Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists(reuters.com)

507 points by abe94 118 days ago | 697 comments

jimnotgym 117 days ago |

There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value.

Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It can be, but it doesn't need to be.

I am reminded of Daniel James also known as Gwyrosydd, his bardic name. He was a Welsh language poet, who wrote probably the greatest Welsh language song, Calon Lân (means 'a pure heart'). People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later. It is a proud continuation of a bardic tradition in Wales going back probably thousands of years. It also encompasses the Welsh culture of choral singing, noted in early recorded history.

Daniel James spent his life slaving away in an ironworks, making crucible steel. John Hughes, who wrote the tune worked in an office there.

I like to imagine what they could have done had they been at leisure to work and perform all day.

Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK.

Schlagbohrer 117 days ago | |

When Nirvana first moved from their small Washington town to Seattle, they were able to pay their rent + everything else from working minimum wage jobs for 2 weeks a month. They had time to practice music and pursue their art.

In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. Seattle successfully exterminated their entire arts, music, and culture scene by raising the cost of living sky high.

closewith 117 days ago | | |

> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids.

In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation.

Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?

CGMthrowaway 117 days ago | | |

Citation needed. "Cobain thought Seattle was too expensive a place to live. He couldn’t even afford his Olympia apartment, and was evicted for not paying rent while he was recording Nevermind.”[1] "They supported themselves through food stamps, sleeping on porches."[2]

[1]https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-...

[2]https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php

maccard 117 days ago | | |

I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills.

It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.

BSDobelix 117 days ago | |

>Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK.

It's a bad scheme, it divide's your population into people who have to create "wealth", and people who create "art".

Yes creating art (or preserving rare potatoes[1]) should be supported by your government if it's not survivable in a capitalistic society, however having different rights because of your occupation is not better then the middle ages.

[1] https://irishpotatofederation.ie/varieties/

the_gipsy 117 days ago | | |

> people who have to create "wealth"

most people don't "create wealth". They're forced to serve up half of their awake time to someone that is "wealthy", most likely through inheritance.

lucideer 117 days ago | | |

I agree with your sentiment but in practice that criticism only shows that this measure is insufficient, not that it's a net negative.

I think it should go a lot further than it does but it seems unambiguously positive even by your own framing.

jimnotgym 117 days ago | | |

Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth.

So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?

elxr 117 days ago | | |

You get different rewards, not different rights.

It's the same as cities/governments spending on free public basketball courts/tennis courts/running tracks. I come from a country with none of those things, and the difference that makes on the average fitness/skill level of the population is massive compared to places where those things exist.

Both basic income, and public sporting infrastructure have a significant (but not unreasonable) upfront cost, but the payoff in even 2 years time will be massive. Provided the economics check out, there's no reason to not give it a shot.

misja111 117 days ago | |

> People seem to think only money has value.

Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here. Of course nobody thinks that only money has value. If only money had value, why would anybody exchange money for, say, a bread?

What many people are wondering about, is whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. Because if it would be equal, then one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

AdamConwayIE 117 days ago | | |

You don't have to wonder whether or not it returns value to the tax payer. The Irish government already monitored the pilot program for two years, publishing all of the details and findings. [1]

"The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"

This came about as a mixture of greater economic activity from participants, cultural impacts that saw public-facing artist activities increase, and improvements to wellbeing of participants that reduced their requirement for psychological interventions by the state. The state also predicts that the further roll-out of this program will benefit consumers with lower prices for artistic works, as there will be more supply overall.

The scheme has been quite popular here in Ireland. Given the history of Ireland when it comes to art (both in the sense of spoken and written word, and in other mediums), it makes sense to introduce a scheme like this to safeguard and uplift those who produce art.

[1] https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...

lucideer 117 days ago | | |

> Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here.

From reading your comment I think this observation applies to your own understanding, not the gp's.

> whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. [...] one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

You might not see it but this is effectively equivalent to thinking only money has value, because you're describing a system whereby value is defined by money. Your dichotomy assumes anything that cannot be sold has no value, & anything that is sold is only as valuable as its price. The emergent conclusion from that formula is that only money has value.

It's worth noting that it also follows from this that value is defined by people with purchasing power. If for example the only cohort who value any given piece of art cannot afford to financially support the artist creating said art, not only is the art & the artist's work without value, but by extension so too are the perspectives, autonomy & - ultimately - the lives of that cohort without value.

ryanjshaw 117 days ago | | |

I also wonder why the tax payers who care can’t contribute directly to a fund, and keep government out of entirely.

TomasBM 117 days ago | | |

> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

Because the skills and effort needed to market and sell your art to an audience are not equal to the skills and effort needed to produce good art [1].

I agree that there could be other complementary or better solutions compared to this scheme. But as long as the above premise is true, not every good artist will want or be able to sell well.

[1] However you define this. Supposedly, Van Gogh was a lousy salesman, but a good artist.

multiplegeorges 117 days ago | | |

Art is often only appreciated in retrospect, so it is typically undervalued at the time of its creation.

> equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return

This seems incredibly shortsighted.

komali2 117 days ago | | |

Nobody pays to view a mural, but a lot of people view it, and property values go up as a result. It cost the artist time, effort, and money to make it, and if you hire an artist specifically to make a mural, it's prohibitively expensive for an individual.

Better to amortize the cost across the population and have public works. Like we do for infrastructure. Seems to work just fine.

picture 117 days ago | | |

There are many things that are valuable to people, but which they would rather not pay for. They include public goods and externalities, like infrastructure and education and a reasonable amount of military. It makes a lot of sense that people would rather enjoy art for free if they had the option, and since the majority of art experience can be easily duplicated and transmitted, why pay for it yourself? There is also another benefit of art stimulating further intellectual and creative development of a society, perhaps yielding second order benefits that are hard to quantify. Thus overall, it can make a lot of sense for government to pay for art as a society.

angiolillo 117 days ago | | |

> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money

"Public goods" like parks, museums, bridges, roadways, transit, nature preserves, community spaces, and public safety services produce both direct value to their immediate users as well as substantial diffuse value to their community. Direct value can be captured by user fees, tolls, subscriptions, etc but capturing diffuse value is challenging. A park raises surrounding property values even for people who do not visit the park. Good transportation infrastructure increases the value of surrounding land and and productivity per capita even for nonusers. Relying solely on user fees may force some of these entities to close or fall into disrepair, thereby reducing overall value by substantially more than it would have cost to maintain them. And in some cases shifting the cost burden to direct users substantially lowers the diffuse value, for example back when fire fighting companies would let houses burn unless their owners paid them, ultimately resulting in more overall community fire damage.

In these cases, subsidizing these public services with taxes (optimally Georgist land-value taxes) is an economically rational decision.

One could plausibly argue that artists similarly produce diffuse value e.g., raising the profile of their nation or culture, making their neighborhood a more desirable place for people with money. Not only do artists typically struggle to collect a share of this diffuse value, as renters the very value they create often ends up pricing out of their community. I could imagine cases where it is a net benefit for a government to subsidize such entities if such subsidy is less than the fraction of the diffuse benefit that ends up being collected by taxes.

