Capitalism is the only system that lets you chase your dreams, if those dreams are stomping on the dreams of others through a position of privilege.
Ok then that’s my dream. Where do I sign up?
Since you were born, you’ve been doing exactly that! So don’t worry, the sign up already happened
Yeah “acquire passive income through exploitation and then pursue your dreams”
Especially if by “pursuing your dreams” you mean exploiting workers, protecting capitalists, making opportunities for money laundering (for capitalists), or oppressing and killing minorities domestic and foreign (to help the capitalists).
I’ve seen so many youtube videos from conservatives where they literally just listen to someone saying what their minor/emphasis was and saying “wow, it’s so stupid that’s even offered, that’s completely useless”. The comments tend to be more unhinged, I frequently see “these universities should lose their accreditation”, “it should be illegal to offer these”, etc. Usually it’s something extremely basic, like the impact of colonialism on X, or something to do with intersectionality. Like, these aren’t even their majors, they’re just a component of their degrees that they can freely choose. I feel like many conservatives are just against any new ideas regardless of their validity.
many conservatives are just against any new ideas regardless of their validity.
You got it right there. That’s exactly what conservatives are.
Oh but they fucking love evo psych when a shitty study confirms their biases, but when they run into replication issues they just ignore it.
It’s basically in the word itself: Conserve = maintain, unchanged
Sometimes I think about how much art was never created because of capitalism. It either never got funded, or a potential artist never got the chance to make it, because just to scrape by, they had to spend too much time toiling to make some business owners money. It’s depressing.
And, just to cut off one potential counterargument: I don’t give half of a shit how “good” that art would be. I’m confident there are spectacular works of art that never came to be, but even putting it aside, it’s all subjective. Some folks would have loved it, and the artists would have found value in making it. That’s more than enough, and a hell of a lot more meaningful than breaking your back working for a living so that other people can own stuff for a living.
While I am not a fan of capitalism, there is something to say about everyone does what they do best. I am not an artist, but there is a lot of artists for me to enjoy and support on the internet, and for them it’s easier than ever to live the life off an artist.
Idk about other places, bit in Norway there’s a requirement for a % of the budget that has to be used for art on the outside areas and lobby area on public buildings.
Almost all of it is crap. So giving away money to anyone calling themselves an artist doesn’t work.
For some reason people in art believe they don’t have to compete like every other individual creating a business. I’ve bought art and have some on my walls at home. But it’s an ocean of bad or uncreative works to skim through if you want to find something you like.
Hey, that’s like every other work, and people still get paid for their shit output in other fields.
There’s no reason for any of us to compete to survive. Especially when the metric that determines whether one succeeds in competing is just how much money some rich fuck makes off of your efforts.
Creating art is a product which requires demand. Say you work as a graphic designer for a magazine or TV station. Then you make your money doing art just as a receptionist make money sitting behind the desk.
Being a receptionist as a freelance is a pretty shitty gig I believe. Working with art as a freelancer is actually possible. But it require a lot of networking and actual talent.
The demand for mediocre art is low. The demand for good art is high. Prices on popular works increase fast.
Wait. Define good and mediocre, first. Then, please, adress the most important point: why should we have to compete to just survive? Also, that kind of competition, and the inequalities that it gives birth to, benefit mostly the system and the very very very few people that are behind it, not the majority of the people.
Also capitalism: “Lol sure, you can give us $40k per year to get this art degree”
There are capitalist countries in which tuition is free, so I don’t know if we can blame this on capitalism. Then again, most likely you’re still going to have a lot of other expenses like rent, food and possibly also books and stuff, so in that case UBI would be great.
Free public tuition, like we have in Norway, is a non-capitalist component of an otherwise capitalist society. Paid higher education, like in the US, is a capitalist component of an otherwise capitalist society.
Actually this is the result of strong and convincing left parties and the fear of conservatives that communism might get more approval. At least in Germany.
To be fair, how many historians etc do you need to qualify every year?
