Artists,
artisans, chefs, crafters, composers, entrepreneurs, journalists,
musicians, novelists, photographers, song writers, students, and other
creative people will no longer need a trust fund or a flexible job to
develop their skills to a marketable level.
People
driven to create typically have “Starving” attached to their
professional designation and frequently to their underpaid day jobs in a
Starving Artists Store. Others choose to live in cooperatives in
extremely low rent and frequently dangerous neighborhoods to reduce
expenses to what they can live on in marginal part-time jobs, or
welfare. With UBI even at a subsistence level those cooperatives can at
least be in a safe area, and the marginal part-time jobs will provide
for better tools and supplies as well as a more comfortable subsistence.
Even creatives more comfortably situated, living with parents or a
solvent other, can at least feel like they are paying part of their
share until they can create a marketable product.
Another
benefit of UBI for creatives is that many of their neighbors will have
disposable income to spend on early creations with only front porch or
word-of-mouth advertising. Most people would much prefer to buy art or
decorative objects from their neighbors than get mass produced imported
crap from the internet or a box store. Most of the art on my walls I
have bought or has been gifted by people I know E.g. https://www.instagram.com/siriusly.inked/
Drawings
pasted on the refrigerator door are another example. With UBI if they
are good you no longer have to admonish the kid to get a MBA to find a
“Real Job.” You of course will encourage education for its own sake but
the art will be given equal encouragement. It is also a fact that
artists do better in school than their peers. The discipline demanded by
art carries over into school. Well-known studies show that to improve a
kids grades hire a piano teacher. https://www.medicaldaily.com/music-education-improves-students-academic-performance-active-participation-required-314508 The extra income from UBI makes the tradeoff between art and education unnecessary.
There
are many benefits of successful creators for the economy. Some of these
creative people will make it past crowdfunding and create substantial
companies that will be the backbone of the bottom up economy which will
create real assets for the GDP to grow on. They will also generate real
taxable income to pay the UBI forward. Successful artists, and
entrepreneurs, etc. need accountants, media reps, and many other jobs
that will be filled from the neighborhood at least in the early stages.
At the very least even a few dollars earned by a sale will be recycled
in the community several times.
Creativity
is not a racial or ethnic characteristic, although Eurocentric
colonialism has made it appear that way by systematically ignoring the
art of the natives and slaves, and keeping that population so poor that
creativity was suppressed to survive. Frequently art was simply stolen
for colonial “culture studies” and museum pieces. Another colonial
exploitation tool was cultural appropriation. The colonialists took
native and slave art and adapted it using colonial imitators for the
amusement of the colonials as costumes, decorations, shows, and even
mascots for sport teams. Most of the art was simply ignored as ethnic
trash to keep the natives amused and docile. A music group I am in is
looking for Black composers in response to BLM and the search list is so
long that it had to be divided among several board members to find
suitable compositions.
Minority
creators will be able to cater to the esthetics of their neighbors and
will build businesses within the community and for the community. Since
the community will have disposable income, the best ethnic food carts
and trucks, for example, will go back to the neighborhood and sell
quality ethnic food rather than trying to eke out a living selling cheap
food to mainstream consumers. Ethnic clothing and jewelry creators will
find ready markets in the neighborhood as UBI will augment other
outside income earned by neighbors working in the mainstream economy.
In
poor and minority communities most of the UBI will recirculate in the
neighborhood, as those with disposable income including the artists and
entrepreneurs will buy locally whenever possible. The only money which
escapes is local vendors buying inventory and supplies unavailable
within the neighborhood.
The
community will have disposable income generated from within the
community supported by the UBI which for most minority communities will
be more than enough to support the lifestyle they are accustomed to. As
an example most Native Americans live well below the subsistence
standard for mainstream poor. I would expect an explosion of native
jewelry, leatherwork, and beadwork that will support native businesses
selling to mainstream Americans. When the profits go back to the
community cultural appropriation will become a desired result. With the
internet as a marketing tool, even relatively small cap businesses can
create real value. This is the only way to increase the percentage of
minority entrepreneurs. Trying to force them into mainstream businesses
has never been beneficial to the minority nor to the businesses that
hire them.
As
these communities become self-supporting they will interact less with
the mainstream thereby reducing opportunities for bigotry and micro
aggressions that currently cause so much social disruption. Given
economic parity, which UBI will quickly provide at the community scale,
like tends to associate with like, which tends to reduce social
friction. The relatively similar communities will grow as they are able
with the UBI providing the “outside income” to drive that growth. At
first growth will be within the communities. Eventually as communities
create resources to trade, growth will expand to the larger community.
Creative
people have always driven economic growth but an economic cushion to
try and fail and thereby learn has limited creative opportunities to the
economically secure classes. A UBI sufficient to cushion failure to
mere poverty will allow all the creatives in our society to reach for
the brass ring again and again. Some will catch it and lift all to a
more pleasant and rewarding standard of living.
From Medium
Written by