I have no insight as to whether this scheme in particular is net positive, please see sibling posts for that. I'm just explaining that such arrangements are both economically rational and extremely common in high-functioning societies.

YesBox 117 days ago | | |

Unlike baking bread, It can take decades for an artist to become experienced enough to create something of value.

Some art, like classical music composition, is and has been propped up by grants and wealthy donors since forever.

Whether that’s a good allocation of resources is of course entirely subjective :)

JKCalhoun 117 days ago | |

Plenty of people get upset if they think there is someone, somewhere getting a "handout".

It's easy to channel indignation toward those people and not, say, their corporate masters that seem to hold everyone's strings.

whywhywhywhy 117 days ago | | |

What’s “corporate masters” got to do with a transaction from taxes and inflation (stolen value on your savings and spending power) to a handout?

ecshafer 117 days ago | |

Who gets to be an artist? I want to be an artist now. Is it people who go to certain universities with art degrees? Can any working class guy decide he wants to pursue art and get the basic income?

Another question is would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks? In the 1800s most of the great literature was written by normal guys writing on the side, they need that experience to make great art. Heart of Darkness is never going to be written by an academic. Hemmingway doesn't write anything without his experiences in Italy, Spain and France in WWI, Civil War and WWII, if he was just a beat reporter forever, all of his great inspirations don't amount to much. Tolstoy and Doestoyevsky are notable exceptions.

maleno 117 days ago | | |

Just to answer the question in this specific case: yes, a working class guy can decide he wants to pursue art (in quite a broad range of forms), and he can apply for the basic income once he can show that he is working as an artist. The artists who ultimately receive the payment will be chosen randomly once they meet the criteria to apply in the first place (which, again, is simply that you are working as an artist—exhibiting, publishing, performing, whatever "work" might mean in your case). There is a fixed number of people who can receive it in each round (I think it's 2500 people, cycling every three years), and those people are picked by lottery; if you receive it in one round, you cannot apply for the next. This, and in fact no arts funding in Ireland, has anything to do with certain universities or art degrees. This scheme is far from perfect, but these vaguely leading questions (so common to all commentary on public funding for the arts) are clearly irrelevant.

As for the second question ("would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks"), well, life and art really are too varied to draw the kind of conclusions the following comment implies.

boston_clone 117 days ago | | |

Heck yeah, go be an artist! If you want to be one and aren't, what's stopping you? Perhaps the lack of financial security? ;)

Here's a non-exhaustive list of eligible types:

https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...

irishcoffee 117 days ago | | |

You're saying the quiet part out loud. Clearly we just need to pay people to "make art" all day long on the backs of taxpayers who will most likely never see the "art" or derive any value from it.

"Dad why are you working your hands off? Well... the government decided to pay people to "make art" instead of working. How come? Well... nope I have no fucking idea"

akudha 117 days ago | |

People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later

I wonder how far are we from a song that is entirely generated by AI and becomes as loved as a song created by a human, and is still sung/played by people decades later? It feels weird to even think about it.

If AI does get as good as humans at creating art (I think it might), what happens then? Will human generated art be still as respected/valuable? Will humans even bother creating art at that stage?

On the topic of basic income - people seem to have strong opinions on both sides. I guess time will tell, but there isn't anything wrong in experimenting, at minimum. To those who strongly oppose UBI - don't we already give bailouts, huge tax breaks, subsidies to entire industries etc, to the extent of rewarding bad behavior (criminal behavior even) - like the one that caused 2008 crash? Why is corporate handouts okay but not UBI?

EQmWgw87pw 117 days ago | | |

Corporations produce things (productive), while UBI rewards unproductive behavior (theoretically)

amichal 117 days ago | | |

I wonder, can we not turn all threads into a "when will AI do this creative thing better than humans".

Humans need basic income (or at least resources) and to have culturally valuable work to do. Art and craft esp as a form of human expression seems like we should ASSUME that humans want to do this, that we as a society value the human energy that goes into it.

matthewkayin 117 days ago | | |

> Will human generated art still be as respected/valuable?

I would hope that humans would always value human generated art, but these days it seems that many businessmen and AI bros do not. Perhaps they are not human.

b112 117 days ago | |

All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable.

Living in a one room dwelling, with a shared bathroom is unpleasant, but safe, warm, and has a bed. Having enough for basic food, but no luxuries.

My point is, welfare(not disability, welfare) should sustain. Keep safe. Alive. Free from elements. But absolutely be something a normal person wants to escape from.

And there will always be those happy with the above, and .. well, OK.

But whether artist or whomever, basic living in hard times should be there for you.

mjanx123 117 days ago | | |

Whip them to the hamster wheel...

komali2 117 days ago | | |

> All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable.

Why? We are well beyond the scarcity that would require this.

whywhywhywhy 117 days ago | |

Why would I ever do work if I can just do art? I mean I have worked in the creative industries so I have successfully done art for others but why would I do art to serve others if I can just do what I want and live comfortably.

Or is it more of have to apply to be subsidized and the government chooses what art is worth subsidizing, which won’t result in good art, more just government building lobby bad art.

GorbachevyChase 117 days ago | |

There really is not an objective criteria to find who is and it’s not an artist. The proposed system makes a purely political decision out of who sits at a desk doing unsatisfying but necessary tasks, and who gets to sit at home and smoke dope all day and put out a painting or a song twice a year. Not very fair to the tax donkey fixing the plumbing.

kiba 117 days ago | | |

Don't tax labor, or capital which helps assist labor with performing economic activity ,or at least tax as little as possible.

Instead, focus on taxing scarce resources, especially since we cannot make more of it. If it's natural resources coming out of the grounds such as minerals and oil, it becomes a severance tax.

If we're talking about occupying land, then it's a Land Value Tax.

You could also tax negative externalities like pollution or traffic congestion.This is known as a Piguovian tax.

ap99 117 days ago | |

You can only tax people so much before it's too much.

effective tax rates

0% ... not realistic outside very unique circumstances. 25% ... feels fair to me. 33% ... still fair but yeah 1 out of every 3 days worked you start to feel that. 50% ... the border of fair and unfair. if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin.

Now, when you are near that border of fair and unfair and then you see John Q Artist getting his whole list comped using tax money that pushes the somewhat fair into unfair territory real fast.

Now, we already have situations similar to this in most countries either from subsidies, gov't spending you don't agree with, corruption, waste, etc.

All of that should be reduced but when you see your neighbor living free while you slave away you feel that differently.

dns_snek 117 days ago | | |

Which tax rates? We have dozens. What determines fairness is how the resources in our society are allocated once all is said and done. Income, tax rates, and even money itself is just an abstraction.

> if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin.

How fairly you made that money in the first place and what you get in return in the form of government services makes all the difference.

dgb23 117 days ago | | |

Ireland is a tax haven though?

