What Libertarians Do

[Audley Strange]

Well you make a good point about State influence of art. I've heard people many time ponder what the "Great Artists" would have done if they were not working for monarchs or the clergy. I'm not against arts in school, in fact I think the fact that my history teacher and english teacher touched on the poets of the great war at the same time, gave me a better appreciation of them, but it's not that I think anyone reasonably objects to.

In fact I think the main objection is more blatantly pointed out by yourself, subsidising the fringe and antiquated entertainments of the Rich because those who like them think they are more worthy of subsidy. I find the arrogance of it breath-taking, considering that so many of those who support it are pseudo-intellectual poseurs who would get upset if someone dismissed Ibsen or Butoh as easily as they dismiss the art of soap opera or seemingly content free reality T.V. shows.

Snobbery is one thing, Government funded snobbery is quite another, especially as it does in effect promote ignorance.

I can see your point regarding government funding of endowments for the arts and things like that. But I have a harder time agreeing that arts and music should be cut from public schools as if they are some kind of fringe Bourgeoisie movement that should not be supported by government.

Well I agree. We are supposedly educating children, not just training them to work whatever machine they'll inevitably use for a living. However given the entirety of art you have to judge what is appropriate and at that point you have to choose what is taught and what is discarded. I think inevitably what is considered more or less "The Cannon" would win through and that is problematic in so far as it is essentially Bourgeoisie tastes and that really that has a stultifying effect on contemporary society's appreciation of art because their tastes outside of that are neither respected or analysed to the same degree.

Why is Shakespeare's work more important than I Love Lucy? Why is Chaucer's comedy filth acceptable but American Pie juvenile? Often it boils down to no more that "I like it and can rationalise my reasons for it better than you can." That's got very little to do with art and I would say is the opposite of education.

[hadespussercats]

Nobody posted this yet?

[Coito ergo sum]

My favored supermarket not only has baggers for the groceries, but they provide options of paper bags, or plastic bags, or reusable "environmentally friendly" bags. They'll bag the stuff up, and they ask each customer if that customer would like them to wheel the cart out to the car for them. I think that's meant for the elderly and the infirm, but they ask even able bodied folks so that nobody bitches. They'll help people load their vehicles with the groceries too, and wheel the empty cart back to the store.

My nearest supermarket likes to wheel the cart out to the car for us and wheel the empty cart back to the store because in their neighborhood, unattended shopping carts get stolen.

Don't they get locked together and released with deposit (£1 here)

No. People generally don't steal them here. They are just left open. In most malls and shopping centers here, even merchandise is left out front unattended and easily stolen. Bookstores often have tables of books outside on the sidewalk with no attendant.

You live in some kind of gated community?

No, that's typical in the US. Go to any Barnes and Noble bookstore, and there are books right at the front door, unattended, easily reached and taken. Often, they set up tables outside and stack books they want to sell quickly at a discount and people parse through them and take them inside and pay for them.

You'll see merchandise sometimes stacked out front of an Office Depot or Staples office supply store too, and it would be easy for someone to drive up, toss an item in the back of car or truck and drive off unnoticed.

People generally don't steal. I lost my wallet at the mall with $400 in cash in it, and I retraced my steps some hours later and found it at the Macy's lost-and-found. It was found outside of the Macy's but nearby. Someone picked up and brought to the Macy's lost and found, and the folks in the lost and found kept it intact, not a dollar missing.

[Coito ergo sum]

My favored supermarket not only has baggers for the groceries, but they provide options of paper bags, or plastic bags, or reusable "environmentally friendly" bags. They'll bag the stuff up, and they ask each customer if that customer would like them to wheel the cart out to the car for them. I think that's meant for the elderly and the infirm, but they ask even able bodied folks so that nobody bitches. They'll help people load their vehicles with the groceries too, and wheel the empty cart back to the store.

My nearest supermarket likes to wheel the cart out to the car for us and wheel the empty cart back to the store because in their neighborhood, unattended shopping carts get stolen.

Don't they get locked together and released with deposit (£1 here)

No. People generally don't steal them here. They are just left open. In most malls and shopping centers here, even merchandise is left out front unattended and easily stolen. Bookstores often have tables of books outside on the sidewalk with no attendant.

