If fully implemented, Taylor Swift would be
| _incapable_ of selling away her works fully, always retaining
| a degree of control. This would no doubt reduce the value of
| art but would keep control in the hands of artists. So when
| the artist feels dissatisfied, they can always walk away no
| matter what contact they have signed earlier in their career.
|
| NerdCubed did a video recently about similar experiences when
| publishing a book.
| tim333 wrote:
| Universal basic income is a bit impractical just now - give
| everyone free money and who will do the jobs that need doing? -
| but shortly will be very practical when robots/AI will do the
| jobs that need doing.
| graemep wrote:
| No, people always want more money.
|
| Why do so many rich people who could afford to retire work
| hard to make more? Why does hardly anyone on a high hourly
| rate work the minimum hours they need for an adequate income?
|
| There have been numerous trials of UBI and I have yet to
| heard of one that showed people worked significantly less
| when given it.
| tim333 wrote:
| I kind of figure people will work on things that don't
| really need doing like putting on music festivals etc.
| while the robots will do the essential work like grow food
| and take out the trash. Maybe I'm being optimistic.
| Although I have lived places where things worked a bit like
| that like when I was in South Africa a while ago with the
| blacks doing the less desirable jobs usually. So maybe like
| that but with robots?
| gosub100 wrote:
| my only problem with it is "give everyone 1400/mo and
| suddenly prices will rise by an effective rate of 1400/mo".
| I don't see any argument to counter that. I want it to work
| though.
|
| The only way I could see it working is having a 2nd
| currency, comparable to SNAP benefits or housing vouchers,
| that is independent of the dollar (and not stigmatized
| either). Then let the dollar value of rents and food
| fluctuate as they may, but require that the UBI currency is
| accepted for some fraction of housing and food (and the
| minimum housing is sufficient to be covered 100% by UBI).
| Then cover the spread through taxing the corporations who
| wish to do business in that state. If the greedy Private-
| Equity owned corporation wants to jack up the rent, they
| can get their UBI tax jacked up also. If they want to quit
| the state, they can sell their assets to a local resident
| who wants to build a _small_ business being a property
| manager.
| graemep wrote:
| No, I do not think it will have as strong an inflationary
| effect as that because the money would come from
| increasing tax or reducing other expenditure so the net
| amount the government is injecting into the economy (less
| what it takes out by way of tax) would not change.
| gosub100 wrote:
| if you can convince the people to vote for higher taxes
| paid by corporations or ultra-wealthy, I'm all for it.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Cultural investment in education is my take. People should be
| enabled to study for career mobility in highly regulated
| environments.
|
| Getting this and that cert. is costly, but even things like
| hands-om experience in new domains is inaccessible if you don't
| have the cash flow.
| HPsquared wrote:
| UBI would introduce massive inequality between those who work
| and those who don't. Much tension would arise.
| decimalenough wrote:
| How would this differ from the tension we have today between
| the employed and the unemployed? The latter are already
| heavily stigmatized (dole bludgers, welfare queens, etc).
| trueismywork wrote:
| How would it increase inequality?
| gosub100 wrote:
| those who choos 40hr work weeks have similar earnings and
| quality of life as someone who sits at home all day on UBI.
| jenniferCrawdad wrote:
| Why do you think the word "universal" is in the phrase
| "universal basic income"?
| gosub100 wrote:
| then it will never happen, of course. keep fantasizing
| sensanaty wrote:
| No? Everyone would get the same amount, and then the
| people working 40h would get more than the people not
| doing anything.
| orangecat wrote:
| Absolutely not. Our current system is closer to that
| because you lose benefits as your income increases, to
| the point where in some case it's possible to get a raise
| and end up worse off. With UBI (assuming it replaces most
| means-tested benefits), you're always better off earning
| more.
| mentalpiracy wrote:
| a definitive assertion offered without elaboration
| graemep wrote:
| It would do the opposite.
|
| It would set a minimum income that everyone would know they
| had.
|
| Whatever work people did would add to that. It would
| encourage the unemployed to start businesses, or do casual
| work as they would keep all the money (rather than having
| their benefits cut).
| decimalenough wrote:
| You're conflating three very different types of jobs here.
|
| Minimum wage hourly jobs like grocery baggers need to be able
| to survive off a 40-hour week, and it's a societal problem if
| they can't.
|
| Taxi drivers are essentially sole proprietors who set their own
| hours and accept higher risk for a higher payoff. Demand and
| supply will calibrate themselves unless the government distorts
| the market (eg. taxi medallions).
|
| Musicians and actors are and have always been in a brutal power
| law market where all the wealth accrues to the 0.1% at the top
| of the heap. This drives exploitation since people will do
| anything to get to the top, but at the end of the day society
| does not _need_ them the way it needs taxi drivers or grocery
| baggers and there is no economic rationale for subsidizing
| them.
| somedude895 wrote:
| > at the end of the day society does not need them the way it
| needs taxi drivers or grocery baggers
|
| This is absolutely true. In my country psychologists are
| complaining about "low" wages and tough conditions, and yet
| people go study psychology in droves because they "find it
| interesting." There's only so much demand for any one thing
| and if you decide because you enjoy something you want to
| make that your career well tough shit, there's thousands like
| yourself and nobody wants more of what you supply. So you can
| keep it as a hobby, but to make a living you have to provide
| something that people want and need, otherwise you're just a
| leech on society. It's funny that the ones complaining about
| these issues are usually the people who care about the social
| aspect of things, yet there's absolutely nothing social about
| demanding money without contributing anything that others
| actually need.
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| The grocery bagger on a zero hour contract needs to be able
| to survive when not given 40 hours. Also the 5% unemployed
| people in a 'full employment' economy need to be able to
| survive when sacrificed to control inflation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you want to talk about the root of problems, it comes down
| to preferences. Income inequality in musicians? People prefer
| some musicians and songs over others. UBI and taxation isn't
| going to meaningfully change the income inequality between the
| median and top earners in entertainment fields due to social
| dynamics. Guess what the primary driver of the housing shortage
| is? Preference for larger homes and "better" locations. There
| are enough housing units nationally, but their distribution and
| charateristics don't match the preferences. You might be
| thinking about NIMBY, but guess what that is? The preferences
| of the people already there. Solutions like UBI or just
| building more skip a logical step of evaluating the true
| underlying causes and presume them instead. To solve a problem
| we must first understand it.
| fraggleysun wrote:
| Any reference that you can point to on the housing shortage
| being due to preference?
|
| It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of
| living, and commute would play a fairly large role.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of
| living, and commute would play a fairly large role."
|
| Are you saying these don't involve preferences?
|
| And a web search will bring up tons of housing preference
| sources coming various aspects.
|
| https://learn.upright.us/real-estate-investing-
| blog/a-housin...
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Sure, you could argue that some people prefer to not live
| a destitute life, and that influences the high price of
| housing. But that is reductive, ignoring a host of other
| factors, which again, you might be able to boil down to
| preference (wealthy capitalists prefer to make more
| money) but again, it's reductive and offers a somewhat
| shallow perspective and not much to act on.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You would at least be able to act on the true cause
| rather than chase short term changes that may not even
| work or won't scale. If it's indicative of a distribution
| problem, then we should be investigating distribution
| solutions. If you can't see this connection, then I posit
| that you might have the shallow perspective.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Exactly. Those are preferences.
|
| You can get a decent, 3 bed, 2 bath house for 100k. Just
| move to some place like Tucumcari, NM. Why not?
| Oh...right...the same reasons no one else moves to places
| like that...
| Retric wrote:
| Preferences don't explain why we aren't building housing
| where people want to live. Mid rise buildings don't need
| to be particularly expensive per square foot. ~11 million
| for a 50 unit building is 220k / apartment not 100k cheap
| but way better than what you see near most cites people
| want to live in. 2 to 3x housing density requires extra
| transportation infrastructure but it also means being
| able to support such infrastructure.
|
| Instead walk around most expensive city's and you see
| single family dwellings /row houses in sight of high
| rises / skyscrapers. That's not economic efficiency
| that's people who can afford high housing prices likening
| the system the way it is.
| koliber wrote:
| You need to find a way to convince the owners of that
| inefficient housing to sell it to a developer so that
| they can demolish it to build the efficient housing. That
| will add significantly to the unit economics of the
| efficient housing.
| orangecat wrote:
| In most cases it's illegal to build that efficient
| housing.
| Retric wrote:
| Legal issues are more of a hindrance.
|
| At the start you might be adding a few million in land
| costs and building taller, but that quickly deflates the
| housing market. Pushing people to sell before their homes
| become ever less valuable. Further cities outlive people,
| reluctant homeowners eventually die.
|
| City infrastructure similarly has real costs, but an
| infrastructure tax on every net new unit isn't going to
| see anywhere close to current prices.
| jkestner wrote:
| Because there aren't jobs there?
| simonask wrote:
| The inequality of musicians is not about what they earn once
| they make a living making music. Professional
| instrumentalists, for example, tend to be paid fairly equally
| (though not necessarily well).
|
| It's about who gets to become a musician, because practicing
| the skill takes a lot of resources, and it seems the middle
| class can no longer afford that.
