Comment by pixl97
3 years ago
As to your question, UBI.
Artists are the ones now experiencing what the Luddites did. Smashing the looms didn't stop more looms from being built. Also, now the average person can afford fabric because of the technology.
Simply put as we move into a world where most needs can be provided by technology keeping up the 'winner take all' method of capitalism so many subscribe to isn't going to work.
Giving away (economic) power and "trusting" some benevolent actor without having some other kind of enforcing power is rarely a good idea. I hope military uses of new technologies will not used on ever growing powerless citizens. For example, the gains of the commonfolks the last two centuries were "strong" bcs their labour (strikes) or brute force were valuable arguments. Things are different now, and power has visibly shifted out the hand of common people
except that AI art is made off the backs of artists who created the art being fed into the AI database.It could not exist without their work.
Automatic looms probably wouldn't have been possible without the lessons learned by skilled weavers (not to mention the mechanics building them) either.
Capital formation is always and everywhere painful for labor (see: medieval enclosure, the American frontier/genocide, the Great Leap Forward, the triangle trade, and many others). This is obviously really really bad but so far we haven't devised a workable, lasting way to systemically stop the ownership class from doing it to us.
Automatic looms are programmed with designs by designers who are paid to make them. AI takes the designs from the designers who make them.
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What are you doing to make UBI a reality?
How will we support ourselves until the extremely unlikely event that becomes a reality?
What are you doing to support artists through this shitty transition? Hint: Calling us "luddites" and vaguely waffling about the hoped-for death of capitalism is pretty much the opposite of supporting us.
Most artists already fail to earn any real money from their work, so this is not a future question.
Thank you for completely dismissing the existence of myself and the many freelance artists who do make enough money to pay their bills off their work, and our concerns. Well done.
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