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Bill: National Office for the Arts
Details
Submitted by[?]: Leviathan Party
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This bill is a resolution. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: November 2067
Description[?]:
| This bill will create the National Office for the Arts, a body whose responsibility it will be to award stipends to artists. |
Proposals
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 09:51:40, June 16, 2005 CET | From | Leviathan Party | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | Please also see: http://www.takeforum.com/forum/posting.php?mode=newtopic&f=15&mforum=particracy For hearings on the creative commons stipend. |
| Date | 11:35:39, June 16, 2005 CET | From |  Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | we wrote a blurb on the forum. mostly we objected to it. there were many problems with the economics of the whole issue, furthermore there are problems with the implementation of the plan as well as the authentication of legitimate artists. but we go into more detail about other things too. |
| Date | 11:38:29, June 16, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | ooc: here is what we posted on the forum. Although an interesting idea in theory, it fails in reality because an artist can explain any sort of creation as "art." Furthermore, its utter fallacy to assumer a government bureaucrat will be able to tell when someone is or isn't defraduing the government when it comes to something so ill-defined as art. OOC: Need I remind everyone of the work of Martin Creed who used blue tack on a wall as a piece of art? http://www.designboom.com/portrait/creed.html IC: Also there are people who could easily get by writing 100 pages of the letter 'A,' in a similar way to the PP's best seller and it is justifiable as art. The problem is that whether or not you think that type of thing is or is not art , the nature of the way art is defined and percieved makes it impossible to say it is or is not. furthermore, by attaching income to quantity (pages, number of minutes in a song etc.) you are automatically exchanging quality for quantity. which is something that will inevitably happen when you simplify the process by which art is recognized. ooc: this is a very simplistic look at art and copyrights and by exchanging legal copyrights and those methods of earning money you destroy the process by which art is supported. in the real world, art is recognized by a number of institutions, art houses, galleries etc as well as the market through auctions and other things. there is an established process whereby aspiring artists go through school and learn various crafts before specializing. it is part of what adds credibility to art and artists. as for literature it is the same way, there are competitions etc. and being published is a big sign of support for one's work. IC: By introducing government stipends you have succesfully delegitimized art by making it all the same level and you have inhibited the process that artists used to go through in order to become recognized. also, you have put the group of "real artists" in the pool of people who are trying to get an easy Pliny. And your final addition about artists having to sell their work in order to have a comfortable living shows how little thought the LevP has put into this. What is the stipend for then? Just a minimum wage for artists that won't support their living costs, but the problem is that you have destroyed the large companies that help them sell their products in order to make a comfortable living. Congratulations LevP, you have succesfully crippled the economy of the country. The CC makes all art and technology free to anyone who wants it, so how do you expect anyone to sell their art when 1. people can get it for free 2. all the publishing companies are out of business becuase of the CC and 3. all artists and computer developers get paid no matter if they produce anything worthwhile or not. ooc: they did this sort of thing in China and the Soviet Union too, shopkeepers, taxi drivers etc were all paid, no matter what they did. so taxi driver's never drove anywhere and shopkeepers could never be bothered to help anyone. as for art and literature, they only produced one kind: what the government thought was the right kind. and it is the same here. ic: this is ridiculous levp, you say you're not communist? Well, all your voting and arguments show otherwise. |
| Date | 15:11:30, June 16, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | in reply to further comments made by the levp in the conference: there is a far more efficient and fair method: the market. The simple truth of the matter is that once again the government is monopolizing the private sector and going to do a bad job of it. Governments have never been efficient at public services and worse at taking over private services. In any case, perhaps the LevP should learn to read everything before writing responses: The FRP mentioned several problems with the distribution of money to artists. 1. There is no clear way of determining what constitutes art and thus either you must set guidelines, which naturally inhibit some art. or do it on a case by case basis which is naturally a longer process that will probably cost more money than paying the stipend in the first place. 2. There are various deals that publishers arrange with writers. even if the first one can be dealt with (which it cannot) then what it amounts to is tagging money to quantity, which reduces quality. which we have mentioned before, but fell on deaf ears. What would be the solution to this? the LevP is saying that 100 pages of the letter a is not allowed, so what then? we do it the old fashioned way: based on the quality and marketability of the work? if that is the case then it means that the government took over the industry just to take control of all the income sources in our contry. but the LevP will probably say "not true!", of course. 3. the CC has made all forms of art priceless, not in the high value sense, but in the no value sense. there is no way to make money through inventions, ideas and art anymore except through the government stipend system which is a total loss to the government (which means the taxpayer) so what we have done is create a system by which we support artists who cannot make money from their work at all and there is no return to the government through taxes. We have listed 3 problems that in conjunction make the whole system of giving money to artists a total loss to the taxpayer, the economy and the world of art and technology. if we move forward on this, how do you plan to resolve these problems LevP? are you going to back out again by saying that they aren't problems? are you going to insult us again to avoid debating? the ball is your court levp and as far as we can see, you keep missing. |