| osigurdson wrote:
| The idea that the middle class musician ever existed at all
| is a false premise. Lamenting the loss of something that
| never existed is pretty ridiculous. "Ahh, remember the good
| old days when one could make a middle class living as an
| amateur ski jumper". How can we get back to that? Of
| course, UBI / communism.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is nonsense. The music business relies on a core of
| largely unknown session players and arrangers. The
| successful ones earn a comfortable living. The top
| players are easily millionaires, because there aren't
| many people who can learn and perform parts by ear _with
| the right vibe_ for a headliner stadium or Broadway show
| in under a week. (Or a weekend, in some cases.)
|
| There are people you've never heard of earning six or
| seven figures a year from music for ads.
|
| And so on.
|
| The catch is these people are very, very good at what
| they do. They're not bedroom wannabes.
|
| As for pop - that has always had a complex relationship
| with management and funding. Everyone assumes you join a
| band and get famous. But many bands/artists were treated
| more like investment vehicles or startups, with record
| companies and sometimes private individuals providing
| seed funding for careers.
|
| It's a much riskier career than software, where you can
| be pretty mediocre and make a good living.
|
| But _impossible_ and _nonexistent_ are both spectacularly
| wrong and absolutely detached from how the industry
| works.
| osigurdson wrote:
| The article isn't focused on the plight of the session
| Broadway player or Orchestral musician (nor artists
| writing music for ads or movies or acting as a session
| musician for a headliner act). It isn't clear that this
| is getting better or worse but is completely orthogonal
| to the discussion.
|
| Mainstream recording artists (pop, country, R&B, rock,
| etc.) represent the vast majority of industry revenues.
| My argument is that middle class musicians have
| effectively never existed in this space. Just like middle
| class professional basketball players effectively don't
| exist. You either win big or do something else.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Looks like about 3/4 of musicians are part time. The
| average salary of $57k for the full time workers is about
| $1k over the minimum to be considered middle class. And
| the unemployment rate is about 18%.
|
| There's no doubt that there are some middle class and
| higher earners. It seems that most are part time, don't
| make much and face higher unemployment than many other
| sectors. Sector growth is alaso very slow. There's a
| reason that most people's parents don't push them to
| pursue music careers unless it's as a teacher or if
| they're exceptional. Same thing for sports - you can make
| decent money as a college coach or gym teacher, but the
| proportion of people who play sports that go on to do
| anything professionally with it is extraordinary small.
| It's all supply and demand.
| throaway955 wrote:
| Not false in any way. The life of the middle-income
| touring performer used to exist and is gone now..
| osigurdson wrote:
| Can you name any?
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I've known quite a few people who made quite good livings
| playing 5-nights a week at hotel lounges in BFE. You're
| not going to recognize any, because they aren't famous,
| they just made their living going around playing music
| and weren't super famous. Even the relatively "famous"
| ones I have worked with (say, marc benno or paul pearcy
| or jay boy adams) aren't known by folks outside of very
| small circles.
|
| IME, the consolidation of radio, changes in taste around
| live music, and the dissolution of paying for recorded
| music all worked to get rid of that group of folks.
|
| But that doesn't mean that I haven't played with a lot of
| folks who are now in their 70s and 80s who made a good
| living playing music for folks.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Thanks for the names that you provided. I'd say these are
| examples of people that had some success and then pivoted
| to become session / touring musicians for other (very
| famous) bands (though one is a Grammy award winner in
| their own right). I suppose it is possible that there
| will be fewer people like that in the future. I guess we
| will see.
|
| Perhaps the artist in the article could similarly pivot.
| At least, that seems to be the main way to stay in the
| industry if you are unable (for whatever reason) to
| attain commercial success.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Same with the Midlist Author
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| This is an obvious trolling attempt, but I'll bite. Very
| simple statistical sample for those interested:
|
| - Go on the wikipedia page for the notable alumni of
| Berklee College of Music[1]; - Sort by graduation years;
| - Notice the "early life" snippet on the bio of most
| musicians from the 1970-2000. - Compare those with the
| bio from artists from and before such interval. Bonus
| points for taking in consideration how many musicians
| past year 2000 come from a family with an already
| existing musical background.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Berklee_College
| _of_Mus...
| osigurdson wrote:
| Well, I do mean in the context of the article. I'm not
| suggesting no one ever played in an orchestra. I'm saying
| that are vanishingly few middle class touring and
| recording rock, hip hop, pop and country artists and this
| has largely always been the case. In this domain you
| either hit it out of the park or go on to do something
| else.
|
| I don't really know what the table of Berklee grads is
| pointing toward. Are you suggesting that this says it is
| now harder to become a middle class recording / touring
| artist today than it was in the past? If so, how?
| JSteph22 wrote:
| I agree. Entertainment has long been called a "hits
| based" industry.
| osigurdson wrote:
| A question for the downvoters. How many of your middle
| class neighbours are recording / touring artists playing
| original pop, rock, hip hop or country music? Did you
| have a lot more such neighbours 20 years ago?
| losvedir wrote:
| 20 years ago I knew a bunch of people in their teens and
| early twenties. Now I know a bunch of people in their 40s
| and I couldn't tell you what the teens around me are
| doing. Are you sure you're not just picking up on the
| fact that you're 20 years older now?
| osigurdson wrote:
| My point is 20 years ago I had zero middle class
| neighbours that fell into this category and that number
| is the same today. I suspect those numbers represent most
| people's experiences as well.
|
| The article is suggesting that there is a delta between
| the past and the present. My argument is there is no
| delta. There were always nearly zero people in this
| category.
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> It's about who gets to become a musician, because
| practicing the skill takes a lot of resources, and it seems
| the middle class can no longer afford that.
|
| Most of the middle class has lots of time to practice (just
| do that instead of watching TikTok). Practice can help you
| become a better musician, but cannot make you great -
| innate talent is needed for that. Being great is also no
| guarantee of success - luck and / or other forms of skill
| are needed (marketing capability, etc).
|
| This is also only on the performance side of things. The
| real limiting factor in music for the most part is writing
| songs that people want to hear. If you can do that you will
| be successful almost immediately because supply and demand
| is so out of balance here and distribution is trivial.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| This seems extremely overly reductive. It's not just
| "time to practice".
|
| It's also about having access to equipment that is
| available, clean, and in proper working order.
|
| And it's about having access to educators who can teach
| you what you are doing right or wrong. And those
| educators having the time to be able to actually do so.
|
| And it's about having the ability to attend performances
| or competitions so that you can learn to actually perform
| and to receive impartial critique to improve. That
| doesn't just mean having the option of attending these
| events but also being able to afford the fees associated
| with the events as well as being able to afford
| transportation (whether that's getting there yourself or
| having family being able to take time off from work to
| transport you there and back).
|
| You don't need every one of these to be able to succeed
| but each one of these legs you take away is one less leg
| the next generation of lower and middle class musicians
| have to stand on.
| osigurdson wrote:
| The focus here again seems to be on the plight of the
| Orchestral musician / related. While this might represent
| a large portion of mind share in some groups it is tiny
| from an economic perspective when compared to mainstream
| recording acts. The primary instruments driving this
| revenue are as follows: 1) voice 2) drums 3) bass 4)
| guitar 5) keyboard. None of these things are expensive or
| hard to maintain. You don't even need to be particularly
| good at any of these things other than voice.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| No this is just in general. Voice is cheap but it's easy
| to destroy. So many artists get close to or just past
| breaking out into success and torch their voice in the
| process, killing their careers. Likewise percussionists
| risk their hearing if they don't know better.
|
| And in general, musicians are rarely made by just
| practicing in one's room. Even your big successful
| musicians spend their middle and high schools in band
| classes where they learn a substantial portion of their
| technical skills. They may not be playing the same
| instruments that they become successful on but school
| concert, jazz, and marching bands are really the breeding
| grounds for musicians who eventually go out and pursue
| their passions in other genres. Likewise that's generally
| where they meet their band-mates or colleagues who spur
| them on to greater things.