TheSpiceIsLife 117 days ago | | |

It has a tendency to lead societies to do things like round up all the artists and intellectuals and against-the-wall when-the-revolution-comes them.

jimnotgym 117 days ago | | |

What has that got to do with my comment?

MisterTea 117 days ago | |

> Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It can be, but it doesn't need to be.

They don't care about the art, only the clout it brings them in terms of hoarding a limited thing people value.

Art is a medium that is used to convey and stir emotion in the viewer. It's not currency to anyone but shallow fools.

lbreakjai 117 days ago | |

The problem is, how do you define "art"? How do you define which art is worth subsidizing?

Am I eligible if I doodle on a piece of paper once in a while? What about if I decided to expose a urinal? Or paint a can of soup?

stemlord 116 days ago | | |

you can't really fake the labor that goes into mastering a craft any more significantly than one can fake labor at a white collar job, let alone some level of institutional involvement that any professional pursuit would end up with (i.e., showing a work at the gallery on main st or giving workshops at the community center), so this isn't actually that challenging of a question in practice. even with highly conceptual work there's still an involved studio/research practice to audit

if your artistic practice is truly so abstract that you can't prove labor by any material means then you probably just won't get subsidized for it.

dev_l1x_be 117 days ago | |

> Daniel James spent his life slaving away in an ironworks, making crucible steel. John Hughes, who wrote the tune worked in an office there.

Part of being an artist (at least it used to be) is struggle.

afavour 117 days ago | | |

I’d say that’s correlation, not causation. Just because past artists have struggled to make ends meet doesn’t mean it’s a requirement to make art.

nandomrumber 117 days ago | |

> I like to imagine what they could have done had they been at leisure to work and perform all day.

Probably nothing.

The idle rich and trust fund kids aren’t exactly know for producing, well, anything of value, really.

Getting paid to sit around all day and do fuck-all isn’t exactly character building.

jimnotgym 117 days ago | | |

He was in his 40s when he wrote his most famous work, that would qualify as a portfolio in Ireland and get the grant.

I reckon the 20 years as an iron puddler he had done by then had built his character already.

jodrellblank 117 days ago | | |

Yes they are.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientist... - "An independent scientist (formerly called a gentlemen scientist) is a scientist with a private income who can pursue scientific study independently as they wish without excessive external financial pressures."

Including: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (Evolution), Ben Franklin, Robert Boyle (Boyle's gas law), Oliver Heaviside (electromagnetic theory, co-axial cables), Alexander von Humboldt (established modern Geography), Thomas Jefferson, Leopold Kronecker, Alessandro Volta (voltaic pile battery)

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist - "Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the Victorian era, especially in England, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the Royal Society in London were independent scientists. "

Including "Charles Babbage, Henry Cavendish (discovered Hydrogen), Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Thomas Young (Young's modulus of elasticity, eyeball focusing), Joseph Priestly (discovered oxygen)

Rene Decartes "arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life."

And basically any tenured professor paid to do whatever interests them, or academic or researcher, especially mathemticians, hired and paid for blue sky research, all the places like Bell Labs that HN loves.

eucyclos 117 days ago | | |

The majority of great works created by the ruling classes of Athens or London at the height of both cultures ascendency is a major counterexample. Maybe we just had bad luck as to today's ruling class.

Xunjin 117 days ago | |

> There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value.

To be fair, the majority has been conditioned in thinking that only money should be your purpose, that's literally how capitalism works, even arts now is a product that need to be sold to the highest bidder, or manufactured in the millions to be sold.

badgersnake 117 days ago | |

What did you expect from a forum for VC fanboys?

CalRobert 117 days ago |

The frustrating thing about this program is that it is not possible to avail of this unless you are ALREADY an artist. So if you gave up art because you had bills and kids and needed to support yourself or a family, you're SOL.

The only person I know getting this money was already semi-retired after selling their house in London and retiring to the Irish countryside, and basically just noodles around on the guitar now and then.

TitaRusell 118 days ago |

They had something like this in the Netherlands during the 80s. Basically everyone was out of a job back then so it didn't really matter. Worst recession since 1929.

Artists had to make a buch of art which was then given to the government. The state ended up with entire warehouses filled with crap.

tomcam 117 days ago |

I don’t get it. Why are artists more deserving than unemployed insurance salespeople or carpet installers?

Daub 117 days ago |

Artist speaking. A similar scheme was employed by Holland for many years. The state committed to buy at least one artwork from each artist per year and predictably their warehouses became filled with crap art that no one wanted.

That being said, wise governments recognize the value of some kind of support of the arts. One reason for the incredible esteem that Korean culture is held in within Asia is the Korean government's active support of its filmmaking, TV and music industry. This was also true in Renaissance Italy (courtesy of the Medici family) and in 17th Century France (courtesy of Louis XIV). It was even true of the CIA's active support of abstract expressionism. The payoff of such support is soft power, which is a very real force.

sixo 117 days ago | |

Even in the US we see cities becoming desirable place to live when they successfully cultivate a film scene, or an art school, and being dead when they don't. But this feels like a better approach than a basic income (which is an invitation to idleness)--make it easy to use the environs for film, streamline permitting, provide cheap capital, solicit locals for public installations.

GaryNumanVevo 117 days ago | |

> crap art that no one wanted.

Through the kunstuitleen they leased and sold art to galleries and private homes. It was like a library for contemporary art which paid struggling artists and their families, while also exposing the public to more art.

To say that "no one wanted" is a massively overblown. Thousands of art pieces lived happily in many Dutch homes.

Daub 117 days ago | | |

OK, maybe my use of that phrase was a bit ill-judged. However, aside from supporting artists, what did the initiative achieve? Keeping artists off the dole should not be, IMHO, a goal in itself. The reputation of Dutch culture at the time was not brilliant, though neither was it bad. A strategic attitude would have been more effective... maybe target one or two artists and promote them.

The Young British Artists (YBA) boom of the 80s was a product of the innovative teaching environment of Goldsmiths' college plus the drive of people like Damien Hirst, who organized the ground-breaking Freeze exhibition. The British Council did their best to capitalize on this.

seanieb 117 days ago | |

Thats not similar in the slightest…

arexxbifs 118 days ago |

Sweden introduced a similar scheme in 1964, in which artists (broadly defined, having since come to include one clown and one chess player) have been given a basic income, supplementing their other incomes up to a specific level.

Artists couldn't apply for this, but were officially selected. The program was stopped in 2010, meaning no new recipients have been selected since. As far as I know, there's been no studies surrounding any measurable increase in artistic quality or artistic output.

It is of course easy to point out how deeply unfair such programs are on multiple levels. Unsurprisingly, many recipients have utilized loopholes in order to receive the grant despite having incomes and wealth well above the threshold.

Edit to clarify: Sweden still grants long-term stipends to various artists, sometimes up to a decade. What's described above is a guaranteed, life-long, basic income.