| Date | 03:50:36, June 17, 2005 CET | From | Social Republican Party | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | Although we disagree with the LeviP's verbal abusiveness (and think that the rumour might just be correct) we have a suggestion. For mass producible art, like Music and Works of Fiction, which really are the easiest to consider: The commons are stored and can only be accessed through one path. For example - to get a CD, you would go to a CC outpost (think record store) you pay the raw materiel cost (say, 1Pl for a CD) they create it, (print it, burn it, ect.) and you are given the CD. Or you can go to the governments website, and download works from there. The government records the amount of times each work is accessed. Award the stipend according to amount of times accessed. |
| Date | 09:09:40, June 17, 2005 CET | From | Leviathan Party | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | Please confine comments on how the stipend is awarded to the hearing, this is merely a vote to create the NOA, which regardless of what is decided, will be required to adminster those decisions. |
| Date | 15:18:42, June 20, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | Luthori's National Forwardist Party added this to the conference: "Just a suggestion: Artists would apply to be considered artists by profession (to prevent hobbyists from throwing together stuff for a government buck on the side) the conditions would be simply that they do not have any other job. The artists would recieve a certain amount of money each year: x+y x is the lowest amount deemed to be livable on, depending on food, housing, and medical costs. y is a number that fluctuates between 0 and the nationa income average for non-artists, and depends on public acclaim for the artist. Artists who recieve the highest public acclaim possible will recieve an amount of money equal to the national income average plus the lowest livable amount. Artists who do not produce anything, or whose works are unliked by the public will recieve enough money to survive. materials will be provided according to the public appreciation for the artist's previous works (ie: a novelist who wrote a popular book that was available free online will have his next book printed. a sculptist who made an amazingly good sculpture out of clay will be given marble for his next work) I'm not in your country, but it seems like the best way to go: give them money depending on how much society appreciates what they contribute, but give even the worst enough to live off of." |
| Date | 15:20:15, June 20, 2005 CET | From | Free Reform Coalition (FRP) | To | Debating the National Office for the Arts |
| Message | We responded with: Interesting ideas National Forwardist Party, and they go some way towards bridging the gap between the calamity of this system and the needs of the working artist. Thank you for your input. the x+y idea is certainly a better approach than anything else that has been offered so far, but it is only the first step in creating a workable plan. up to this point, the FRP has been trying to show how ideas like this one don't work (of course no one has proposed them, but we anticipated something like this from the levp, who still hasn't come up with anything) The problem that we immediately confront, of course. Is that Quote: "Artists who do not produce anything, or whose works are unliked by the public will recieve enough money to survive." Which means that many so called artists could just be living on dole for the rest of their lives without producing anything. It seems like there would be too much difficulty in stopping that. Solutions could be that they receive food stamps as part of their pay, they can only live in certain types of housing etc. but those have have their own problems too. another issue of concern is Quote: "materials will be provided according to the public appreciation for the artist's previous works (ie: a novelist who wrote a popular book that was available free online will have his next book printed. a sculptist who made an amazingly good sculpture out of clay will be given marble for his next work) " In our country we have an Enforced Creative Commons (ECC), which means that even if the author's book is published the second time, it is still available for free online. So people will not necesarily t has his or her preferred medium to work in, so maybe she won't want marble to work with. In any case this has brought a new issue to light: the subject of procuring the items necesariy for the artist to do her work. Let us assume that we have a musician, maybe she is a DJ or some such thing. Does the government provide her equipment? How does she obtain it? there are problems here because she could order the best (and most expensive) equipment available and would the government pay for it? what if she needs certain equipment as a minimum to create her music, but it is very expensive? Would the government still pay for it? The big problem here is that someone could register themselves as an artist, and even if we put regulations on their stipend, if we supported the cost of the art materials they needed then they could say "oh i need a 10,000PY video camera, a 3,000PY computer with 800PY video editing equipment, a 30 inch screen costing 5,000PY" etc etc etc and basically turn their home into a mansion by calling it an art project. Simply put: the government could be defrauded. Also, even if this was a perfect world with no crime, when it comes to handing out expensive equipment supplies etc. we are going to have to create a huge bureaucracy for that, which would cost the taxpayer far more than the stipend would ever cost. it would be incredibly expensive but necessary if we are going to prevent abuse. possible solution: what if we make it on a lending basis; some expensive equipment will be lent to the artist, we could create a credit system that would allow artists who take care of the property to get better equipment. that would minimize costs to the taxpayer. also we could create the option for the sale of the equipment to the user after the artist has obtained enough credit and money to purchase it. problem: with very little money and no other opportunity to get a job (as part of the registration process for an artist. see above) an "artist" could borrow supplies, sell them on the black market and say they lost the equipment etc. and make some extra money that way. solutions could be to remove the artists from the designated artist register and make them pay off the value of the product with a fine attached. someone would probably come up with "artist insurance" to help that. to sum up: its an okay start, but there are still too many problems and loopholes that need to be fixed. does anyone have a solution to this? perhaps the levp could come up with something constructive. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 62 | ||||
| no | Total Seats: 27 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 11 |
| Random fact: Real life-life nationalities, cultures or ethnicities should not be referenced in Particracy (eg. "German"). |
| Random quote: "Thousands of Zardic soldiers were sacrificed so that the Zardic government could gain control of a few buildings and Theodoro could pretend to be Augustus the Great. This is the kind of jingoistic ideology Zardugal would bring to the Security Council. They will throw countless lives away in pursuit of former glory." - Prince Akhaias, former Coburan royal |