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> Voice is cheap
|
| A good voice seems very rare. Perhaps as rare as 1/10000
| or so. Practicing voice is cheap of course.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| That's also true for programmers, machinists, all kinds
| of engineers, pilots, etc.
|
| A cheap guitar + youtube to start is a lot cheaper than
| anything involving eg. CNC machining, where most people
| can't even think about starting the process, way before
| the "get good" phase. Just obtaining a mac + an iphone is
| hard to impossible in many places on earth, especially
| for younger people.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| This doesn't work in practice. Marketing for instance
| rewards spending far more than skill. Sure social
| media/viral marketing can theoretically be free, but that
| just kicks the can down the road. My friend's band is (in
| my opinion) terrific, but despite constantly playing
| shows and posting everywhere haven't gotten "instan"
| success". They haven't gotten the recommendation
| algorithms or playlists skewed in their favor by signing
| with a major publisher but that comes with its own
| problems
| osigurdson wrote:
| Well, do tell. What is your friends band's name?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Thin Lines, Golden Days is a fantastic album: https://ope
| n.spotify.com/album/7KZ2Rp2bp5X3MU3rmu7nwf?si=O1d...
| osigurdson wrote:
| I gave the opening track a listen. It sounds fairly
| undifferentiated to me. I hope they find success. I am
| just one data point.
|
| I want to hear something that is simultaneously good and
| also I have never heard before. Not an easy ask of
| course.
| wyre wrote:
| It seems very disingenuous to suggest needing to live
| somewhere one can make a living is only a "preference."
| giantg2 wrote:
| The definition of "make a living" is highly subject to
| preferences. The vacant houses are in areas where other
| people live. If those other people can't make a living,
| then shouldn't we improve the economy in that area rather
| than ship those people off to more congested areas or leave
| the homes vacant?
| tomgp wrote:
| In Britain it's noticeable that as unemployment benefit and
| social housing has been stripped back the proportion of
| people from working class backgrounds with careers in the
| arts has declined. The most visible example of this is
| probably actors; pretty much all the current generation of
| British actors went to public school and were able to support
| themselves via family wealth as they became established. This
| wasn't the case for the generation coming through in the 70s
| and 80s. The underlying cause is that if you can't subsist as
| you learn your craft you can't learn your craft, I don't
| think this is mysterious.
|
| This doesn't just apply to the arts, if all junior dev roles
| are stripped away by llm's where do the talented developers
| of tomorrow come from? Those who can learn the craft on their
| own time, those with independent wealth.
|
| At a societal level there is a huge amount of potential
| talent being left on the table, and imo redistributive
| policies are the obvious fix. In think this is really
| important both from a mortal point of view and an
| economically pragmatic one.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This has nothing to do with subsisting while learning your
| craft. This is about a supply and demand difference and the
| inequality in entertainment roles. If you have too many
| actors, then the nobodies get paid next to nothing while
| the famous people get the lion's share. And many of those
| nobodies never make even close to earning a living because
| the supply side is saturated and the demand side doesn't
| want to pay for that art. You have to have buyers.
| MrJohz wrote:
| Class in this context is referring to the actors'
| backgrounds, i.e. parental incomes, rather than their own
| income. There is an issue if you have to be born to a
| rich family in order to take on a career like acting, and
| right now, at least based on the evidence, that appears
| to be true: you need a sufficient safety net to be able
| to survive for a long time on basically no income while
| you practice and work low-paying gigs until you finally
| break through. For some people that just isn't possible.
|
| A social safety net means that more people have the
| ability to try out risky careers - not necessarily that
| more of them will succeed, but that the pool of
| applicants will be larger and include a wider proportion
| of the population.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Should we also subsidize lottery tickets?
| MrJohz wrote:
| Does society benefit from there being lots of lottery
| winners from a variety of backgrounds? I think there is a
| big difference between having a thriving arts landscape
| and having a thriving landscape of people who won the
| lottery.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Why would your proposal result in a 'thriving arts
| landscape'?
| MrJohz wrote:
| It comes back to the Stephen Jay Gould quote:
|
| > I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and
| convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near
| certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died
| in cotton fields and sweatshops.
|
| If you widen the pool of applicants, you've got a better
| chance of finding the best actors, musicians, writers,
| etc. And you also get a wider variety of stories to tell.
| Monocultures are dangerous, be that in the workplace, in
| politics, in academia, or in the arts. Ensuring that more
| people get a chance to enter these fields keeps them
| healthy and active, and prevents them from devolving into
| navel gazing.
|
| It's the same way that if you want to see innovation in
| tech, you need to keep on funding startups and small
| companies. If instead you just constantly subsidise
| Google and friends, you'll never get that next great
| thing, you'll just get more of the same.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It's the same way that if you want to see innovation in
| tech, you need to keep on funding startups
|
| Right, and there's a market mechanism for funding risky
| startups.
|
| If there's such a benefit to finding additional folks
| with extreme acting talent/potential, why is a non-market
| solution required?
| MrJohz wrote:
| It's not just market mechanisms that ensure risky
| startups get funded. It's also decisions in government
| about how to tax those sorts of companies and
| investments, what sort of writeoffs they have available
| to them, what safety nets are available for people
| investing, etc. It's not as simple as just having the
| government take its hands away and let private enterprise
| get on with things -- the government needs to actively
| reward the behaviour it wants to see.
|
| There is of course a market mechanism deciding which
| actors achieve success -- the employment market. It
| doesn't make sense to get rid of that. But government
| interventions are what fuels innovation -- otherwise the
| market will simply stagnate as the largest entities in it
| capture it and prevent any growth or change from
| happening.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Lotteries are already a tax on people bad at math
| ralferoo wrote:
| The real question then is why the "professionals" in these
| fields are able to command such massive incomes, and why
| people are prepared to pay multiple hundreds to watch their
| favourite singer but won't drop into a free gig at an open
| mic night. Why some footballers can can earn millions per
| week, and the lower tiers of the sport are paid so little.
| Why top actors can earn more from one film than even most
| doctors or lawyers will earn in their lifetime, while other
| decent actors spend their entire careers working as an
| extra, etc...
|
| Clearly everyone can see that the system is "unfair" in
| almost every industry, so the question is why does
| everybody perpetuate this system. It seems to be that by
| and large, people are prepared to pay more to get more of
| whatever they consider "the best" and they care much less
| about everything else in that space.
|
| But shift the focus away from people and to products - why
| are so many people willing to pay over $1000 for the latest
| iPhone, when they already have the previous year's phone,
| and a $100 phone probably does 90% of what they need.
|
| Again, it's because people want the best they can afford,
| and so the market increases the price to the point that
| maximises the product of price and people prepared to pay
| that price. Sadly, for the aspiring musician that hasn't
| been scouted yet, the price is low and even then not many
| people are prepared to pay it. This is why we have record
| labels who scout for talent, front them some money up
| front, handle publicity and building an audience, hoping
| that one of their 100+ artists might make enough that they
| can pay for the rest and still make a profit.
| reactordev wrote:
| And yet they just voted to do the opposite. It's not universal
| income that's the solution, it's breaking apart the
| monopolistic legislation that allows certain companies
| strangleholds on the markets. M&A shouldn't be allowed if 65%
| of the majority of the market is owned by those two companies.
| Individuals with wealth should be capped and any excess should
| be used for low-income development programs.
|
| We built a world for higher level thinking but ever since 2010,
| we've been failing to meet that standard.
| gosub100 wrote:
| one idea I've been toying with is to give municipalities
| ability to be hostile to corporations. for instance, levy a
| hefty tax on the wealth that is extracted from the community
| and paid to shareholders.
|
| Of course I'm sure there are a million laws against this at
| the state or federal level, but citizens could still band
| together to make them comply or else run them out of town.
| ie. the police could agree to stop responding to McDonalds,
| or courts could allow trial by jury for eviction cases, and
| simply have the jurors find them not guilty (for the case of
| corporate landlords). These would be elements of last resort.
| The first resort would be to require corporate owners to pay
| a lot more to do business. A second line would be to rescind
| a lot of the "tax cuts" given to companies to build there.
| Just say sorry, this is an emergency and we cannot afford to
| give you the cuts anymore.
|
| It would be dangerous, no doubt, and ripe for abuse. But it's
| a tool that could be used at the local level to provide
| relief. Ultimately, I think certain sectors should be
| forbidden for corporations to operate, such as restaurants
| and landlording. These are entry-level small business
| opportunities for normal people to get involved in, and they
| do not deserve to be pushed out by wealthy corporations.
| missedthecue wrote:
| A community that engages rapaciously with enterprise based
| on unpredictable or moving standards is one that will
| quickly be left without any enterprise. I cannot imagine
| opening a restaurant in a city that could one day decide to
| fine me for doing too much business or have the police stop
| responding (an open invite for consequence-free theft).
|
| If you want to raise higher taxes across the board that's
| one thing, but becoming hostile is shooting yourself in the
| dick. An ultimate example of short term over long term
| thinking.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Usually when people in western countries think about UBI, they
| are assuming that money from people richer than themselves will
| trickle down to them. What they don't realize is, globally,
| money will trickle out of their pockets to the rest of the
| world. Basically they are looking for a constrained
| hypothetical situation in which free money flows to them.
| amelius wrote:
| The root of the problem is that the rules of the economy are
| unfair.
|
| By analogy, try playing a game of monopoly but enter the game
| after a few rounds have already been played. Exorbitant housing
| prices are an example.
|
| Another problem is that while it is fine if hardworking people
| make more money, these people can use that money __against__
| people who made different life choices, in various ways,
| consciously and unconsciously.
|
| We have to acknowledge that the system is broken, and it is
| starting to show.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This doesn't make sense... people have always been able to
| use their time, effort, and resources against someone else?
|
| Since the beginning of society I imagine.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, but whether that becomes a problem to society depends
| on a number of parameters. One of them is the existing
| level of wealth inequality.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| If someone is grinding you down... what does it matter
| whether they are 10x or 100x wealthier?
|
| Even perfect equals can wreck each other's lives
| completely, in legal ways too, if they commit their all
| to it.
| amelius wrote:
| You are looking for extremes, whereas I am merely looking
| at it from the average behavior of wealthy people.
