💾 Archived View for station.martinrue.com › willowf › e7d585d49ff8487f9f1645a55d9565c6 captured on 2024-08-19 at 00:04:26. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Liberals/capitalists literally can't fathom the idea that someone might create art without a profit incentive, or as anything other than a commodity.
I was arguing with one of them today about my problems with the advertising-surveillance complex. They mentioned that advertising makes money for YouTubers. Naturally, I brought up PeerTube.
They said, "How do content creators make money on that?" I said, "Why does that matter?"
They didn't think anyone would make and upload videos if they couldn't expect to be paid for doing so. I'm naive and entitled for expecting that people will create art and freely share it with others for the sake of art itself, apparently.
5 months ago · 👍 maxheadroom, userfxnet, lykso, serge, leaf
I know a few people who say they're leftists who think like that. My dad is one of them. More often than not it's people who don't make things or have creative hobbies like that who can't understand why anyone would even consider doing things that couldn't be monetized · 5 months ago
@clseibold You are correct that liberalism is not capitalism. But it's undeniable that liberalism is closely related to capitalism. When I say "liberalism", I am not referring to social democracy. I am referring to the thread of political-social theory that started with classical liberalism, and continues to the present day as what might be less ambiguously called "neoliberalism".
Liberalism without capitalism strikes me as an odd notion. Social democracy still includes capitalism, merely aiming to curtail its excesses; democratic socialism is illiberal, because it subordinates the desires of capital (rent-seeking and profit growth) to the political consciousness of the masses via ballot. · 5 months ago
@willowf Sure, I just want to point out that there are real humans that are not businesses that are just trying to earn a living in a very capitalist society that they cannot change. Additionally, I don't know if you intended this, but you seem to setup liberalism as capitalism - it isn't. It's completely unrelated. Classical liberals were capitalists only because that's what the common economic position of the time was, not because it's a core thread of liberalism across time. · 5 months ago
@clseibold My beef is with advertising. I don't like art that is created in order to be monetized through advertising.
Art that is itself sold, or offered in direct exchange for cash, doesn't bother me as much. I'd rather subscribe to a video artist's Patreon than watch an advertisement before (or worse, *during*) the video itself. This is a necessary evil for my favorite artists to live in decent comfort.
My favorite kind of art (including videos) is that which cannot be commodified, cannot be used to put an ad in front of my eyes, and cannot be co-opted by capital into the sphere of market-transactional social relations. · 5 months ago
Also, I believe it's wrong to take what one person says and generalize it to everyone as if that person speaks for the whole group. We may justify to ourselves that we can do this because it matches with our biases and stereotypes, but that doesn't make it right. · 5 months ago
We should distinguish between classical liberals, libertarians, and modern liberals. There are many differences.
Anyways, my perspective is that while I do a lot of work myself for free, and so I appreciate all of the art that people do for free, you cannot expect everyone to do everything for free, because food and water and shelter cost money, and that's just reality.
Selling art doesn't diminish that art. One can create art for art's sake and sell it too! There is this false dichotomy between good art and art that is sold/costs, and it bothers me how people are so quick to diminish the art of others just because they want to support themselves and their families. · 5 months ago