BryantD 117 days ago |

Ireland has already provided substantial benefits to artists — income from art is exempt from income tax up to a certain level. Society has not disintegrated. Speculation and anecdotes are not terribly useful but my Irish author friend is not from a rich family, nor is she well-off, but she’s able to support her husband and child in a smaller Irish city by dint of writing several books a year and stressing a lot. I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/money-and-tax/tax/inco...

throwaway74628 117 days ago |

A novel treatment for the proverbial dying man. I understand that this program is currently assigned at random but it’s prudent to assume that they’ll shift to a “merit based” system before long i.e. sweetheart deals for members of the right clique, nepotism, and the occasional worthwhile project. For concrete examples, look no further than the content funded and produced by the national broadcaster, RTE. Aside from a few decent documentary shows, the dramas and comedies produced are extremely low quality, often with the same familiar faces who are well established in the clique. The occasional exception proves the rule.

relistan 117 days ago | |

Alternatively, it's successful and is expanded to support more artists in the future. Cynicism with governance not unjustified in Ireland, but here we are looking at some actual progress.

reliabilityguy 117 days ago | | |

> Cynicism with governance not unjustified in Ireland

What do you mean?

throwaway74628 117 days ago | | |

Artists picked at random will still be subject to existing conditions, those best able to maneuver within the social and political currents will inevitably outperform those who cannot. Those running the program are ill-equipped to define it’s success, being part of the same regime which routinely delivers bottom-of-the-barrel slop.

forgotaccount3 117 days ago | |

> it’s prudent to assume that they’ll shift to a “merit based”

There is already a "Merit based" system that supports the arts. It's called the private market.

My initial gut reaction was akin to many responses here but a post that detailed the implementation mitigates many concerns I'd have if I were an Irish citizen. As long as the system has some required 'buy-in' from applicants to prove they are working towards being an artist, and the distribution is random so it's not a guaranteed payout, and possibly the odds of being selected are driven by the number of applicants and so no one could do a cost-benefit analysis of submitting the 'buy-in' purely with hope of receiving a payout, then this seems to be a more fair way of supporting up and coming 'arts' than the government paying some already established artist for a mural or to design a park or to create a sculpture.

ElevenLathe 118 days ago |

This is admittedly a tangent, but I love that British (and apparently Irish) government programs are commonly called "schemes". To American ears, it always sounds like some grand confidence trick is being pulled.

esperent 118 days ago | |

As an Irish person, in normal speech the word "scheme" has exactly the same shady connotations as it does for Americans. Calling someone a "schemer" is a common insult. I've always assumed the government started using the word in a rare moment of honesty and it stuck.

TrainedMonkey 118 days ago | | |

Or perchance it is the other way around. The word started as official term and over time got shady connotation because can't trust Big Government.

nv2156 117 days ago | |

In India too, discounts and promotional policies are commonly called 'schemes.' I learned the hard way that in the US, the word has a negative connotation when I asked my rental office about any 'schemes,' they looked at me with total shock.

acuozzo 117 days ago | | |

Similarly, "doubt" has a negative connotation in the US, but I see it often used as a synonym for "question" by Indian speakers of English.

jerbearito 117 days ago | | |

That's hilarious! I hope y'all cleared up the confusion quickly.

rorylawless 118 days ago | |

Growing up in the UK, we would be sent to a “play scheme” during the school holidays. Weird phrase.

extraduder_ire 117 days ago | |

Various variants of english diverted quite a bit since the US became its own country. Like how the US constitution mentions "freedom of speech", which includes many things that aren't just speech as we'd call it, whereas many other countries call the same concept "freedom of expression" because they committed it to writing later.

Another funny difference is the word "corporation" meaning the government in some cases. Like someone living in Belfast could go home from their corporation job to their corporation flat, if they lived in public housing and were employed by Stormont.

yesfitz 118 days ago |

Previous discussions:

3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45590900

4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29977176

People have seemed critical of the presentation, scope, and goal of this program. (e.g. It's not "universal" basic income, the number of recipients is limited to 2,000, and why are artists being subsidized instead of essential workers?)

Now it seems that we'll get some real world answer to those questions/concerns.

bawolff 117 days ago | |

I dont see how we are getting "answers". Disagreeing with program design is not a question.

Tbh though, that doesn't sound that special. Many countries subsidize artists.

ergocoder 117 days ago | | |

There's no good way to evaluate the result anyway.

Grants like this at a small scale is generally inconsequential to the country.

bell-cot 118 days ago | |

> and why are artists being subsidized instead of essential workers?

There are far more than 2,000 real, paying jobs for schoolteachers. And for grocery clerks. And for nurses. And for fire fighters. And for drivers of rubbish lorries. And for ...

Not so much for the folks who hope to be the next James Joyce or Louis le Brocquy.

sam_lowry_ 118 days ago | | |

I hope to be the next Rothshild, give me a trillion!

AlexandrB 118 days ago | | |

Many people who work as schoolteachers, grocery clerks, etc. at one point might have had ambition to be the next James Joyce.

mantas 118 days ago | | |

Those can go and do normal jobs like grocery clerks. While doing their art in free time. Like many famous artists were doing.

jcarrano 117 days ago |

"If you need subsidies in order to live off art, you don't live off art but live off the state".

As part time artist I see many problems with these schemes:

- Decoupled from people's actual appreciation of the art being done: I feel better when I know people voluntarily gave up their hard-earned money for what I do. - Monopoly-style "winner takes all". The people who benefit from this are the ones already in a position to ask for the benefit. - No one bites the hand that feeds then. That will form a body of "artists" subservient to the state.

The human problem is that no artist is willing to acknowledge that the public is not willing to spend money on their product.

JKCalhoun 117 days ago | |

The obvious conclusion is that artists should make the art that the wealthy want and are willing to pay for.

And in hard economic times artists ought to turn to gleaning.

christkv 117 days ago | |

Thats whats happened in Norway, and even worse they gave the artists the decision making process of handing out grants leading to them self dealing or dealing to their friends.

kbelder 117 days ago | | |

Oh, wow. The absolute worst thing that could happen to this sort of program would be for artists to make the decisions about who qualifies.

bagacrap 117 days ago | |

Must feel pretty good when rich people get into a bidding war over your product!

I have a hobby and I don't get compensated for it (quite the opposite). It's not making art, but if art were my calling I could quite easily see myself making it without any hope of monetary reward. There are plenty of people who have the same hobby as me and don't have a job -- they pursue it as is it's a job, though most are not paid either. I view that as some combination of privilege and laziness.