|
| If there is a large wealth inequality that means that the
| relatively poor will simply have a smaller piece of the
| cake and the wealthy growing their wealth will have a
| larger impact on the poor, percentage-wise. Now, if that
| growth is only due to hard work, then you can't really
| argue against that; however, if that growth is partially
| due to "wealth abuse", then that's a different matter.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I do a lot of things as an amateur but at pretty high level:
| athletics, music, art and more. I also pay a huge portion of my
| income as a software developer in direct and indirect taxation.
| Convince me I should fund people to focus full-time on things
| where they can't make a living, the same things I love to do
| but realize can't be your sole pursuit.
|
| You've conflated people busting ass who can't keep up with
| those following their passion in the arts voluntarily. Those
| don't feel anything like the same thing to me. I don't think
| I'm alone in a perspective that if you keep taking more from me
| I'll stop contributing all together, and we'll all fail. The
| ultra-rich and others with means to avoid picking up the tab
| have already done so.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Assuming you live in the US, it is relatively easy to
| convince you - but it heavily relieve on you opening your
| eyes.
|
| Start traveling, talking to other cultures, and stop being
| dismissive and defensive.
| metabagel wrote:
| > Convince me I should fund people
|
| Are you in the top 1%? If so, you can afford it. If not, then
| I don't think your taxes should go up - I think Bezos' taxes
| should go up, and there should be a wealth tax for high net
| worth individuals.
| osigurdson wrote:
| The top 1% globally is 60K USD for a single earner. Should
| taxes go up for anyone above this level?
| NERD_ALERT wrote:
| What? Why would US taxes have anything to do with people
| in poorer countries?
| osigurdson wrote:
| It seems that UBI arguments are all about "fairness". So
| it naturally should extend to other countries it seems.
| Otherwise you are just creating another greedy /
| protected group.
|
| Of course people usually try to draw the UBI Venn diagram
| such that they are a net receiver of funds.
| wombatpm wrote:
| As soon as those other countries join the US it should
| extend to them as well.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It's sounds like you are trying to draw it to be as
| absurd as possible to reduce the proposition to something
| ridiculous.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| What would be absurd about a global UBI? It's amazing how
| fast people jump off the high horse of equality when you
| point out that on a global scale they are incredibly rich
| and privileged.
|
| Equality to them means them getting more material goods,
| not them giving up more material goods.
| osigurdson wrote:
| It is hard to say "I want UBI because inequality" and
| then fail to recognize this.
|
| What they are really saying is "I don't want anyone to be
| richer than I am but fine with people being poorer". So
| the default human position on things.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Currently, US taxes are primarily used inside the US, the
| exception being foreign aid, which relatively is a small
| amount.
|
| Are you suggesting the US should fund a global UBI?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The logic extends flawlessly so it's difficult to say
| "I'm all for UBI, but only within our borders".
|
| The US has used cheap labor globally for decades, why
| would the blue collar worker in Indiana qualify more than
| the blue collar worker in Indonesia? Both are making
| goods for American billionaires and both are struggling.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| From a moral perspective I agree and that should be the
| long-term goal. Practically, however, the notion of
| national sovereignty makes it infeasible to implement a
| global UBI. Within the borders of a country, that
| country's government can do what is needed to make it
| work (e.g., punish scofflaws). Across international
| borders, that's much more difficult. We see this already
| in that many countries that are "poor" overall have
| ludicrously high levels of inequality, because a small
| elite controls all the flows of foreign investment, etc.
|
| To take a simple example: within a country, if you send
| the UBI money to a local government for disbursement and
| the local mayor/governor just pockets it, he's still
| ultimately subject to the legal system of that country
| and can be jailed, etc. There's no international
| equivalent of this. If you send some UBI money to Poor
| Country X for disbursement and the local governor pockets
| it, there's nothing you can do except not send any more
| money.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > Convince me I should fund people to focus full-time on
| things where they can't make a living, the same things I love
| to do but realize can't be your sole pursuit.
|
| You already are, it's just going to the ultra wealthy and
| pension fund kids, while you slave your life away making that
| stock go up because you believe there should be no other
| choice.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| So why not have the worker get/keep more of his money,
| instead of giving it to a different group of "others"?
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Because the taxi driver could keep all of his money and
| still wouldn't make very much.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Sure, but he'd make more if he wasn't taxed so much.
|
| In my country, from the customer to the persons net
| paycheck, a bit over half goes to the government (vat, 2x
| different benefits, income tax).
|
| Every time someone mentiones taxes, the rich and the poor
| over here, the average (ie. people earning around average
| income) get taxed more, the rich on paper earn nothing,
| and the poor get taxed the same (because there's nothing
| more to take).
|
| I'd much prefer a system where an average joe would pay a
| lower percantage of taxes (ie. a tax break), and people
| like bezos would actually get taxed at the same rate
| instead of paying zero throug loopholes).
| xyzzyz wrote:
| I understand that you don't like the European taxation
| regime, where the bulk of the tax burden is carried by
| the middle class, but I find it strange that then you
| give Bezos as a negative example. It is strange, because
| in US, unlike in Europe, it is the wealthy who pay most
| of the taxes. Our middle class pays very little tax,
| unlike middle class in Europe.
| cschep wrote:
| That should be true, but it doesn't end up working that
| way because people become corporations right? The actual
| tax burden is footed by the people making just enough to
| call rich, but not breaking into the territory where it's
| worth hiring an army of tax lawyers to reduce it to zero.
| This is bad.
| motorest wrote:
| > _Because the taxi driver could keep all of his money
| and still wouldn 't make very much._
|
| So what does this have to do with income inequality? If
| you try to make a living from a business and the revenue
| you get from it is not enough to keep it afloat, what
| does it say about it's viability and income inequality?
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I was responding to the question:
|
| > So why not have the worker get/keep more of his money,
| instead of giving it to a different group of "others"?
|
| The quote is implying: "rather than tax people and give
| that money to others, just have people keep the money
| they make."
|
| My point is that this would not necessarily help the taxi
| driver much, since he probably doesn't pay much in taxes
| anyway. His issue is that his wage is not high enough.
|
| One could argue that taxi driving shouldn't exist or
| should be relegated to some impoverished underclass, or
| one could argue that the issue is with the taxi driver's
| lifestyle expectations and not with the low wage, or that
| taxi drivers should find other employment, thus reducing
| the supply of drivers and either raising wages or
| "rightsizing" the driver workforce.
|
| In any case, I don't agree with the parent poster's
| implication that lowering taxes is a viable alternative
| to tax-funded universal basic income.
|
| Lowering taxes benefits most those who pay a lot of
| taxes, and those are the people who are least directly
| affected by the removal of tax-funded welfare programs.
| Sending the money to "others" is the point.
|
| Keep in mind that the taxi driver is just a made up
| example, and I myself am not sold on the idea of
| universal basic income.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If being a taxi driver doesnt making a living if they
| keep all their wages, then we shouldnt have taxi drivers.
| intended wrote:
| Because the worker doesn't have the ability to be able to
| protect his interests when he is just keeping his money.
|
| The rich are able to keep larger portions of their
| income, and then eventually leverage that to be patrons
| of political power and set the rules for themselves.
|
| You are also not in the same category as the super rich,
| so theres an unspoken blurring of the terms here as well
| - theres no sense in considering a normal perso, or a
| rich person against someone like Bezos, who has the
| wealth of several countries.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This seems like a tautology?
|
| By definition, the median person only has a mediocre
| ability to "protect his interests".
| wisty wrote:
| Consumption matters not wealth. Wealth is just paper
| ownership, it's consumption that is wasting scarce
| resources.
|
| And the super rich simply can't consume that much. Bezons
| isn't eating a thousand times as much as a millionaire.
| If his kids spend their lives being unproductive, it's
| only a tiny handful of wastrels. Mansions, yachts and
| large private airplanes might be a bit of a resource sink
| I guess .... but how does paper wealth cost society real
| resources? It's like being made at someone with a rare
| monkey gif
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is the obvious answer, and unattractive for those
| with unsellable skills.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| If all the people who passionately pursue art decided to
| pursue only profitable full-time jobs, you bet that your
| software developer job would pay shit like an art and you'd
| be way worse off than if you just paid a few hundred bucks
| (at most, let's be real, unless you have _serious_ assets in
| which why would we pity you) annually to allow to a civilized
| society that actually allows for cultural innovations.
| ahoy wrote:
| Because you have to live in a society with those other
| people. Because that's going to be YOU in the future. Because
| it's going to be your kids, your cousins, your neighbors.
| motorest wrote:
| > _Because you have to live in a society with those other
| people._
|
| Your reply was a strawman arguments, and fails to address
| OP's point. The point is quite simple and straight-forward:
| if your argument for UBI is that people could
| hypothetically pursue their interests, why should I have to
| be the one having to work to pay the taxes required to
| finance this income redistribution scheme only to have
| others, perhaps less talented and dedicated than me, pursue
| my interests at my expense?
| wrs wrote:
| You would have the option to do what they're doing if you
| prefer. You just wouldn't have as much disposable income.
