Arts and Public Funding

In order to address properly this issue we should start by asking why is so common to believe that the arts differ from other private enterprises so that they require from special funding in order to exist. Why the government should provide the arts with funding and give any kind of support to other industries like for example the retail industry?

People that agree with the idea of government subsidizing the arts have the underlying assumption that this discipline is not able to make profits on its own and consequently if you leave it subject to market preferences it won´t be able to flourish. Thus is perfectly reasonable that government support this kind of human activities and not others which can sustain on their own, like the retail industry for example. This assertion is based on the common belief that few people have the willingness or the budget to pay for arts and therefore, as the prices of artistic expressions will be low, artists will make very little earnings and be discouraged from dedicating their lives to art. In other words, the market is never going to be able to provide a great part of society with artistic services or goods. One might agree with this assertion if we look at the music industry. Today is very difficult for musicians to earn good salaries because the sales of original CD´s has been completely undermined by free downloads of music through the Internet. The only way through which musicians are able to earn more money is by giving concerts and live performances. Nevertheless, musicians that are starting with this practice can´t organize concerts very often because people could get used to them and this could affect their potential popularity. Having neither the choice of selling their music nor to organize concerts with certain desired frequency it’s very difficult especially for young musicians to follow their passion and thus many of them abandon this kind of non-profitable occupation. Therefore, if we accept the fact that market isn´t able to provide goods and services regarding arts, then is reasonable to consider the arts as public goods which should be provided by governmental action.  

Despite this perspective sounds coherent, I believe that artists should try to produce, distribute and sale their forms of expression using the free-market system and without any public funding. If people don´t have the willingness to pay for arts, why should the government use money collected from taxes to force those people to be exposed to artistic expressions for which they don´t have any real preferences? I think that money from taxes can be used in other more important areas such as education, health or social security. Artists should therefore use their creativity in order to expand their expressions as much as it´s possible among individuals that are free to choose their artistic options.

On the other hand, I agree with the belief that allowing the government to take part in arts will likely affect the integrity of arts. If government will give subsidies to arts then, as resources are not infinite, it will have to discriminate some projects against others. This means that a bureaucrat with probably no deep understanding of arts will have to decide which projects to support and which projects aren´t worthy of funding. Consequently society will receive only the kind of art that is accepted by government. For example, if people in government consider that certain paintings with non-religious motives are preferable over religious painting because “the state can´t support any kind of religious expression” then the former group will impose over the latter although this might not represent the major interests or preferences of society. In this example painters with non-religious interests will be in a most advantageous position than other painters only because of the existence of a certain regulation or law written sometime by some politicians. Then, when religious painters achieve some public funding as a result of some strikes or demonstrations others groups will use the same method in order to get some money. Under this mechanism is very unlikely that arts will flourish. Instead, artists will struggle in order to get the attention of the government. It will be a battle where the most powerful or influential groups will win. I rather prefer another kind of battle, the one that occurs in free-markets where artists will compete in order to get the preferences of free individuals whose tastes and preferences aren´t subject to any law or regulation.