If there's any problem here it's that people don't have enough time to pursue hobbies. I only have enough time because I work from home (no time wasted commuting). Perhaps the government should focus on where we as a society waste people's time and energy such that they have none left over for hobbies.

appreciatorBus 117 days ago |

Since only people with a wealthy family safety net have the wherewithal to call themselves artists, these schemes just end up as a transfer from poor to rich (kids)

miladyincontrol 117 days ago | |

iirc from previous criticism I saw on this a majority of the trial recipients were retirement age adults, but all the same people much wealthier with the privilege to have time/money to spend doing art. Younger artists? Not established enough.

ghiculescu 117 days ago | |

Deeply ironic that those who claim to support socialism are so okay with taking from the poor to give to the rich.

appreciatorBus 117 days ago | | |

A story as old as time, unfortunately.

thegrim000 118 days ago |

Ok, let me guess, without looking at the article .... is it a "pilot" that's rolled out to a small number of people, for a limited period of time, and its success is judged by surveying those people on whether they were happy to get free money? I bet it was.

tgrowazay 118 days ago | |

> Ireland rolled out a permanent basic income scheme for the arts on Tuesday, pledging to pay 2,000 creative workers 325 euros ($387) per week following a trial that participants said eased financial strain and allowed them to spend more time on projects.

> The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle. O'Donovan said he would like to increase the number of recipients over time.

> Over 8,000 applicants applied for the 2,000 places in the pilot scheme.

> A report on the trial found it lowered the likelihood of artists experiencing enforced deprivation, and reduced their levels of anxiety and reliance on supplementary income.

themafia 118 days ago | |

> It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through [...] and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments,

Which sounds quite a bit like "we spent more on one type of welfare so we ended up spending less on a different type of welfare." Which, okay, good, but I don't think you can say you "recouped" anything.

Schmerika 118 days ago | | |

If you want to criticize the study, it would be best to actually read the method rather than make assumptions.

jamesbelchamber 118 days ago |

If they think this is good/important then fine but what they've created is a grant programme, not a UBI.

Personally I would have thought this money would have been better spent getting people on the margins the stability to retrain into in-demand skilled careers (e.g. single, unskilled parents training as electricians or plumbers). That feels like it would be a more durable, multi-generational benefit.

But again, this is just a grant programme.

RupertSalt 117 days ago |

In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts has issued more than 128,000 grants, totaling more than $5 billion, to fund the projects of American artists. These subsidies have not lacked controversy, and were eventually challenged at the Supreme Court level, during the Clinton administration.

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

If you or your parents would like to sample a NSFW taste of your tax dollars at work, try this deep cut from Plaintiff Karen Finley: https://youtu.be/5gk6JCeGExo?si=FEqZtLlDiQDr0_XI

What criteria of artistic merit, cultural relevance, and common decency will Irish artists need to meet, in order to qualify for their basic income?

ProllyInfamous 117 days ago |

>"...go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

>—Kurt Vonnegut

yawboakye 118 days ago |

<rant>

the irish government is adept at misplaced priorities, (very) short-term thinking, pursuers of feel-good vibes, basically everything besides running a state. incompetence here has bred the need for more and varied welfare programs just so we can have a variety of careers that cater to the needs of life. of course, necessity of the arts is undisputed. but can the artist make a career here when the money you make from a show, including tips, can’t pay your utility bills? when your income can’t afford you decent accommodation?

</rant>

fedeb95 117 days ago |

this kind of reasoning will accumulate so much inefficiencies that it will eventually blow up. Or, in the best case scenario, create a proportional inflation that makes this subsidies useless.

Think about the big picture: your salary is a cost for someone else. In the case of "basic income" is a cost for the tax payers. Who decides what benefits the tax payers? The state can't possibly do it, if not for a limited extent. Today we don't have a method more efficient than free market and free prices. Planned economies have historically failed. It may work for now, we all love arts; but tomorrow it will be the artisans (were is the boundary between art and crafts?), then maybe small businesses?

Each of this "tax exemptions" or subsidies eats the profits of someone else. Very rarely it's the richest luxuries that are taken away. Usually it's the middle-low class that doesn't receive exemptions and subsidies who's penalized. Ironically, that same class that most could consume art, crafts, and products in general. This way society spirals toward an halt.

csense 118 days ago |

Does the government get equity in the artist's work? If one of the recipients turns out to be the next Picasso, and makes say $1 million selling a painting (either as an NFT or a traditional art auction), does he have to give the $1 million to the government?

hippich 117 days ago | |

State will tax it. And the tax amount from 1M is infinitely bigger than the tax from 0

mdemare 117 days ago |

The Netherlands has had a similar scheme for decades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist_subsidy_(Netherlands). 1956-1987.

misja111 117 days ago | |

Yeah but then this was called a subsidy so it would never have made the HN frontpage.

Legend2440 118 days ago |

>pledging to pay 2,000 creative workers 325 euros ($387) per week

>The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle.

Is it really correct to call this UBI? It is hardly universal if it applies to only 2000 selected artists.

Seems more like a 3-year grant, similar to the art grants awarded by the national endowment for the arts.

Schlagbohrer 117 days ago |

Nearly every great work of literature in the English canon was written by someone who was "on the dole" at the time.

k__ 117 days ago | |

Those programs make economic sense if the successful artists later pay for it with their taxes.

If they leave the country, then not so much.

thepaulmcbride 117 days ago |

It's wild to me how many people in the comments see any form of government doing anything as shady. It is doubly wild to me that using public funds to create art is seen as a bad thing.

skywalqer 117 days ago | |

You know that tax money is taken from people who could buy art with it? Or, maybe buy food and other things that they need even more than art at the moment.

thepaulmcbride 108 days ago | | |

In a society with a progressive tax system these things are overwhelmingly paid for by people who have vastly more money than they need to survive. Taxation when done correctly is a good thing.

erxam 116 days ago | |

You have to remember this is a site geared towards American techbros. Americans don't know what culture even means, much less why it's important. Cultural creations to Americans are shit like burger or Coke ads.

It's even worse for techbros. All techbros ever read are self-help books and Nick Land's meth-fueled ramblings. Peter Thiel is a head honcho techbro because he was able to finish The Lord of the Rings.

erxam 116 days ago | | |

You ask an American what's the last painting he saw and what he thought about it and he'll bring up whatever random shit some vastly-underpaid and over-exploited immigrant will have been made to plaster over a McDonald's wall.

The "intellectual" Americans will bring up Thomas Kinkade and how his work embodies the true nature of what American society should be all about. His pieces make them long for the good old past where non-whites knew their place and segregation was a godly law.

abe94 118 days ago |

here is the government report - https://assets.gov.ie/static/documents/b87d2659/20250929_BIA...

The cost benefit analysis includes a euro value to attribute to better wellbeing, using the WELLBY framework and apply £13,000 per WELLBY

sgt 117 days ago |

I know a guy in Norway who got the "statsstipendiat" fund which basically gives him a very decent salary for the rest of his life, no questions asked. All he need to do is just continue doing whatever he's doing, make art and so on.

That came as a big relief as he always struggled to make money, but it's still not a thing that a lot of people get.

Thlom 117 days ago | |

That being said, it seems like this is being phased out. No new "statsstipendiat" has been awarded since 2019. Before that it was mostly 1-3 persons awarded each year.

sgt 117 days ago | | |

That's silly, I think more should be handed out, to encourage art and culture and let it grow organically. But I guess with the Norske Krone doing so weak and the economy and all...