|
| Why are you pay for other people to use the roads or have
| their fires put out or have health care? Because society
| is more pleasant overall if everyone can assume a
| baseline availability for those things.
| motorest wrote:
| > You would have the option to do what they're doing if
| you prefer. You just wouldn't have as much disposable
| income.
|
| That's fantastic. So let's build upon your personal
| belief, and as the system is universal then your
| recommendation is extended to everyone subscribing to the
| service.
|
| Now please explain how you expect to finance an income
| redistribution scheme where all participants do not
| contribute back and instead only expect to consume from
| it.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| VCs fund a lot of companies, even though they only get a
| return on a few. The government routinely gives out
| subsidies to industries they want to encourage, knowing
| that only a few that receive the subsidies will generate
| a return. This isn't a novel/unworkable concept, a lot of
| our economy is currently based off of it actual, you just
| don't like it.
|
| Some people think if you fund people's ability to live,
| so that they aren't killing themselves going to multiple
| jobs, not sleeping, not raising their kids, remove fears
| like 'insurance is tied to this job so I can't leave it',
| etc, you will encourage an economic renaissance, just
| like VC funding has created a renaissance for the
| pocketbooks of VC funders.
| motorest wrote:
| > VCs fund a lot of companies, even though they only get
| a return on a few.
|
| You're not talking about long-shot bets in a system where
| everyone is expected to produce. You're talking about
| income redistribution schemes. This means today's salary
| is used to finance today's benefits. Please explain who
| do you expect to foot the bill when the system pressures
| those who sustain it to abandon that and instead add to
| the pool of consumers.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| No, I am talking about investing, not bets, in every
| person, improving their lot, which in turn will improve
| society's productivity. If I go from watering 10% of my
| garden to 100%, I get better returns. A mom working 2
| horrible jobs with varying hours can not raise a healthy
| new member of society. Freeing her to do so lifts ALL of
| society. There are lots of factors that will improve.
| People no longer just barely hanging on can start re-
| investing in themselves, their ideas, their skills.
| People not afraid if their idea fails will start new
| businesses. If anything business and capital flow will
| increase and flourish.
| just_some_guy_2 wrote:
| Denmark already have a limited form of the UBI when seen
| in that light. The state offers free education and a
| monthly "basic income" for people studying for a degree,
| for up to five years.
|
| Sure, some people waste it. Some are just passive
| consumers, even shopping around between multiple
| educations without ever completing a degree. Some drop
| out half-way. Some get impractical degrees with few real
| job opportunities.
|
| But enough people go on to become doctors and engineers
| and software developers and so on, and then have long
| careers that ultimately pays back the venture capital to
| the state, in the form of taxes. Most also work a side-
| job while studying to supplement the "basic income"
| stipend.
|
| I don't personally believe that the majority of people
| will become unproductive consumers with an UBI. I think
| that societal pressure to contribute, the wish to enjoy
| luxuries, and to get status is enough for the majority to
| still work. I think that the added safety net of the UBI
| will also allow more people to take a risk on a dream,
| and perhaps make it big in art, in inventing new stuff,
| in science or in politics. And, as in VC investments, the
| few big hits will hopefully pay for the failures.
| ownagefool wrote:
| I think the overriding idea is a UBI would only result in
| a modest living and luxury would cost more.
|
| That's where many of the practical issues come in of
| course.
|
| I'm not going to personally argue they're not solvable,
| but many people will argue the requirements of basic
| shelter and sustenance being far higher than what they
| actually are, and in our current system, the landlords
| would take the cash anyways.
|
| Of course, if we all end up jobless due to robotics and
| AI enhancement, which again isn't something that's
| necessarily going to happen, UBI or similar might be the
| only positive path out of that mess.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The point is hollow, as is your restatement of it
|
| _why should I have to be the one having to work to pay
| the taxes required_
|
| You're not. You are not the only person paying tax. And
| far more of your tax bill is going toward subsidizing
| people and industries who are already rolling in money
| than helping relieve the burden on the poor.
|
| I'm not saying you should pay more tax, you should
| probably be paying less. But we should reorganize the
| economy away from rewarding ownership of property as if
| it were productive economic economy activity in and of
| itself.
| motorest wrote:
| > The point is hollow, as is your restatement of it
|
| No. I'm not sure if you failed to understand the question
| or you tried to avoid it. My question refers to the core
| argument involving any economic system: fairness and
| equity. Why are you trying to avoid touching on the
| topic?
|
| > You're not. You are not the only person paying tax.
|
| Yes, I am. Everyone is forced to pay taxes, and I am no
| different. In income redistribution schemes such as UBI
| you get a chunk of your salary taken straight from your
| pay check to finance other paychecks. So far this sort of
| scheme is used to cover salaries representing social
| safety nets such as pensions, disability, and temporarily
| for unemployed. UBI radically changes that, as it goes
| well beyond the role of social safety net and
| unconditionally extends this to everyone. So now you are
| faced with a scenario where you have two classes of
| people: those who sustain the scheme and make it
| possible, and those who only consume it's resources.
|
| Even if you try to argue there's a net benefit to
| society, you must face the problem of lack of equity. For
| instance, how do you justify to people like OP that they
| should continue working at their jobs so that others can
| have the privilege of pursuing their personal interests?
| If you argue that OP is also free to quit his job to
| pursue his interests then you're advocating for an income
| redistribution scheme that presssures participants to not
| contribute to it and instead consume the resources it
| manages to mobilize.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| > income redistribution schemes such as UBI
|
| It's a common framing, but UBI does not have to be that.
| Another may be that of a just compensation for giving up
| access to land.
|
| > Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent
| for the land which he holds
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_Justice
| jt2190 wrote:
| I don't understand your comments about "fairness" in the
| context of UBI. Doesn't _everyone_ get the benefit
| whether they work or don't? Otherwise that wouldn't be
| "universal", would it?
| pineaux wrote:
| Its not a strawman. The argument is: because you need the
| other people in the society. You need them for basically
| everything. You have built your life on shoulders of
| others. Everything you can do, you can do because you
| profit from other's labour. That is why. You would not
| have culture, language, computers, roads, garbage
| collection, nursing homes, music to listen to, etc. You
| have enjoyed all these things "at the expense" of the
| people who did that for you.
| motorest wrote:
| > Its not a strawman. The argument is: because you need
| the other people in the society.
|
| No. Your argument is that other people exist. That's
| great, everyone had the right to exist. But in the
| meantime, why do you think that just because someone else
| exists that means I am obliged to work a job to pay off
| their bills? And if you answer with a puerile and
| superficial "but you can also quit your job" then who
| exactly do you expect to foot the bill? Age you
| envisioning a society where no one contributes to it?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Society is a perfectly valid response to your question.
| You are used to a certain society, societal rules that
| doesn't care about it's people. OP feels like society
| should be more than that. And simply that thought, that
| society shouldn't let people die on the street, that
| mom's should be able to raise their kids not forced to
| work two jobs, should encourage people to do XYZ, is a
| totally valid response to your question.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Because the guy sticking out 60 hours a week at the
| office to get a comfortable middle class life loves his
| job just as much as the painter traveling to do his
| national parks series.
|
| Therefore the government can tax the office worker and
| use the proceeds to buy the artists paintings and utopia
| is here!
| pavlov wrote:
| I love art and I also love making art, but I have to work so
| I don't get to spend as much time on it as I'd like.
|
| Yet that doesn't mean I want to see other people making less
| art. On the contrary: I wish other people could create more
| great stuff that makes me happy, and I'm also happy if my tax
| euros (and my private consumption) help pay for that.
|
| What I'm trying to say is that this idea of "I don't get to
| do it, so nobody else should either" seems completely foreign
| to creativity. It's not a zero-sum game.
| orangecat wrote:
| _"I don't get to do it, so nobody else should either"_
|
| That's not it at all. There are already tons of people
| doing it, so many that the incremental value of one more
| person is small. The low pay reflects that; it's a signal
| that you should consider other jobs that are more in
| demand.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You don't have to pay tax, _you can just go buy their work
| directly!_
| pavlov wrote:
| I want artists I've never heard of to have the ability to
| grow.
|
| Taxes are a great way to fund culture, sort of like an
| index fund: I don't have to try to pick winners now, I'll
| get the accumulated benefit eventually.
| harmmonica wrote:
| I feel like this is one of the fundamental issues with US
| taxation today and this overall issue of wealth inequality.
| People like you, high-income and likely not a lot of shelters
| for that income based on what you're saying, pay a lot of
| taxes percentage-wise and so the thought of paying another
| 1-2 percentage points is, for lack of a better word,
| sickening. I tend to think you're right about that because it
| feels really unfair when you're paying 40-50% tax, a lot of
| people pay zero, and then people who are much wealthier than
| you are paying 20%.
|
| It's when you start making fabulous amounts of money, and can
| park it in all sorts of shelters, whether that's
| straightforward things like real estate or, as HN commenters
| point out every time this comes up, by not ever even earning
| income or investment gains and so you can drive your tax
| towards zero (by doing things like taking out loans against
| your assets for money to live on).
|
| I'm not sure what the answer is, but a North Star, in my
| mind, would be that as you have more you pay more, a truly
| progressive scheme, because every additional dollar you earn
| (through income or investment gains, realized or unrealized),
| as you get richer, actually _is_ less critical to your
| livelihood. Who am I to say that? I 'm not talking about some
| nebulous concept. I'm saying that if you make $1 million
| dollars per year, in total, a dollar extra matters less to
| you than it does to someone making $100,000 so I'm purely
| speaking on a relative basis (cue someone saying "how do you
| know it matters less? That person could live in a HCOL
| location, or have 12 kids or..." Hopefully we can avoid that
| because it misses the point; those things are choices people
| make. How much you're taxed is not a choice for the most part
| though can be to some extent (move from a high-tax state to a
| low one, etc.).