What’s the point of studying something for years, getting in to dozens of thousands in student debt, potentially getting near the top of your field and then having to go work in a Starbucks because there are so few vacancies in your field?
I agree that these degrees are nice to have, but we should be honest with students in regards to the sort of lifestyle they can expect after they qualify.
Neo cons unironically love all of those degrees, at least in the US. Don’t forget that student loans are a big business.
Non-occupational degrees give a steady supply of young workers with massive debt and qualifications that won’t enable them to get a job with a high enough wage to pay back the principle of that debt.
This is how the gig economy flourishes.
This is how Amazon stays in business.
This is how the hospitality industry thrives on a deliberately broken business model.
This is how landlords profit.
This is how the post-boomer generations are oppressed.
We are cannon fodder.
Rise up.
Become ungovernable.
FTP
Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice.
This goes hard.
Where’s the quote from?
Reminds me of George Lucas talking about how Soviet filmmakers had more creative freedom than American ones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI
While there is absolutely truth to what he’s saying there, I do think it is sort of a “grass is always greener” thing.
For example, Tarkovsky famously butted heads constantly with Soviet censors/authorities about the content of his films (though to be fair, he was making some out there shit). I believe it’s ultimately why he left the USSR.
Communists: communism is the only system that creates equality.
Also Communists: Fuck art degrees, …work the factory cogs comrade & think of the collective!
Capitalist: If you aren’t a simp for capitalists, you must be communist. There is literally not other choice. Trust me bro.
Don’t forget the few artists that do exist are forced to make state propaganda
Yeah this is a blight of communism and leftism in general, you have no real artists, just State propagandists
Must be so awesome for those people living in non-capitalist countries that are able to do all those.
Remind me what countries those are please?
Remind me which countries failed due to socialism and not the full force of the western military complex whether by coup or invasion?
LMAO it was never real socialism
So you can’t answer the question, got it.
What question? Are you talking to someone else?
Do you think Socialist countries don’t have colleges? Lmao
I do think that doesn’t answer my question.
I think it does. Do you think that art and humanities aren’t appreciated under Socialism?
No it doesn’t. I asked what non-capitalist countries allow you to chase the OP’s dreams and you’re just asking me a bunch of questions about my opinion of the existence of colleges, and art appreciation.
But OK let’s suppose I have to answer your questions before I can get an answer to mine. Same answer for both: actually it’s not something I’ve ever thought about. But I could find out fairly easily, the first anyway, given a list of socialist countries I could do a quick web search to find out if they have colleges. They probably do, but I couldn’t name any at the moment. I think it would be tricky to find out whether or not A&H are appreciated under socialism; I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be but I couldn’t point to anything that gives an indication one way or another.
Your answer now please: a list of countries where I could, if I lived and so desired, chase those dreams without the limitations of capitalism.
Pretty much all of them to different degrees. What’s your point?
I don’t think I’m trying to make any point. I’m just trying to understand where this stuff successfully plays out.
If you don’t want to give a full list that’s fine. What would be your top three? Or any three if you prefer.
You have:
And also:
And how could I forget about:
What? How is art not profitable?
That’s a big misconception there
It has a limit. Lots of talented artists out there still looking for jobs. I know someone looking for a while and they worked on Archer(backgrounds and layout artwork).
What limit?
As in the amount who can successfully pursue jobs in that field that pay enough to live off of. Even education jobs are having a hard time with pay.
Some types of art appear to look great because of those in the field who are hugely successful, but for every successful pop star or diva, how many people keep trying to make music, make something decent but don’t get off the ground? Indie music has its place, but a lot of really successful artists are connected to the industry by family or friends etc, same with a lot of acting talent nowadays.
You could argue other jobs have similar limits but they’re usually much more dense.
Wait, were they expecting to get paid?
That only speaks of the consumption patterns. Unless they want to force people to buy their shit, this is a non problem
But… you asked how it’s nonprofitable… how is it profitable if they don’t get paid?
Some do, some don’t . I question their expectation, why were they making art in the first place then?