The deposit isn't mainly to hinder theft. If you want to steal a cart, I am sure you can spare 1€ deposit for it (that will come with you, anyway). It is to get people to bring the carts together in places from where it's efficient to bring them back to the front of the store. You see, we have minimum wages here, so stores can't have semi-slaves running after carts from all over the parking lot.

Our minimum wage is approximately as high as yours, and folks in supermarkets have to be paid the minimum wage, and generally people in our country aren't total tools who leave the carts anywhere and everywhere. We don't need a $1 or a pound incentive to put the cart in the cart corral.

And, better to pay a worker to grab the carts and bring them back, rather than set up a system that deprives him of a job altogether, ay?

[MiM]

Why is Shakespeare's work more important than I Love Lucy? Why is Chaucer's comedy filth acceptable but American Pie juvenile?

American Pie (the song by Don McLean), is absolutely fantabulous, and if the best way to bring more music like that to the world would be public subsidy, I would happily pay my share.

More on the theme (or the derail), I find that we are living in a world of produce for the masses. This brings us great things in an affordable way, like the computer I am writing this on, superbly aligned football teams or the fantastic escapism of Hollywood movies made with megabucks. But if you have any interests that does not align with the masses, or maybe even more harshly with what the moguls choose to make the masses dependent of, you very often lose (I would e.g. like to have a microwave oven that doesn't go "BEEP" when it is finished, or a wakeup clock I can connect a non-apple player to).

What I think I am trying to say, is that I would very much like to see a world that is better at tending to diverse individual needs and wants, and that the global market economy, with its giant players is nor very good at that. I believe that most people, or at least the majority have some kind of fringe interest that they would like financed, and so might be willing to pay also for financing other similar things, if not else, then just because a more diverse world is just that more beautiful. And at least over here not only high culture gets public money - top level sports, like the Olympic team gets a pretty sum of public money every year.

Then again, afaik the Helsinki opera is subsidised with many times the price per ticket. I am not at all sure I think that is what we should do.

[Gallstones]

Libertarians are like atheists (and liberals) in that you might as well attempt to herd cats than organize them into some kind of coherent group.

A coherent group of libertarians is an overly ambitious expectation. I'd be happy enough to discover just one individual who is a coherent libertarian.

• 

[Gallstones]

We have Shakespeare in the Park every summer.
Free and, as the name implies, performed outside.
It is funded, at least in part, by donations.

We have a Folk Music festival every July in Butte. Shitloads of music, not just the 60's type granola folk music.
It is free too. Musicians come from all over the world, it includes American Indian music too and ethnic/traditional food (you buy) and other displays of culture and tradition.

I learned more history in Art History than I ever did in the standard history classes. But I was an art major in college and Art History was mandatory for me, not so for most others.

We have a small art gallery in town that contracts for several traveling exhibits every year. It is free to go in. They also provide free art classes to grade school children during the school year. The instructors go into the schools to teach and all materials are provided by the program. All of it's operating costs are provided by grants and donations and a few fundraisers.

[Coito ergo sum]

Why is Shakespeare's work more important than I Love Lucy? Why is Chaucer's comedy filth acceptable but American Pie juvenile?

American Pie (the song by Don McLean), is absolutely fantabulous, and if the best way to bring more music like that to the world would be public subsidy, I would happily pay my share.

You can. It's called buying tickets to shows that you like.

More on the theme (or the derail), I find that we are living in a world of produce for the masses. This brings us great things in an affordable way, like the computer I am writing this on, superbly aligned football teams or the fantastic escapism of Hollywood movies made with megabucks. But if you have any interests that does not align with the masses, or maybe even more harshly with what the moguls choose to make the masses dependent of, you very often lose (I would e.g. like to have a microwave oven that doesn't go "BEEP" when it is finished,

Many microwaves have a "signal elimination" feature that eliminates the audible alerts. Example: http://www.microwavewizard.com/sharp-mi ... 30ekt.html

or a wakeup clock I can connect a non-apple player to).

http://www.gadgetcraver.com/mp3playercl ... p-194.html "Line in stereo speaker system, can connect to other sound source;"

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+Spea ... Id=3316142 Sony - Speaker Dock for Apple® iPod®, iPhone® and Most MP3 Players

[MiM]

Yes Coito, those products luckily exist, but they are note easy to find. I really did ask around, last time I was buying a microwave, and I cannot find that model of microwave with a quick search anywhere in Europe. But on the first note you did not understand my point. The existence of "American Pie" is not dependent on my ticket money, but on the ticket money of the aligned masses.