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| There's actually a mathematical proof that the more dollars
| you have, the lower the utility of the marginal dollar;
| utility has to fall at least logarithmically or else you
| fall victim to the St. Petersburg paradox.
| harmmonica wrote:
| I'm glad to hear you say there's mathematical proof. I
| guess the sad thing is that if someone disagreed with the
| sentiment and then you told them there's mathematical
| proof that same person may be inclined to disagree with
| the math as well. I'm going to look up St. Pete's paradox
| now because never heard of that before. These are exactly
| the types of things I like to learn about on HN to
| reinforce (in this case) or rebut my takes so thanks for
| replying.
| pineaux wrote:
| Because if all these people are forced to do what you do,
| because nothing else pays their bills, your income will go
| down.
|
| Also, all the people who cant do what you do, should they
| just curl up and do fentanyl? What do you propose they should
| do?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Your argument begs the question. If we made it so it could be
| a sole pursuit then you'd be free to choose.
|
| Besides, why do you want to live in a world with less artists
| and full of people who hate their jobs?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I want to be able to choose what I want. If I want art, I
| will buy it and pay an artist. If I want to eat at a
| restaurant, I will pay for that instead.
|
| Why would I ever want to let others decide for me if I get
| art or food today?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| OK, I'll do my best: Economies of scale.
|
| Consider two toy economies: One in which purchasing power is
| fairly evenly distributed among the population, and one in
| which it's concentrated via a power-law distribution into the
| top 1%, and 0.1%, etc.
|
| In the first case, the quantities of mass-market products
| demanded will be much larger, because more people can afford
| to purchase them. This means demand for things like cameras,
| cell phones, breakfast cereals, movies, video games software,
| etc, go up. However most of these are also things where
| economies of scale makes production more efficient as order
| quantities increase. Factories can invest in jigs,
| automation, and high-throughput lines to make enough quantity
| for everyone. The jobs that produce these goods also become
| better-paid, and easier to secure investment for, because
| order quantities are higher and less volatile. And doubly so
| for intangible goods like software, ebooks, music, and video
| games: production can scale to infinite demand, so there can
| never be a production shortage, but people who work in these
| industries can be better rewarded for their efforts because a
| bigger audience can afford to pay more.
|
| So order quantities grow, and so do incomes, but inflation is
| relatively low because of the increasing efficiency of
| production. This means real GDP per capita increases greatly,
| and the population as a whole becomes materially more
| wealthy. Even though wealth is being distributed away from
| top earners, there are huge material rewards available to
| anyone able to supply goods and services to the masses,
| because the masses are able to pay for those goods and
| services.
|
| In the wealth-concentration economy, those mass-production
| industries have to fight for scraps, because the top 1% has
| as much purchasing power as the bottom 99%, and the top 0.1%
| has more purchasing power than the 1% below them. More
| purchasing power is directed towards luxury goods: golf
| courses, supercars, yachts, country club estates, Rolex
| watches, art, private jets, and real estate. Production
| quantities are low and inefficient, and in the case of land,
| production is effectively impossible. Prices go up for these
| assets, but there is little productive benefit to the
| economy. The excess wealth of the 0.1% is put towards buying
| political influence, buying news media, and so on, which
| becomes another negative for society as a whole. Meanwhile an
| entrepreneur might identify a pressing need among the bottom
| 25% of the populace, where very simple things (eg. vitamins
| or eyeglasses) could create an incredible increase in social
| welfare, but they will not be able to secure investment nor
| be rewarded for such efforts because there is no profit in
| it; the poor cannot afford to pay.
| worik wrote:
| > Convince me I should fund people to focus full-time on
| things where they can't make a living
|
| I cannot do that.
|
| But given that we need the labour of about 10% (give or take)
| of people for society to function, we need to change our
| economic arrangements
|
| I think we should fund the basic meat hook realities for the
| common person. Accommodation, food, health care, shoes...
|
| That is a UBI - Universal Basic Income
|
| It will simplify so many aspects of modern life, increase our
| taxes, and open up many opportunities
|
| The current system has failed to deliver anything like
| economic justice and needs rethinking
|
| This will mean that people are able to "focus full-time on
| things where they can't make a living", rather than hustle
| for crusts. That is a side effect, not the purpose
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| "Convince me I should fund people to focus full-time on
| things where they can't make a living" - because you wrote
| the programs that made their job (like everyone else's job)
| obsolete/automated?
| astrange wrote:
| Automation increases productivity which increases
| employment (ceteris paribus).
|
| The important quote you want here is: "If you want a simple
| model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United
| States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what
| [Alan] Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random
| error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God."
|
| Software developers are not Alan Greenspan.
| pstuart wrote:
| UBI seems inevitable with the progress of AI and automation --
| but transitioning to it will need a catalyst to break through
| the wall of resistance to make that happen. Covid was such a
| catalyst, and at least in the US it was so poorly managed on
| the distribution of funds it did not help shift the mindset to
| support UBI.
|
| That's a pity, because it could have done so brilliantly. The
| catch is that we need a government that is not corrupt and
| incompetent to administer that process and that's exactly what
| was in charge at the time.
|
| So while it can't happen now it would be worth exploring what
| that tipping point might be and how to make sure it serves the
| people its supposed to.
| tptacek wrote:
| Acknowledging inequality won't change the economics of a
| midlist artist, because you can't compel people to buy music
| they don't want to buy.
| motorest wrote:
| > _Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our
| problems will persist. This article is another in the long
| series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are
| actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall
| economic inequality is way too high._
|
| I actually read the article before going into the comment
| section, and your comment was surprising and baffling by how
| detached from the content of the post it was.
|
| There are plenty of exploitation arguments made in it, but if
| you read the article is income inequality one of them? Well,
| no.
|
| > _It 's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store
| baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living,
| it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is
| narrowing more and more._
|
| I think that this conclusion is far-fetched if your starting
| point is the actual article. The music business is notorious
| for being virtually impossible to make a living, even if you
| are an international act. There were plenty of examples from
| decades ago up until now of musicians from popular
| international bands with packed international tours not being
| able to afford to quit their day job to make ends meet. If your
| income comes from selling tickets to the public, sometimes
| directly, and you still cannot generate a livable income, the
| problem is not income inequality. The problem is that there is
| not enough demand for what you're selling to make it a viable
| business.
|
| I mean, if your primary source of income is playing shows and
| not enough people want to spend money to attend them, why do
| you think the fact that some people earn way more than you is
| even relevant?
|
| > _Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes,
| breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us
| than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry._
|
| Here is a though experiment: does your assertion hold valid if
| you replace "store baggers" and "taxi drivers" with
| "contortionists" or "jugglers"? Because while "store baggers"
| and "taxi drivers" aren't exactly activities associated with
| upper middle class income levels, they are activities that most
| people are coerced to have because they have no alternative to
| make a living. Musicians are another story altogether, and
| associated with people pursuing their dreams. In fact, there is
| that age old cliche about third generation wealth being artists
| and academics because their exceptional wealth allowed them to
| pursue their dreams.
| msgodel wrote:
| We already have a pretty burdensome welfare system, it might be
| that we've gone _too_ far towards UBI to make middle class
| musicians practical.
| cma wrote:
| Not only that there's already one in place (earned income tax
| credit) and Alaska has one for oil revenue. We can just
| increase the EICT.
| astrange wrote:
| > Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes,
| breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us
| than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.
|
| Basic income has been tested very thoroughly many different
| times and all results show it basically doesn't do anything
| good or bad. So it won't create any new musicians. The main
| effect is it's simpler to administrate than other kinds of
| welfare, which is a good thing because it saves money.
|
| Wealth taxes are inflationary (because they force you to sell
| assets) and so would probably cause fewer musicians. Especially
| if you assume musicians are nepo babies, in which case you
| actually need rich/upper-middle-class people to create them.
|
| Anyway, the solution here is to copy other countries where it
| works. They don't do any of these made-up future policy ideas.
| Japan/Korea produces a lot of culture because it has a low cost
| of living, a mature industry that trains a lot of people, and
| most importantly (but negatively) wages are low so there's
| nothing more productive for the musicians to be doing. Doubly
| so for women, who might as well become Z-grade idols when they
| can't get a career job at all.
