- Jul 21, 2017
- 208
- 576
I'm glad someone at least gets what I'm trying to say here.
This whole model is like gambling. Going to a casino, throwing down money and... well, if you win, you win. If you don't... then you should have gone into the whole thing expecting to not win.
That's just it, though. I don't dispute that people who patronize (And I mean that in the sense of "actually being a patron" and not "being condescending") should only donate as much money as they're willing to lose. But I guess, where we differ is that it's kind of a ridiculous model for supporting the actual production of things. And people keep insisting "Well, that's not what it's for."
Thing is, I agree with that, too. That isn't what it's for. But that's how it's being used. It's being used as, essentially, a primary income stream. A revenue stream intended to replace, say, a full-time job. And yet folks want to insist that there should be a double standard. Or, perhaps, more accurately, that there should be no standards. That if you are relying on people's donations to survive, you should be exempt from having to follow, essentially, the same "rules" that the rest of the world does. In any other job, you don't get paid if you don't produce. And we can go round and round on how this is essentially a self-defeating system. But it's still the system we currently have. We don't live in Star Trek's United Federation of Planets where basic survival needs are fully met by the social structure and there's no need to worry about where your next meal is coming from or whether you'll have a roof over your head next week. And because those are no longer concerns, you can devote all your energies to uplifting the rest of humanity via art/culture/science/whatever.
We don't have that. Be nice if we did, but we don't.
That being the case, yeah, I'm sorry, but I feel I should hold people accountable the same way I would if I were giving them money to... I don't know, wash my car. Or renovate my house. Or set my broken arm.
The crux of it is that I think there's a line to be drawn somewhere. Hell if I know where, but there has to be some kind of middle ground between the people who are saying "I gave you a dollar at some point in the past, that means I know hold ownership of your immortal soul and you will produce pr0n for me until I say otherwise" and "Expect nothing from these people you give money to, you should be honored that they're even taking your filthy cash." Like, I know I'm strawmanning a little, but I feel like the number of people who don't even want to admit there's middle ground here vastly outnumber those who think that there should be at least a modicum of "professional responsibility" (whatever that entails.)
