Artist Livelihood Debate

People are wanting to make a living by making art, not to get rich.I highly recommend reading the book I mentioned as you don’t seem to have a particularly nuanced understanding of the actual struggles at play.Perhaps an analogy you’ll understand is what happens to the value of a developer’s labour when that labour is in many ways replicated by AI and big AI companies actively work to undermine what makes your labour different by aggressively marketing that anyone can so what you so with t

Let’s not over romanticize the starving artist. There are plenty of creative people who could create good, worthy art if they had the means and support to pursue it fully. It’s not a moral failing to have a need to make a living, especially if others are relying on you.

Those artists dont have to be artists. If they realize that their audience is not voluntarily paying them for their art, they can change jobs and do something where customers voluntarily pay for the work done.

Artists who do art will never be replaced. Artists who do art for money may well be.

I've been toying with the idea that the time spent creating by artists (musicians, creative writers, fine arts, indy game devs) is valued at $0 by society. Because there have always been an will always be people who do it for $0. What is valued and rewarded is the effort involved in marketing, distribution, performance and all those bits people don't want to do for free but have too. If you want art to pay as a full time job, you need to (at least) put in full time hours to the 'w

You seem to forget that most artists enjoy it but due to the structure of our society are forced to either give it up for most of their waking life to earn money or attempt to market their art to the masses to make money. This AI stuff only makes it harder for artists to make any kind of living off of their work.

Haven't artists always been starving? Art isn't something that guarantees a paycheck.

Artists have to make art, not shovel money.

Many people will do art for very little. Trying to make a living as a musician is hard because of that.People won't work on Google products for free.This is one of the many reasons I'm for a UBI, it makes it easier to do art without having to be a "starving artist".

It is a narrative mostly driven by artists. Your value is mostly in the knowledge and experience you gained.In case of artists, them being able to make a living was an aberration to the historical pattern, specifically predicated on creation being hard and reproduction being easy. Before 20th century or so it used to be hard/hard, now with GenAI we're at easy/easy and neither can sustain them. Add to that their idealism and that is where it comes from. The "you can become