|
| In the West IIRC a surprising amount of songwriting talent
| comes from Sweden, but don't know much about that.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Perhaps instead of UBI we should be doing UBE (Universal Basic
| Expense). Most governments run deficits today so maybe we start
| with ending those. Here is how it could work:
|
| At the end of ever taxation year, the government calculates its
| deficit for the year. Divide this by all income earners at
| their marginal tax rate. Then, at tax time, the tax payer can
| choose to either pay this or allow it to accumulate at the same
| rate that the government charges itself. Maybe once we can
| cover deficits we can start thinking about UBI.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| In Jan, my son ordered a mystery box from ... I dunno who. It
| just showed up. Evidently it was someone connected with King
| Gizzard because it was recently released KG vinyl, inc a test
| pressing. Also a sealed cassette of another band that we don't
| recognize. Also stickers.
|
| Connect with fans, treat them well and stay creative - and
| they'll buy your stuff. Often a lot of it.
| SlowTao wrote:
| Yeah King Gizzard have basically done the complete opposite of
| what is considered good advice on making it in the music
| business and made it work.
|
| Rapid release schedule (except the last year or so),
| inconsistent genre choices, questionable aesthetic choices, not
| much marketing, and just some generally goofy stuff and it just
| works. I think part of it is folks just tired of the packaged
| crap and see it for what it is. Pure authentic stuff.
| dsign wrote:
| Well, AI is here and I give it a high chance than in a few years
| all the music streaming platforms will go the way of the
| mastodon. Even recorded music in general may take a hit. I'm
| already skipping tracks in YT-music that I suspect they are AI-
| generated. When I find that the majority of the tracks are AI-
| generated, I'll start looking up individual producers and getting
| back to maintaining my own music collection in a harddrive and an
| MP3 player. Maybe I'll even buy a ticket and go to a concert,
| something I've only done once so far in my four decades and
| counting.
|
| You may say that people just care about the music and not the
| musician, and that thus an AI-generated track is as good as any.
| Perhaps. But when I was a kid, all my pals developed their
| musical taste by word-of-mouth and I-want-to-be-cool-like-you-
| and-listen-to-Rammstein. Can't imagine _all_ edgy teenagers will
| fall in love with an AI model.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Disclaimer: I work in the pro audio industry and have decades
| of experience with this industry from the perspective of a
| developer of instruments, tools, and so on, specifically for
| creatives.
|
| You see, I firmly believe that music, itself, is a form of
| currency.
|
| So exchanging that currency for another is the problem.
|
| However, I can say with a great deal of certainty - having
| observed musicians for decades - musicians make money when they
| make live music.
|
| Not all music can be played live.
|
| But live musicians are the future of music.
|
| It's one thing to be able to conjure up whatever you want with
| AI.
|
| But, do it live, in front of 1000 people.
|
| Or, even 10.
|
| I can walk through my city today and encounter 100 (easily)
| musicians making money every hour, plying their wares into the
| stones of the streets and pedestrian bubbles.
|
| But yeah, it's hard work. Why not make an AI do it?
| mettamage wrote:
| What do you mean by: music, itself, is a form of currency?
|
| I really am missing some context here.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| You get up on stage in front of a bunch of people, and you
| deliver a performance that they find compelling enough to
| contribute their own acknowledgement of your work in
| exchange, and in this process there is a current that flows
| between the artist and the audience, which - when properly
| motivated - increases in value over time.
| mettamage wrote:
| Ah, sort of like social capital? Not fully I think, but
| seems related to it.
|
| Interesting take! I can see the value/process you're
| describing, never thought of it that way.
| ggm-at-algebras wrote:
| Surely for most time, musicians have been working class. And
| precarious?
|
| I'm not arguing in favour, I'm noting the deep historical social
| worth of a musician. It's classic veblen goods for a few, and
| serfdom for the rest.
|
| Composers had ambiguous social standing. Virtuosi were
| superstars, but you didn't want your daughter to marry one.
|
| What if the underlying relative value of music was returning to
| its organic roots? Maybe this is a version of the burger index
| and their labour value has been overweight for 50 or more years?
|
| The cost in time and effort to become a musician is comparable to
| an apprenticeship or a surgeon. That cost isn't reflected in
| their value in the market.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| surgery isn't an additive market though, we don't all have
| access to hundreds of thousands of surgeries for $10/mo
| ggm-at-algebras wrote:
| Surgeons also police membership, it's an old school guild. We
| could have many more sugeons, if the restrictive practices
| were changed. I don't think this answers your fundamental
| point btw, I think musician==surgeon is only analogous in the
| time to achieve mastery, the application of the skill
| diverges.
|
| We did in some ways (cosmetic procedures) go to low cost
| rental models. They're terrible.
| weatherlite wrote:
| "The Death of the Middle-Class Musician"
|
| * The Death of the Middle-Class
|
| There I fixed their title
| TimByte wrote:
| The part that really stuck with me: how success in music now
| feels more like surviving a battle of attrition than "making it".
| The irony is brutal--more people are making music than ever, but
| fewer can live off it.
| melvinroest wrote:
| Well this is timely. I just started EDM production as a hobby 2
| weeks ago! I did it a long while ago for a bit and it's time to
| rekindle the music flame. Well, I guess I've always been
| beatboxing but I'm never aware of that. My subconscious mind
| plays a lot of tricks on me when it comes to my musicality. My
| musicality is quite a subconscious thing actually. Well, not
| anymore!
|
| I haven't read the article yet but I suspected as much that there
| is not much money in music, not even a livable wage. That's not
| why I'm doing it though. I have a few tracks in my mind since
| childhood (and a few more recent ones) that I want to get out.
| Also it's a fun thing to learn about marketing while I'm at it.
|
| My point: I think that should be enough. Not everything we do has
| to make enough money.
|
| It's finally time to put that perfect pitch and subconscious OCD
| style melody generation to use!
| bitlax wrote:
| Isn't it clear that we just need a levels.fyi for rappers?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| We were discussing this on another musician forum.
|
| It has been a double (triple, even) whammy for musicians,
| compared to mid 90s and back. There used to be a time where you
| could play in a band, not a huge signed one, and still make a
| living. Just off playing the door, on the regular bar / club
| circuit.
|
| People went out much more back in the day. A regular weekday gig
| could bring you more money than a weekend gig does today. Unless
| you play in the most tourist-y hot spots, in the largest cities
| (think Nashville Broadway), you're not going to find places that
| play music all days. Not even 3-4 days a week. If you're lucky,
| it is going to be live music a couple of days, and almost only
| during weekends. Assuming you're paid $70 - $200 pr. gig,
| calculate how many gigs you need to play a year to not live in
| poverty.
|
| Pay hasn't really changed much, either - for the musicians that
| play for a flat fee, that figure has been standing still for
| decades.
|
| Almost every professional musician I know will have a battery of
| side hustles, these days. They will take every gig they can find,
| they will give lessons, they will do studio work, they will work
| as techs, become niche influencers, they will do whatever it
| takes.
|
| But more often than not, they will have abandoned music as their
| main revenue stream, and rather pick up regular job that
| generates a steady paycheck, and gig during the weekends.
|
| I can count on one hand the musicians / artists that have managed
| to make it "big", as in being C- or D-lister artists, and thus
| making a living off their recorded and touring music. They still
| spend equally much time on their social media, as that is what
| gets your name out. There is an immense pressure to play the
| algorithm, because that could make your tune blow up and become
| viral.
|
| In fact, that is often how musicians become "famous" these days.
| Suddenly their tune becomes viral in tiktok vids, and that's how
| they manage to get millions of listeners...doesn't actually pay
| much, but it puts a big spotlight on your name.
| triknomeister wrote:
| Middle class musician has been a recent phenomena that probably
| started in 1800s and is now going away again.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| To be blunt, the numbers show that the main problem is the
| listener. Most just do not care to choose so they consume what
| they're told is cool. If you think you care but consistently
| listen to artists present in Spotify's top 100 by choice, sorry,
| you're part of the problem too. Most being passive consumers has
| always been the case, but the system perfects itself with time
| and less and less attention trickles down.
|
| Notice, how I used "attention" and not "money" or even "listens".
| Just look at the first and the main goalpost independent artist
| set for themselves. It's no longer "buy our music" or "come to
| our show", by now they strive to convince the audience to
| _attempt to listen_ to their songs.
|
| By this time I consider an artist that's only present in
| streaming services and lacks a visible way of direct distribution
| of their music (which includes such services as Bandcamp, for
| now) either an utterly mismanaged one or, again, a part of the
| problem+.
|
| The only way for the artist to feel appreciated is building their
| loyal fan base, but if you don't want to wear the "entertainer"
| hat (which now equals becoming a circus monkey for the trending
| social media) this becomes harder and harder for a bunch of
| reasons:
|
| 1. Music is just not as culturally important as it was 50 years
| ago. 2. Live shows are in decline and dominated by cover/tribute
| acts. 3. As correctly mentioned in TFA, you're fighting with
| everything else _plus_ everything that came before you. 4. The
| world is closing. Visas have always been a curse++, but nowadays
| even if I jump through a myriad of hoops and get one, I can 't
| even cross the border to the countries we usually started the
| tours from in a previous life. 5. The internet feels like a
| collapsing space too, though it's probably the most controversial
| opinion of mine.
