We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Is this what they call a bull market?

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian back in July:

The return from a tiny government investment is probably greater in the cultural industries than any other – every £1 the Arts Council England puts in generates another £2 from commercial sources.

The UK Film Council, quoted in the Independent in August:

“But the UKFC doesn’t waste money, it makes it. For every pound it invests, the country gets £5 back.

Ivan Lewis in the Guardian yesterday:

The National Campaign for the Arts estimates that every £1 of grant given to the arts brings a fifteen-fold return in investment into the county [Somerset].

43 comments to Is this what they call a bull market?

  • Jim

    I don’t know why we bothered spending all that money saving the banks. Its obvious all we needed to do was to turn the country into one giant arts festival and everything would be dandy……………

  • Chuckles

    Well the ‘bull’ bit seems accurate. Second word might need some work.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    All this stuff about how it is legitimate to steal money, sorry, tax people to pay for arts on the grounds that it produces “net gains” is BS. It is the same, lazy, loose use of the word “investment” by politicians – not just socialists either – to describe spending.

    Arts are not a public good. Come to that, many of those things people assume to be public goods – for which tax-financing is justified – aren’t. I think it was Ronald Coase, (Link)the economist, who gave the famous example of the lighthouse as an example of a supposed “public good” that can in fact operate in a free market.

  • Accepting Ivan Lewis’ numbers, an investment of 17 pence per head of population is surely quite easy to find? If they’d only put on a show that people actually want to see and they’ll soon make that!

  • Laird

    No, it’s not a “bull market” (although it certainly is “bull something else”, as Chuckles noted above), it’s an illustration of fantasy inflation. Someone makes up a number (here, Toynbee) and then others of her ilk run with it, “augmenting” it as they go. Ask any of them the source of their data; they won’t be able to provide it, other than through circular references to each other.

    And of course, if “investments” in the arts really provided a fifteen-fold (or even a five-fold) return private investors would be falling all over themselves to make them. The fact that they are not puts the lie to the statement.

  • llamas

    I think a re-reading of Garrison Keillor’s classic piece ‘Jack Schmidt – Arts Administrator’, from the New Yorker, is called for.

    Oh, Google it for yourself.

    Look. ‘the Arts’ is a business like any other. The fact that its practitioners swan around airily declaring themselves above mere lucre – doesn’t make it true. Very, very few artists indeed actually starve in garrets. Most are merely doing what every businessman does – find someone to pay for their stuff – only this particular bunch of sellers has managed to convince our rulers that their stuff is so special that the rest of us must be forced to buy it.

    Most publicly funded ‘art’ is more-or-less complete cr*p, which is carefully-tailored to please the public paymasters and adhere with limpet-like rigidity to the prevailing political orthodoxy of those doing the funding.. If the public subsidies for much of this cr*p are summarily ended, virtually none of it will be able to stand up in the free market.

    The statistics quoted are generally complete fantasies, arrived at by dividing total expenditure on Mongolian throat-singing recitals by the amount of taxpayer’s money spent on same, then simply declaring that one is solely the result of the other. Most private arts funding tends to be voluntary, or at least-not-for-profit – most of that would continue regardless, except that ‘art’ so funded will tend to be of more value, since the contributors who fund it can at least consider taking their money elsewhere – unlike the taxpayers.

    llater,

    llamas

  • Dom

    Someone, possibly Milton Friedman, tells a funny story that is relevant here:

    A shop-keeper is going out of business. But one day, a burglar comes in a steals $10 from the cash register. Before he leaves, he buys $1 worth of candy. The shop-keeper figures “That’s one dollar that I wouldn’t have made had I not been robbed.” So he puts a sign out front, “Please rob me.”

  • Sigivald

    Every penny spent on the arts produces an infinite return of capital, making Britain the wealthiest place in the universe.

    Top THAT one.

  • Laird

    I surrender, Sigivald. We are not worthy.

  • Thank you all for your comments. Laird, “fantasy inflation” is exactly right. I was a just a teeny bit put out that most people seemed to assume that the double meaning of the word “bull” in my headline was mere coincidence, though. That was my own deliberate joke wot I thought of myself, actually.

  • llamas

    “That was my own deliberate joke wot I thought of myself, innit?”

    FIFY.

    llater,

    llamas

  • Rob

    If the returns are so staggering, why are the only groups making the investment state organisations funded by compulsory levy?

    If it was so good every investment company would be in on the act.

    So, my guess is that the returns aren’t quite so good. In fact, it’s a pack of lies.

  • Laird

    Sorry to have been so obtuse, Natalie. Your wit is hereby acknowledged.