Guestmodinfo 117 days ago |

I feel Ireland has produced lots and lots of literary genius like James Joyce and others. Sometimes I wake up at 5am for a book club about his book for two hours and we only finish 1 page of his book. This is the reason that is in their culture to celebrate and perpetuate art. I'm looking forward to more and more Irish art

scandox 117 days ago | |

Some instinct, waking at these memories, stronger than education or piety, quickened within him at every near approach to that life, an instinct subtle and hostile, and armed him against acquiescence. The chill and order of the life repelled him. He saw himself rising in the cold of the morning and filing down with the others to early mass and trying vainly to struggle with his prayers against the fainting sickness of his stomach.

christkv 117 days ago |

Countries like Norway that has this has lead to a scandal of the artists who decide who gets money, self dealing and giving grants to their friends. You are either in the group and get money or outside and get none.

Get rid of it. State sanctioned art is is probably worse than no art.

slibhb 117 days ago |

What's better? Artists competing for the mass public, artists trying to please individual rich patrons, or artists trying to placate some government commission?

I think a mix is fine. But there are disadvantages if you weigh too heavily on the latter two. In Europe, there's already quite a lot of government subsidies for art. Try finding a British or French movie that doesn't open by announcing its connection with some government subsidy program. While I quite like quite a lot of what Europe produces (especially cinema), in the long run I suspect it won't be sustainable. Whereas the free(r) market approach of e.g. the US and Japan will end up ahead.

johncoltrane 117 days ago | |

Well, I don't depend on my art to sustain my livelihood. This allows me to do whatever I want without a care in the world for marketability.

Much better than all three choices combined if you ask me.

paul7986 118 days ago |

Dublin's Grafton Street with it's buskers is and was so unique to this American. I wondered if anywhere else in the world matches the musicianship heard on that street and in Dublin's bars? Music is engrained in it's culture in a way I have not experienced before(tho the weird looks I received wearing my baseball cap in Dublin was off putting as I had not experienced that in Berlin, Paris, Reykjavik, Amsterdamn, etc).

Overall It's a bit sad going to American bars and not hearing the whole bar singing along to the musician up on stage. Amercia's culture I feel is way more focused on celebrity then musicianship.

colmmacc 118 days ago | |

Grafton St buskers at their best are really really good, but there are also some very average buskers there every day too. New Orleans is a stand-out in the US where you can find world-class jazz bands playing on the streets.

Nashville has plenty in the evenings, and then you can find hot spots in some cities. I've seen regular buskers in Boston, Seattle, Sarasota, and Boulder - usually in pedestrianized touristy quarters.

paul7986 118 days ago | | |

Guess it's Dublin's bar culture and vibe that really stood out to me. I've been to the French Quarter yet don't recall almost everyone in each bar there singing along to their local musicians. Musicians who are really good to great like in Dublin's bars I experienced in December.

rorytbyrne 118 days ago | |

Why is "singing along" a relevant metric?

In Dublin's best music venues, nobody is singing along because it's brand new material from brand new artists. If you're singing along to well known songs in Temple Bar then I'm afraid you're missing some of the best music the city has to offer, in venues like Whelan's, Workmans, Sin É, The Grand Social etc.

paul7986 118 days ago | | |

Because in America we do not appreciate local musicians as i experienced in Dublin nor do we sing alongs in majority of our bars (maybe there are a few but none ive been to throughout the US & its not apart of our culture). We are a more subdued culture in this regards and as I believe worship/appreciate celebrity musicians over local musicians.

badc0ffee 118 days ago | |

I need to hear more about the baseball cap thing.

paul7986 118 days ago | | |

I heard Emily Blunt say on Graham Norton, "We know your American with your baseball cap." I know that's the UK but maybe it holds true for Dublin too.

The looks were strange and from women in their 20s as I walked around Dublin. Im not much to look at yet do not receive such looks or rude behavior (one purposely did not hold the bathroom door at starbucks as I waited my turn 25 feet away waiting to get in rather she purposely pushed the door to close) at home in the DC region or my travels throughout the US and Europe. Another American mentioned a similar experience too. My friend traveling with me he was not wearing a hat & did not experience any such thing.

mikkupikku 118 days ago | | |

Europeans don't really play baseball, presumably they all wear football and cricket hats instead.

CalRobert 117 days ago | | |

Especially since Yankees hats are EXTREMELY common in Dublin.

jancsika 117 days ago | |

> Overall It's a bit sad going to American bars and not hearing the whole bar singing along to the musician up on stage.

What's far worse is hearing a sing along in the original release. Listen to Strumpella's "Spirits"-- those are paid crises singers!

Edit: clarification

KittenInABox 118 days ago | |

Busking and live music is definitely still around. Especially in larger cities. I agree that the neighborhood bar scene sucks but that's more an issue that everyone has to drive home. Once you get to a place with good transportation or a downtown hub it all comes roaring back.

benbojangles 117 days ago |

100 million euro project - that's around 1/4 of a salvator mundi

BSDobelix 117 days ago |

This is how you kill the idea of basic income, create rifts and factions.

_heimdall 117 days ago | |

Killing the idea of basic income would be a good thing. It will never work and would leave a society in much the same situation as other past attempts at Marxism.

BSDobelix 117 days ago | | |

>Killing the idea of basic income would be a good thing.

Maybe we have a different look on basic income, for me it's like unemployment money with less steps and less overhead (less bureaucrats). I also dont know why you pull in marxism, but those systems normally starve because of bureaucrats (hello germany) where you have to fill out 10 papers to create one praline, and NO i dont say germany is "marxist", but they are really good at always taking the worst from both sides.

For giggles, lets say every work can be done by robots, every service by ai and energy is free (dyson sphere or whatever you want), who's left to spend money and for what? And tadaa StarTrek ;)

tokai 117 days ago | | |

Basic income is not Marxism. Marxism is against basic income. Getting a basic income is almost the opposite to getting the actual value of your labor. I write this as someone against Marxism. You should read up on things, and not just let your biases dictate how you understand things.

pnut 117 days ago | | |

...and when your labour, and the labour of 90+% of all humans on the planet have no economic value, we'll do what?

Continue to avoid exploring obvious solutions because certain words have been made into epithets, or failed previously because they were solving future (now imminent) problems?

PunchyHamster 118 days ago |

That seems like... insane discrimination ?

thomassmith65 118 days ago | |

Yes, most of us are programmers. The government should support us, too, since we'll soon be less useful than trad musicians.

Schmerika 118 days ago | |

It... isn't?

shevy-java 118 days ago |

That's an interesting idea. One has to test things to see if they can be made to work.

I think the amount is something that can be disputed, but the underlying idea is, IMO, a sound one. Similar to the "unconditional basic income" idea - again, the amount can be contemplated, but the idea is sound, even more so as there are more and more superrich ignoring regular laws or buying legislation in a democracy. That means the old model simply does not work. Something has to change - which path to pick can be debated, but something has to be done.

baalimago 117 days ago |

But how will they ever create good art without suffering and poverty?