You are free to chase those dreams. You are free to also struggle to find employment like the rest of us. Why hamper yourself? Do things that aren’t profitable but you enjoy as hobbies Stop trying to find fulfillment at work.
Art is hugely profitable.
The arts are a significant contributor to the UK economy. Here’s a quick breakdown of their impact:
- Economic output: The creative industries, which include the arts, are estimated to generate £126 billion in gross value added (GVA) to the UK economy. This represents around 5.6% of the total economy.
- Employment: The creative industries employ around 2.4 million people in the UK, accounting for 7% of all filled jobs. This sector has also seen a faster recovery in employment after the pandemic compared to the rest of the economy.
So your argument is… Yay capitalism?
No, I was simply refuting the claim that art isn’t profitable. If it was up to me, art as a recreation would be what people were encouraged to do with their days instead of working for corporations.
But people are encouraged to do art as recreation. There are plenty of groups and courses to paint, write or dance in your free time.
The caveat was instead of working. As the OP said people should stop trying to find fulfillment at work.
Who are we to gatekeep where people find fulfillment?
Reading this comment has made me measurably stupider.
The difference is you can still get those degrees if you want to. In communism, you cant.
Colleges didn’t exist in communism?
They did, but you got training in whatever the state wanted, not the individual.
This is not true. At least here in Romania, the issue with colleges under communism was that there were VERY limited slots, so you had to either be the best of the best or have a high up party member in the family or as a close personal friend.
So you are basically agreeing? Not true on paper but in practice you couldn’t just get into college, which is what OP claimed.
No, I’m disagreeing. You could study anything you wanted, not what the state wanted. It was just hard to get a slot.
I guess it’s similar to how it’s incredibly hard to get a scholarship at a great university today. You’d hardly say that the modern scholarship system “forces you to study what the state wants”.
Not as different as recent past in Brazil. Federal and State universities where free and the top of the country, but the slots were few and the competition high. And because class disparities were reinforced on school education, even if the universities were free, only rich and middle income families were able to get in. Since the first Lula’s government, there have been policies in place to ensure that public schools and black students have exclusive slots. Brazillian middle class hate it, but they can eat it. This year was the first time in history that USP (best university in Brazil) had more admission from public schools that for private ones.
Yeah, that does sound very comparable to what I was talking about. Your example and mine both do not have the state deciding what university you apply to though, which is what I understood from “the state decides what you’ll study”.
Do you know that political systems are a spectrum and hard socialism or communism are not eh only alternatives to rampant capitalism? Have you heard of Scandinavian countries like Sweden or Norway? If not, I strongly recommend reading about their political systems.
This is true! Socialism is a spectrum of different political expressions of the idea of socially held wealth. The term was coined by Marx to a wider already existant school of thought regarding how basic human needs should be handled through copious economic planning. The slogan we hear about workers and means of production isn’t quite accurate as it is kind of a short quippy way to summerize passages that uses terms like “use-value”.
There were other promenant thinkers who served as and creditied as predecessors on that school of thought. We tend to use the term “proto socialists” to that group because many of them predeceased the term but Socialism is an umbrella term. If you believe on any form distribution of resources required to meet basic needs then you fall under the umbrella.
A lot of the Socialist movers and shakers of the past saw variable amounts and expressions of success in integration of Socialist principles inside democratic systems.
Communism has somewhat less shades of grey and while technically under the umbrella term socialism in some ways it is unique. It refers in practice of the supposed handover of power to a system that is supposed to have a diminishing need for a state while also prohibiting privately held property. It sometimes aims for a currency free situation. As such it is incompatible with current models of liberal-socialist spectrums of representitive democracies. It has also never technically succeeded in that handoff… Which is sometimes veiwed as a critical failure point inate to the attempted implementation of the ideology - or as a set of individual failures of the movements who attempted to adopt the ideology in name and fumbled the landing.
There is a lot of interesting history on different forms of socialism!
Why not?
Gulag
For what?