  • bradley13

    Part of the problem with the arts, be it painting, music, dance, or whatever, is the fact that these are *hobbies* to many, many people. There are zillions of great amateur artists out there, who pursue their art in their spare time.

    The hoity-toity art circles want us to pay them for their art. I (and I suspect many people) would much rather see an enthusiastic amateur effort. It’s less arrogant and far more human.

    My favorite theatre, for example, held no more than about 30 people, in a ramshackle, unheated outbuilding. The stage exits went straight outside. The shows put on by that group of dedicated amateurs have remained in my memory longer than any professional show I have every seen.

  • Ian F4

    Instead of the 1:2, 1:5 and 1:15 ratios, lets look at it like 0.5:1, 0.2:1 and 0.066:1.

    Meaning we can reduce the Arts Council spend down to close to zero, eventually.

  • The hoity-toity art circles want us to pay them for their art.

    Nothing wrong with that, provided they are not forcing it on us.

    I (and I suspect many people) would much rather see an enthusiastic amateur effort. It’s less arrogant and far more human.

    Personally, I beg to differ (or, put more accurately, ‘it depends’), but either way it is beside the point (see above).

  • faxx

    “The National Campaign for the Arts estimates that every £1 of grant given to the arts brings a fifteen-fold return in investment into the county”

    This, of course, is why when I go into Tesco I cannot move for gaia-inspired tea cosies, raffia bicycle clips and hand-carved water jugs. Some days you just can’t find the baked beans, but then as supermarkets are making so much money from it all I can’t blamed them.

  • Martin A.

    At the very least, they should cut their funding to everywhere except Somerset.

    Or impose a 1/15th Sales Tax on Somerset art events, and hey presto! – Infinite self-funding of the Arts!

    ….or the figures could be all bullshit.

  • RAB

    Grants? we dont need no stinking grants!

    Folks round my way have been doing it for ourselves.

    http://www.northbristolartists.org.uk/home.php

    There’s nibbles and wine and music. You get to have a nose round your neighbours houses too, what’s not to like?

    Are we what iDave has in mind for the Big Society?

    Probably not, that takes a Govt paid stooge to coordinate “appropriate” ventures and pat heads, and kick the inappropriate ones into touch doesn’t it?

  • 'Nuke' Gray

    Wot? A woman claims to have made up a joke, all by herself?
    Bull the other one!

  • Alasdair

    Ummm … folks ?

    When did *anyone* in their right minds start believing what they can read in the Grauniad ?

    It’s the Grauniad, for {french baby seal}‘s sake !

  • Part of the problem here is that the word “investment” is now generally used in a Keynesian way, even if the speaker doesn’t realise it. I take it every Libertarian knows the Keynesian multiplier fallacy off by heart, but just in case there’s any noobs about-

    You measure total output. You measure public spending. You then divide total output by public spending, and that’s your multiplier.

    So if total cheese production is £10 million, and the National Cheese Board spent £10,000 last year on cheese subsidies, your cheese multiplier is 1000. You then say in your press release that every pound invested by the government in cheese earned a thousand pounds. It is vital to presume that all output in the market sector is a direct consequence of the government subsidy, and only last year’s government subsidy at that.

    Of course with cheese it’s quite specific, but with “the arts” you can cast the net pretty much as wide as you like, thus getting the highest possible “total output” figure to start with. So, ticket sales to see the new Star Trek movie at a private sector cinema are implied to be directly “stimulated” by an Arts Council funded production of The Duchess Of Malfi performed by dwarves on unicycles.

  • …the best demolition of Keynesianism, particularly the stimulus and multiplier concepts is IMV still probably Henry Hazlitt’s “The Failure Of The New Economics” which can be found on the internet by Googling. A glorious and resounding example of quality debunkery.

  • pete

    If investing in the arts is such a money spinner then why haven’t private investors poured into the market?

    Let’s see Polly and the rest of the Guardian types put their money where their mouths are by putting some of their own money into arts grants. When they all make a fortune they’ll be able to persuade others to invest too.

  • RRS

    I opened a fortune cookie two days ago that revealed:

    “47.2% of all statistics are just made up.”

  • Laird

    Where can I see The Duchess Of Malfi performed by dwarves on unicycles? Is there a YouTube video?

  • Sadly not, Laird. As all clever people know, the success of quality art is inversely proportional to its popularity. The dwarven unicyclists’ Duchess Of Malfi was such an enormous success that nobody saw it at all.

  • llamas

    IanB wrote:

    ‘The dwarven unicyclists’ Duchess Of Malfi was such an enormous success that nobody saw it at all.’