Imnimo 118 days ago |

>The randomly selected applicants

Why would you want to randomly select here?

mikkupikku 118 days ago | |

That's the best way to do it. Otherwise all the money will go to the rich brat children of politicians/etc who are socially connected to whoever they put on the selection committees.

digiown 118 days ago | | |

I'm not sure that's true. What kind of rich brat will go through the trouble of all that for a couple hundred euros a month?

Random isn't a bad way of doing it in any case though.

gus_massa 118 days ago | | |

I agree that it's a problem. But how do you prevent it from been overflowed by people like me that can't draw a circle with the bottom of a bottle?

seneca 118 days ago | |

Mostly because the kind of people who run and advocate for programs like this are actively hostile to the idea of merit. Prioritizing talented people would be antithetical to them.

mikkupikku 118 days ago | | |

Prioritizing merit would be fine if there was some way to measure merit empirically, and if that measure couldn't be gamed by anybody with money and/or connections. But this is for artists, so...

anigbrowl 118 days ago | | |

I bet you also think government shouldn't be picking winners and losers.

AngryData 118 days ago | |

Why wouldn't you? How do you define merit to artists? Many of the greatest artists of all time lived their entire lives in poverty and desperation.

energy123 118 days ago | |

To not have selection bias so you can measure the effects

left-struck 118 days ago | |

Random selection is possibly the fairest way to select almost anything, depending on your definition of fair.

michalu 117 days ago |

I know so many "artists" in Paris, London, Barcelona and Berlin and I can't name a single one who deserves this. In my opinion any other demographic is more deserving. But as long as we're going to pretend anyone who says they do art is an artist or "you just a lowly pleb who doesn't understand art" we're going to have to play this game and pay for it.

OsrsNeedsf2P 118 days ago |

> Ireland's Culture Minister Patrick O'Donovan said the scheme was the first permanent one of its kind in the world [...] The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle.

So it's permanent, but the recipients don't get it permanently?

Jtsummers 118 days ago | |

The program was run as a trial (time limited, not permanent). They've now made it a permanent program (no time limit, not temporary).

So to answer your question: Yes, it's permanent (or as permanent as any gov't program can be), but the recipients don't get the money for an indefinite span of time (permanently).

close04 118 days ago | |

> The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years

Budgets are limited so they can't give to everyone all the time. They give each batch of artists money for 3 years and then move to the next batch. Interesting to see if there's a chance they start looping over.

ericmcer 118 days ago | |

Won't this kind of shaft their employment prospects as well?

Other industries don't move as fast but a 3 year layoff in tech could be a career death sentence.

nemomarx 118 days ago | | |

Do they have to be unemployed during the grant period? They could still find commissions and other stuff during that time or sell their art. And I guess for an artist either way you have a lot of new portfolio entries?

lkrubner 118 days ago |

“Ireland offers long-term grants for artists” is how this would have been written 50 years ago.

The idea is not new, only the rhetoric.

stubish 117 days ago | |

Grants operate differently over here. You have to write a submission, proposing works and budget and generally justifying. It is assessed by a committee. Politics gets involved. And a few people get larger chunks of money and the people holding the purse strings retain control on what is produced. It is essentially work on commission for the government, except you rarely get 100% of your costs covered.

Whereas in this Irish program, it is less money for more people chosen by lottery. The only editorial control is who is qualified to enter the lottery. It is also subsidizing the artist and not the art work, with artists working in cheap mediums receiving the same as artists dealing with high costs. So you are still going to need a grant or commission if you work in monumental bronze.

hoppp 118 days ago |

So good for Ireland!!

the_wolo 117 days ago |

I am really fond of countries creating public wealth by supporting art like this. Imagine how beautiful everything around of us could be if more were to create art instead, e.g. denying people their cancer therapy at an insurance. I yearn for that future…

whiplash451 117 days ago |

Not sure why they claim a “first in the world”.

France has had a similar scheme for a long time (“intermittent du spectacle”).

It is not perfect but does a great job at sustaining artists who work hard to live from their art.

RegnisGnaw 117 days ago |

How is this basic income when it’s like a job? There is only 2000 spots. There was over 8000 applicants. The committe choose the most qualified applicants.

some_random 117 days ago |

Ireland redirecting some of the wealth they have parasitically stole from the rest of the world to reboot serfdom is a fascinating development

notepad0x90 117 days ago |

If the Irish truly want this, I'm glad for them.

But in my view, arts should be funded by people in private. Any spare resources the government can muster up should be invested in improving the security and quality of life for its people. If no one ever goes hungry, and their medical needs are met swiftly, and justice is swift and accessible to all. then I can see the appeal in funding arts. But even then, sciences can meaningfully and in the long-term improve humans' lives.

I don't even know if the arts would benefit from this. Will the government arbitrate whose art is better? Private persons would, they won't fund a terrible artist. and from what I know about artists, the rejection and failure is instrumental to revelations and breakthroughs in their art. Without that, will the state be funding or facilitating mediocrity in art?

Imagine if this was for entrepreneurs. If the government will provide income so long as you're starting businesses. If you didn't have much to begin with, it might prevent you from giving up businesses that are failing, hold on to that restaurant years after it's failed because you like the vibe, and your needs are met. But if you'll eventually be in danger of running out of money to support yourself, you'll be forced to shut doors early, learn lessons and move on to something better.

I'm just making a case against dreams being kept alive artificially on life-support. And of the consequence of not having adversity when needed. I don't know if it's true, but I remember an analogy of artificial biospheres failing to grow trees and plants early on, because they didn't simulate wind. the trees needed the resistance, push and adversity of wind to thrive.

But I'll digress, I'm not saying Ireland did wrong, just putting my thoughts on the subject out there. They know what they're doing, I'm sure. And this is sounding too much like damn linkedin post, and on HN too of all places, talking about entrepreneurship, shame on me! :)

raffraffraff 117 days ago |

My wife is an artist and she absolutely hates this.

For a start, it's a lottery. 2000 randomers who call themselves artists will get no-questions-asked income regardless of their skill or importance as artists. We have people who are full time carers for family members who get less money in their allowance, and it's means-tested.

So you can be a millionaire heir / heiress, independently wealthy and still be eligible for it. One artist on Twitter bragged about getting it, and has been using the "extra money" to go on long holidays. It's basically free world travel for her.

Also, what is an artist? There's one guy on twitter who gets this income and really, he just seems to take bad semi pornographic photos. Like the world really needs more of that.

Another lady my wife knows personally is a terrible artist, never had any talent and doesn't make money. No sense of colour, no line skills, just paints awful blobs in awful colours. She's 100% in favour of this scheme and won't shut up about it on twitter.