|
| There's also a problem of NNGC. At least the previous boom
| (blockchain) promised to make things better in some way (and it
| did, but underdelivered tenfold), but the current one ("AI")
| doesn't even do that -- there's not even a positive scenario how
| the life of a common artist becomes better, unless "post-
| scarcity" truly happens (it won't).
|
| ---
|
| +: To clarify, this is about modern artists, things are a bit
| different when we speak about "legacy" acts that jump started
| their careers in a different era.
|
| ++: Even though in case of EU most artists entering didn't care
| and used their tourist visas because they did not make any money
| anyway.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm disappointed - this article is very short sighted. Everything
| in it is about recording and making money from concerts and
| stuff. It's all modern. When was the time of the middle class
| musician? What was the distribution of musicians as a primary job
| vs all jobs?
|
| Throughout history it seems that there has always been an
| imbalance of musicians that make good money and those that don't.
| It seems that most musicians did it for free as part of a
| community/spiritual ceremony, or did it as a part time thing.
|
| The modern issues are related to the technological advancements.
| The true cause of issue the article talks about is right in the
| beginning of it - music has never been easier to make and record.
| Supply and demand?
| Tade0 wrote:
| In my region of the world an artist of any kind would fall into
| one of two groups:
|
| -Poor and malnourished member of the common folk.
|
| -Part of the elites, who is set for life anyway and creates art
| thanks to the ample spare time they have.
|
| I used to be in a band and one major point of contention in our
| group was whether we could make a living out of this. My opinion
| was that no, we couldn't.
|
| I have a friend who enjoys moderate success with his band -
| they're doing historical reconstruction so they're invited to
| events in the space and, of course, paid. He keeps his day job
| though. Truth be told in the historical reconstruction field only
| smiths and tailors can pull off this being their main thing and
| it's not a given.
| mft_ wrote:
| Time and time again, stories on totally different topics hinge
| on: during or just after the pandemic, there was a major change
| in cost of _doing just about everything_. Now of course, the
| pandemic was A. Big. Thing. and there was also an overlaid global
| supply-chain disruption when the Ever Given blocked the Suez
| Canal in '21.
|
| But: fundamentally, _why_ did all of this happen, and why haven
| 't prices normalised (i.e. dropped) since?
|
| Does anyone have a hypothesis, beyond 'corporate gouging', which
| I can accept, but seems too simplistic to explain what seems to
| be an enduring global phenomenon?
| osigurdson wrote:
| >> But: fundamentally, why did all of this happen, and why
| haven't prices normalised (i.e. dropped) since?
|
| Because governments printed an enormous amount of money during
| the pandemic. Money is worth far less that it was pre-pandemic,
| so prices are higher.
| 3PS wrote:
| For prices specifically I think it's fair to say that inflation
| only goes in one direction, but for larger market trends, IMO
| the key here is _habit building_.
|
| Many things were technically feasible pre-pandemic but not done
| habitually: remote work, streaming movies instead of going to
| the theater, ordering delivery instead of dining out, and so
| on. The pandemic forced many people to change their habits and
| get over any initial inertia (e.g. investing in a WFH setup or
| home theater). The result is that when the world returned to
| normal, the markets didn't: consumer habits had already moved
| on.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I had a look at this artists YouTube page. Clearly he is just not
| very popular despite winning some awards, having various CBC
| interviews, being endorsed by the city of Edmonton and playing
| for Justin Trudeau.
|
| As has always been the case with music, success is extremely
| rare. For every winner, there are a million losers. So, better to
| think of it more like a lottery than a normal industry / job.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| His success can be attributed to Canadian content law all the
| prizes he won, and whatever are government funded
| almosthere wrote:
| Well, I guess I was right... Ill be listening to 80s and 90s
| music for the rest of my life.
| nine_k wrote:
| Many skilled but repetitive jobs became automated away. From
| middle-class weavers (1760s) to middle-class car assembly workers
| (1970s) to middle-class journalists (eroding since 2000s) to
| middle-class software developers (happening now, alas).
|
| All these professions did not disappear. They have transformed
| though more to tending and overseeing machines, at an income
| level below middle class, with a much smaller number of highly-
| skilled professionals doing the exceptional things which machines
| don't do too well.
|
| When the technology is good enough for a one person to record an
| entire album, it's hard to be a specialist musician, like a
| violinist in an orchestra, or even a guitarist in a band
|
| I suppose the skilled professions that will resist machine
| replacement for longest time are these which require a lot of
| custom work and adjusting to unique local circumstances:
| electricians, plumbers, car mechanics, doctors, hairdressers,
| maybe construction workers. But they will likely handle mostly
| special cases, where standard, machine-friendly solutions don't
| fit well, a bit like modern tailors.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| In a discussion about the outstandingly high cost of concert
| tickets, I had a breakthrough moment just on Friday (today is
| Sunday where I am). Artists no longer make a living selling
| recorded music because of streaming platforms. They now make
| their living performing, hence exceedingly expensive concert
| tickets.
|
| I used to go to shows that cost $30-80. Now they are hundreds and
| the biggest artists may cost >$1k. I'm lucky that I make a good
| living, cause I wouldn't be able to go to most shows otherwise.
| philjohn wrote:
| Ah, the music industry.
|
| I know of one songwriter with multiple number 1 hits that was
| with a large american label for a while ... then moved to
| another, and the original label kept collecting the royalties
| when they were no longer contractually allowed to.
|
| Their answer: "So sue us, it'll cost more than you'll get, we can
| drag this on for years, and you can't get costs awarded, so if we
| were you we'd just eat the L".
| alldayhaterdude wrote:
| They been dead
| eweise wrote:
| Part of the problem is that the barrier to entry is really low
| now. In the old days, you had to be relatively talented on your
| instrument, hone your skills for years playing clubs to gather an
| audience, and then a record label would finally give you a
| contract. Now you can download Logic and it will generate most of
| the music. You just sing along, autotune your vocals and you've
| got a tune that can be uploaded to Spotify, Apple Music, etc. I
| just saw MonoNeon in concert. His albums are mediocre but I'm
| guessing he's making an ok living because he's extremely talented
| on bass. The place was sold out.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Patronage should return. That is all.
| tehjoker wrote:
| ctrl-f "dole" not found, but the musical explosion from GB in the
| 60s was in part due to generous welfare
| samiv wrote:
| I expect the "death of the middle class" musician to be part of
| the same phenomenon that is sweeping through all our western
| societies.
|
| The hollowing out of the middle class, wealth distribution
| producing more unequal societies where few people amass wealth
| and more of the (previously just working class but now more and
| more of the middle class) are pushed out a lower rung of the
| income/wealth bracket and ultimately completely displaced.
|
| Fundamentally in a healthy economy the money is the blood that
| circulates around. If you create an economy where most of the
| wealth is held up by few rich individuals who then use the wealth
| to buy more assets and produce more wealth it means that other
| less well off people _will_ get displaced in the society and that
| means that they will also not be able to afford to participate in
| the society to buy goods and services simply because they have no
| financial means to do so.
|
| And to those who immediately go "but the economy isn't zero sum
| game", yes that's correct. But when the real economy is growing
| at 1-2% rate and the musks and bezos and other wealthy
| individuals are growing their wealth at +20% per year that means
| it effectively is a zero sum game and some people's slice of the
| pie is ever growing at the cost of everyone else.
|
| But then people say "but the rich people invest". Yes but how
| much of that is actually active investment in new businesses and
| how much of that is just investing in asset portfolios, property
| and other financial instruments?
|
| Also to grow more businesses and start new businesses you need an
| individual who has financial means to take risk, has an idea,
| stomach for risk and determination and drive to start business.
| Many people do not have that.
|
| For the economy to grow new businesses which one is better? 1
| person with $1m and 9 with $0 or 10 ppl with 100k each? What are
| the chances and probabilities in each scenario that the person
| who has the qualities to start a new business is capable of doing
| so?
|
| If you want to see the future (especially relevant for US and UK
| since they're furthest along the way) just look at the economy of
| Nigeria or India for example. Few rich people, tiny middle class
| and large swathes of people in poverty.
| scoofy wrote:
| After invention of the electric bulb.
|
| >It's easier than ever to light lamps, and harder than ever to
| make a living from it
|
| Lamplighter used to be a job. Now it's not.
|
| The point of anything becoming trivially scalable for most people
| is that it suddenly stops being profitable.
|
| My favorite years in Austin for music were between 2007-2010. You
| could always see a band who were making music for fun, free
| drinks and girls, not to be famous. You can see a gig every day
| or so for $10 or $20. Just people doing it to make a few bucks
| and for fun.
|
| Then I moved to NYC. Every venue was "who are you here to see"
| bands had to make relationships with venues to make them money.
| Everything was about the industry and getting famous. None of it
| was about having a good time. I hated every minute of it.
|
| When you can listen to any artist from around the world in your
| earbuds all the time, _most people_ won 't be able to make a
| living from it. Still, you'll be able to go to a honky tonk in
| Austin on the weekends for $20, because there will always be
| folks making and performing _live music_ , not for the money, but
| because it's fun.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-29 23:01 UTC)