[Coito ergo sum]

Yes Coito, those products luckily exist, but they are note easy to find. I really did ask around, last time I was buying a microwave, and I cannot find that model of microwave with a quick search anywhere in Europe. But on the first note you did not understand my point. The existence of American Pie is not dependent on my ticket money, but on the ticket money of thousands of other people.

I found them in 2 minutes. Best Buy.

Oh, EUROPE! You probably are more advanced with your product safety laws over there, and it was probably ruled that people can't be trusted if they don't have beeps to remind them to take the food out.

Of course the existence of American Pie is not dependent on your ticket money alone. But, you didn't suggest that it would be otherwise through government funding. You just said you'd chip in.

Look - nothing stops you and everyone else who likes a particular kind of music from subsidizing that music now. The only other thing you might be suggesting is that those who don't care for that music be asked to chip in too....

[surreptitious57]

the Story of Maths is never going to be mainstream or anything other than elitist like most of the BBC4

That is my favourite channel
and I am unemployed and lower
class but love watching any of the
science programmes on it so whose
fault is it if it is not that main stream
Would you not put that down to the desire
not to learn by many rather than an apparent
elitism of the channel : in what way how ever is
it being so ? It is on a station that most have access
to and at family friendly times as well : you do not need
to know anything about the subjects concerned since that is
the modus operandi of them : to explain and to educate so the
only reason not to watch it is either boredom or ignorance : if I as
a non university educated : non middle class benefit claimant can get
pleasure and satisfaction from them then no reason why others cannot too

[MrJonno]

]No, that's typical in the US. Go to any Barnes and Noble bookstore, and there are books right at the front door, unattended, easily reached and taken. Often, they set up tables outside and stack books they want to sell quickly at a discount and people parse through them and take them inside and pay for them.

]

I have seen this in UK its usually outside charity shops or shops selling cheap stuff where the risk of it being stolen is less than the cost of finding somewhere to put the stuff inside the shop.

Start leaving expensive lightweight laptops or tv's outside a shop and then will soon be entering the err second hand but new market.

Actually something that did amaze me when I went to the Little Rock Area there was an unmanned firestation with fire engines in them. Do that in the UK and they will end up on ebay extremely quickly

[MrJonno]

the Story of Maths is never going to be mainstream or anything other than elitist like most of the BBC4

That is my favourite channel
and I am unemployed and lower
class but love watching any of the
science programmes on it so whose
fault is it if it is not that main stream
Would you not put that down to the desire
not to learn by many rather than an apparent
elitism of the channel : in what way how ever is
it being so ? It is on a station that most have access
to and at family friendly times as well : you do not need
to know anything about the subjects concerned since that is
the modus operandi of them : to explain and to educate so the
only reason not to watch it is either boredom or ignorance : if I as
a non university educated : non middle class benefit claimant can get
pleasure and satisfaction from them then no reason why others cannot too

BBC4 is elitist as in only intelligent people watch it, it would have zero commerical viability.
I actually watch the Discovery and similar science stuff but its so low brow compared to BBC 4

[MiM]

Actually something that did amaze me when I went to the Little Rock Area there was an unmanned firestation with fire engines in them. Do that in the UK and they will end up on ebay extremely quickly

Like someone over here stole the sunpanels from lighthouses. I'd wish someone who did that would get tried for first degree murder, if anyone gets lost at sea, because the lighthouse wasn't working, and attempted murder, even if no-one gets hurt.

[MrJonno]

Actually something that did amaze me when I went to the Little Rock Area there was an unmanned firestation with fire engines in them. Do that in the UK and they will end up on ebay extremely quickly

Like someone over here stole the sunpanels from lighthouses. I'd wish someone who did that would get tried for first degree murder, if anyone gets lost at sea, because the lighthouse wasn't working, and attempted murder, even if no-one gets hurt.

Lighthouses they still around?