My wife has been struggling to make an income from her art for decades, but has created a small business around it, wedding stationery, other print fits. Guess what? She probably doesn't qualify as "an artist" she "runs a small print business". She also thinks that the government could do a lot of practically things to make life easier for artists but it's easier to take your budget and just give it to random artists. No effort, no real benefit. It's laziness and incompetence.

I know exactly one "real" artist whose paintings will genuinely be hanging on walls for hundreds of years. He has no business around his art, he literally paints and holds exhibitions to sell his work. His name is famous in art circles and you can instantly recognise his style whenever you see it. His work is truly amazing. He has a wife and two kids and struggles sometimes. The long gaps between exhibitions, the worry that an exhibition won't go well. Anxiety, depression. Did he get this magic lottery? Did he fuck.

jl6 118 days ago |

> Ireland began the three-year trial in 2022

Did anyone take a note of what kind of output the artists produced? Was any of it any good?

Schmerika 118 days ago | |

Is art subjective?

inglor_cz 117 days ago | | |

A similar program in the Netherlands once ran for decades. It produced about quarter a million uh, tangible units of art, which not even government institutions wanted anymore, not even for free. The warehouses became full and dusty.

This was later one of the motivations to cancel the program.

pessimizer 117 days ago | | |

Is cash?

uyzstvqs 117 days ago |

Economics apply the same way to art. It can be one of the most profitable solo-endeavors, when your art is generally accepted as good or meaningful.

All the government-subsidized art that I've come across is straight up awful, and nobody ever actually cares for it. Typically it's weird abstract stuff.

By these standards, should I be paid an income from your tax money for my 5 side-projects on GitHub that nobody uses?

throwaway77385 117 days ago | |

I'm reasonably sure funding for the arts is globally as low as can be.

If we applied the rule of "it has to be good to be worth it" and money is the main indicator for "good", then what about the myriad products and services that are low quality / terrible, yet make tons of money because they can afford to shove marketing down everyone's throats and thus stay relevant?

Most popular music is downright awful to me. Do I want to take their money away because I don't think they deserve it? No. On the other side of that coin I'd like to see some kind of counter balance. How many artists were considered awful until they suddenly became the biggest deal ever? Often posthumously.

This tiny sliver of funding for some people you may not like won't take anything away from you.

The early internet was so great because it was full of weird things. We've lost ALL of it, due to commercialisation. We stand to lose even more if we don't do something to fund the people who dare to be weird.

This goes right back to the thing Bezos said about how we need to become interplanetary so we can inhabit the galaxy, because if we inhabit the galaxy we could have a thousand Mozarts. I think we could already have a thousand Mozarts if they weren't busy slaving away in Amazon's warehouses.

Once there's a trillion humans in the galaxy and they're still all slaving away in warehouses, we still won't have any Mozarts.

Not everything can or should be quantified by money and economics.

antisthenes 117 days ago |

We're going to need basic income for all people whose jobs have been absolutely gutted by LLMs.

camgunz 117 days ago |

HN: Don't worry about AI, UBI will fix it.

Also HN: UBI is a scam and no one will want to contribute to society.

jjice 117 days ago | |

But HN is thousands of people and not one hivemind.

camgunz 117 days ago | | |

I don't see any pro-AI people in this thread heralding the toehold UBI is getting in Ireland.

luplex 117 days ago |

I think this is a great idea, and a good example of a government that's willing to experiment with creative policy ideas.

Maybe UBI works for some recipients when it's clearly time-limited and the recipients have a clear way to building a stable income, but are bottlenecked on time and capital. I think artists are a good fit for such a program.

miroljub 117 days ago |

Everyone is talking about basic income as an experiment and wondering about its impact on productivity and human behavior. And everyone talks about hypothetical scenarios and a need for massive tests, without realizing that we already have a massive test data about basic income.

There's a huge group of people in western countries that has received unconditional basic income for decades, without any requirements. No questions asked, no documents required, no forced work. They could basically use that free money to flourish and pursue whatever creative activity they could imagine, without fear of economic downsides.

And we know the results already. We see it in our cities daily. But as a society, we have decided not to talk about it so we are not called racists or far right. Instead, we keep ignoring this massive group with an equivalent of basic income and keep pretending we still require experiments on its effects.

But yeah, let's test a few dozen Irish artists and keep pretending everyone needs to work for a living.

danparsonson 117 days ago | |

You'd need to be more specific - who/what is this huge group of people you're referring to?

miroljub 117 days ago | | |

> You'd need to be more specific - who/what is this huge group of people you're referring to?

I already explained why I don't want to say it aloud in this context. Your guess is as good as anyone's.

> ... as a society, we have decided not to talk about it so we are not called racists or far right.

abujazar 117 days ago |

This is not basic income, it’s a grant for artists.

Still a good idea though.

elnatro 117 days ago |

Why only for artists?

oulipo2 118 days ago |

Really cool! Looking forward to the findings of that study!

everdrive 117 days ago |

I wonder if there's a lot of controversy here. I'm not Irish, but I would really hate to be subsidizing the guy who taped a banana to a wall, for instance. In the general sense, I think subsidizing the arts can be a smart move, but so much art these days is nothing of the sort.

Schlagbohrer 117 days ago |

In Iceland, if a band can get an international tour scheduled, the Icelandic government will pay their tour costs. I believe Ireland has a similar plan of support for artists who can gain an audience abroad. Those nations know that the creativity of their people is a renewable resource and an economic engine as well as a source of cultural "soft power".

I absolutely do not expect sillycon valley libertarians to understand or appreciate any of this so probably a good idea to avoid the comment section here...

feverzsj 117 days ago |

Weird way to call homeless people.

ricardobayes 117 days ago |

We should normalize this. Before, artists were able to live in hotel suites, something that would be impossible nowadays.

deaux 117 days ago |

This is absolute peak irony given that Ireland is the number two valiant protector of US big tech - right behind the US itself - including the main AI corps. Shielding them from prosecution for all the laws they violate across a population of 450+ million. And then they give their own citizens this UBI from a sliver of the protection money they get paid. Fuck you, got mine.

It's despicable, they're as much as an insider threat as Hungary.

cyberjerkXX 117 days ago |

This is just the state contracting 2000 artists to do nothing...

falcor84 117 days ago |

> The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle.

"Permanent", I don't think that word means what you think it means.

bandrami 117 days ago |

"basic income scheme for a few selected artists"

almosthere 117 days ago |

Bad idea

fareesh 117 days ago |

im sure this will make their political art more popular with the working class

reeddev42 117 days ago |

This is fascinating because it implicitly acknowledges that some valuable work does not have a clear market path. Artists create cultural value that is difficult to monetize directly.

The same is true for a lot of open source and indie software. I have been running a free AI companion bot on Telegram for months and the operating cost (5/month server) comes entirely out of pocket. The users get genuine value from it but there is no revenue model that does not compromise the experience. If I add ads or charge money, the thing that makes it feel like talking to a friend (no transactional friction) disappears.

Ireland is essentially saying: some things are worth publicly funding because the market undersupplies them. That is a healthier framing than trying to force everything into a subscription box.