The citizens wage (Facebook)

The citizens wage

This is a conversation which took place on Facebook at the weekend, copied from my “wall-to-wall” with Samantha Murphy who runs SMtvmusic.com.

On Facebook, just as on MySpace, ( and years ago on JellyOS ) the convention is to reply to comments left on your profile page ‘comment wall’ by visiting the poster and replying over there, on their space. On mySpace that means you have to keep flipping back and fore to make sense of the conversation, but on Facebook they have coded in a workaround through the view wall-to-wall function, which puts the conversation back together, albeit in an upside down sequence. I put it back the right way up, here:

Samantha asks…

How much do you think an MP3 is worth (One you want that has NO DRM, of course)?

I’d be in favour of a citizens’ wage for all artists and creatives who feel they are working towards making a contribution to society. That way there’d be no need to commoditise art as products, and there’d be a genuine range of free choices available.

Hey Andy!

I’d also be in favour of a citizens’ wage for all artists and creatives but only those who ARE making a contribution to society. Lots of them feel they are, however…
Only question is, who would be the judge of this?

Cheers!

Hmm, well I don’t think any contemporaries can really judge. That way anything very innovative or forward looking would get filtered out. Only time or history can tell. Granted there will be more than a few who overestimate their own talent, but I think we can afford to carry them on a modest citizen’s wage. After all, we presently carry plenty of fat cat parasites who live off the results of other people’s work. Thanks for batting this one back and fore by the way

All good points, but how would one go about applying for and getting this wage? How would it be paid/collected? Perhaps like the TV tax you have over there? Who does the TV tax money go to anyway? I lived in London and was having this conversation with someone last night, but couldn’t remember how much it was and who was the beneficiary (probably the government).

Two quite different things really. The citizens wage will be paid to anybody who needs it. A bit like claiming a pension or social security, but with full personal dignity because you’d be unquestionably entitled to it, just like every other citizen. Many people would probably opt for a higher standard of living through conventional types of work though, but without building empires out of exploiting others. Through the abolition of advertising, middlemen, pointless duplication of effort and waste, there would be plenty of food , shelter, creature comforts and even luxuries to go round, without anybody needing to work more than a few hours a week, unless they wanted to.

The present TV tax in the UK is collected by the govt and then dished out to the BBC, who then use it to make and buy in programming (and to run itself). Much of it goes on the rights to sporting events, films, celebrity presenters, independent production companies etc. Not to ordinary people.