    – but it made a 1500% profit. It would have been more, but the necessary number of transgender unicycling dwarves who could sing in Italian (as described in the initial grant application) could not be mustered, and so the production had to make do with the normal dwarves. Obviously, additional grant funding is desperately required to redress the despicable heteronormative imbalance in the vital area of the performing arts.

    I thinks I sees me a whole new career direction.

    llater,

    llamas

  • Laird

    The way these clueless leftards calculate “return” on the state’s “investment” reminds me of a nice lady I once knew who got involved in one of those direct marketing companies. She opened a separate bank account for her “business”, and dutifully deposited into it all of the proceeds of her sales of laundry detergent, etc. However, she paid for her inventory and supplies out of her regular household checking account, rather than her business account. She was enormously pleased with all the “profits” building up in her special account! (Of course, her husband was somewhat less pleased when he balanced the household account, but that sort of reality check never happens to governments.)

  • Sunfish

    What if the Duchess of Malfi were performed by Mongolian throat singers rather than unicycling dwarves?[1] Just because the previous singers sang in Italian doesn’t constitute diversity.

    When there is publicly-funded art that doesn’t look or sound like the goofy stuff on NPR, then I might be willing to concede that public broadcasting serves a purpose. Until then, there is a whomping one hour out of the week that NPR has programming that doesn’t suck, and I’d be perfectly willing to deal with commercials or pay a subscription for a free-market Car Talk.

    [1] Who are to be referred to as ‘little people,’ not ‘dwarves’ and certainly not ‘midgets.’ The only midgets who are to be referred to as midgets are the midget strippers. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell explains this in more detail, but in the meantime you guys are going back to sensitivity school if you don’t watch it.

  • Laird

    Sunfish, you are aware that there is a technical difference between dwarves and midgets, right? Because obviously Ian B is employing the correct technical term in this circumstance.

    And “little people” are leprechauns, neither dwarves nor midgets. I thought everybody knew that.

  • And I thought ‘little people’ were children? Damn, I just can’t seem to keep up with the PC lingo…

  • search for “NASA Technological Spinoff Fables” – people have been saying the same thing about the Space Race for ages.

  • No, that refers to lesbian hillbillies.

  • 'Nuke' Gray

    The Indonesian hobbits are (were) real little people! And haven’t women been saying all along that size doesn’t matter? Why not have ordinary people do the dwarf role, calling themselves giant Dwarves? Problem solved! There need never be a dwarf shortage again!

  • Petronius

    Obviously, the community here at Samizdata has completely misunderestimated the enormous planetary market for films about toothless Scottish junkies, the UK’s equivalent of the Bollywood musical.

  • Petronius

    Obviously, the community here at Samizdata has completely misunderestimated the enormous planetary market for films about toothless Scottish junkies, the UK’s equivalent of the Bollywood musical.

  • Laird

    Well, at least one Scottish (former) junkie has done all right for himself over here in the States. (I don’t think he’s toothless, though; does that still count?)

  • faxx

    “And I thought ‘little people’ were children? Damn, I just can’t seem to keep up with the PC lingo…”

    And there was me thinking the little people are in fact us, much less worthy and considerably more weedy than the elites who know everything and inform us wisely from elevated places such as the Guardian.

  • We are the world, we are the children…

  • Paul Marks

    A “bull market” (i.e. a B.S. market) indeed.

    My favourate part of this is when the statists come out with false history.

    Either they pretend that the arts have always been subsidized by government, or they pretend that there were no arts (at least apart from for a small elite) before government subsidy.

    This simply is not true – even for opera (perhaps the most elite art form – at least in English speaking world). For example, the Carl Rosen Opera Company used to go round in its private train to provisional town and cities in Britain without government subsidy – even in the depressed 1930s.

    And in the United States the arts (serious music and so on) were MORE (not less) widespread before the Feds set up their “National Endowment for the Arts” in 1965.

    Actually the involvement of government in the arts (both in Britain and the United States) has seen a decline in the arts – both in content, and in ordinary people being involved.

    The late Frank Johnson (one of my favourate journalists) often used to write about the arts (serious music, literature and so on) in “working class” life before World War II – and it is all true (even Working Men’s Clubs were often serious places, institutes of learning and culture, – not the drinking dens and strip clubs they are now), yet it has gone down the “memory hole”.

  • Well Paul, it depends on what you mean by the word “arts”. To those of us who are insufficiently educated, it means something foolish like “fine aesthetic works”, whereas the educated arts establishment are wise enough to know that it means The Duchess Of Malfi on unicycles.