@danicaswanson

Finally returning to this. Thanks for your patience. Normally it wouldn't have taken this long for a response. Turns out life threw us some curveballs, so it took a few weeks before any of us had enough bandwidth for the kind of thoughtful response we like to write in this channel. Anyway... "Passing the same $5 bill around" is a widespread problem in creative circles. As you mentioned, it's a thorn in our side, and it's been that way for a long time. I applaud your efforts to get money into artist circles from the "outside." I also think there are many underlying structural and cultural challenges involved that hamper such efforts before they even begin. So while I wouldn't deny that many artists are reluctant to do marketing, I think the problem has much deeper roots. For example: the excellent essay "Why Artists Can't Get Paid" by @tombeck.eth presents a long list of the challenges faced by artists trying to earn money. In point #18 he writes: "Much of the value created by art is positive externalities (cultural enrichment, inspiration, etc.) that artists can't monetize. Art is important, but it is not valuable. Platforms are much better at capturing the value of the network than any individual nodes on that network (the artists)." I agree with the first assertion he made there, but the second is only applicable when viewed through a market-exchange lens. Art IS valuable, but its greatest value exists only in contexts where gifts can remain gifts. Gift value can't be fully translated into market terms without some kind of value leak or loss. Brings to mind a quote from The Gift by Lewis Hyde: "...in gift exchange, the increase stays in motion and follows the object, while in commodity exchange it stays behind as profit." So how might we address the passing-the-same-$5-bill-around problem? Well, I've been thinking about it for years, and the best idea I've come up with so far is to *begin* with financial gifts to the artists. So in that sense, your small-scale philanthropic efforts are directionally correct. At the same time, I think it's also a problem when artists are publicly perceived as charity cases who have to compete with each other for tiny pools of scraps, and there's no realistic path to a sustainable livelihood (in market terms) for anyone who doesn't take the nose-to-grindstone route: doing not only their art, but all their own marketing, accounting, and everything else required of solo business owners. Especially when they have to do it on top of their day jobs. Gift economies rely on real reciprocity (not charity), and for those patterns to take root we'll need infrastructure that returns more value to artists. Much more of the value that's currently captured by platforms needs to be re-routed to the individual nodes (artists) in the network. The Artist Corporations initiative driven by Yancey Strickler, for example, could be a step in the right direction. In any event, I agree about @bertwurst.eth. For awhile I "only" saw dog photos/videos from that account too. I wasn't following him until I saw a thoughtful, well-worded, and outstanding contribution to the recent discussions about women in top positions on the leaderboard. Now I see what I was missing. I've also seen Bert distribute his rewards to others, so that's another reason to appreciate his efforts. Thanks for the thoughtful discussion!

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