 Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers. So Ant, what do arts, humanities, meals for old people in public television have in common? Arts, humanities, meals for old people in public television. Tell me, James. What does it have in common? Well, they're all in the news these last couple of days because the current administration has decided that maybe it's time to cut our spending on these sorts of things. Yes, so everybody's, at least on the Republican side, is all up in arms about the size of the budget. So we're going to start cutting things. And of course, interestingly, what they pick are things that in the great scheme of things are very small. But this is what they pick, the NEA, PBS and so forth. Yeah, but let's just let that sleeping dog lie for now, right? Because the fact that politicians are talking about cutting anything is probably cause for a certain kind of incredulity on our part. Right, right. But we've got this idea that maybe, just maybe, it's time to start getting budgetary concerns under control. And any cut is by definition a good cut if that's your goal. So we're going to cut this. But lo and behold, people lost their minds when they heard that these things were on the chopping block. And the rejoinder from the supporters of these programs is always precisely the same, right? They seem to believe that for whatever the reason, if we make budget cuts to these sorts of programs, that we will no longer have arts or humanities or television or meals for old people. Yeah, and this is kind of interesting because there are lots of things that we have that the federal government doesn't fund, right? So why would this argument apply only to these particular things? Can you actually think of things that we have that the federal government isn't somehow funding? Well, yeah, it's somehow funding, right? But I mean, in direct sense, it's a line item in the budget and a big chunk of the funding comes from this, right? For example, take interior decorators, right? They come, they do. They make your space look nice with feng shui or whatever it is. But the fact is there's no line item in the budget that says we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on interior decorators. And yet it exists. Interior decorators, really. That's the first thing you wanted to think about. Well, and the feng shui they bring into our lives. But the interesting thing is it's a form, you know, you can at least from my perspective, it looks like a form of art, right? It's something that looks nice that I can't do. So there are people that are going to say, well, look, the world is a better place if we have interior decorators. And the fact is the world is a better place with interior decorators. And how do we know that? Because people are willing to pay their own money to have these people come in and do the feng shui thing. Well, I'm just going to leave that out there for the people to comment on later in the little box below. I don't think I want to get into that any more than we already have. And, you know, judging from what I see in the frame there, you don't avail yourself of an interior decorator. No, no, no. So maybe you don't place much of a value on it after. Right. Oh, incidentally, do you know what these are back here? Yeah, I have them in PDFs. These are books. Yeah, the modern people do them in PDFs, James. These are these are books. But here's the thing. That same argument applies to the arts, right? So you could say, well, look, if the arts are indeed valuable and pick one, you know, dance, if a dance performance is valuable, truly, then people will be willing to pay to come and see it. If they aren't willing to pay and come to come and see it, it suggests that there's a disconnect, that the artist thinks that the thing is far more valuable than people on the ground actually believe. Yeah. And I think we could probably go a little further and say that artists generally believe that what they produce is far more valuable than what people on the ground think. And I'm not the least bit surprised by that, right? Almost everybody believes that what he does is more valuable than than people give him credit for in the end. The real question is, is that right? And then the the other real question that nobody ever really asks is, does the federal government have any business funding these sorts of things in the first instance? Because it might well be the case that this is overstepping on the part of government right from the first. And we might even stipulate that these things are in fact valuable. And I would stipulate that. I think that great art is, of course, quite valuable and that we should probably be encouraging it somehow. The question is, do we encourage it through the use of government grants, which is functionally one group of people in society holding a gun to the heads of the other people in society, saying, you will pay for this even though you don't want to. They might want monster trucks and professional wrestling. But no, no, no, you're going to pay for this because we think it's valuable. Really, what they're saying is we think you need it. Yeah. And the fact is they may be right. You know, it may be the case that, you know, paintings and sculpture and dance are truly more valuable than the NASCAR. But but notice what we're doing here, what we're effectively doing by publicly funding them is saying that the people who hold those beliefs have greater consideration under the law than people who don't. Now, all of a sudden we're no longer a nation of free and equal people. Well, ultimately, what we're saying is this group's opinion matters more than this group's opinion. Right. And how do we know that? Because we'll use government to enforce the one but not the other. Right. You know, that the second group of people, the vast majority of us, right, who who really would rather not be taxed at any level to support any amount of this, you know, we're just rubes and rednecks. And all we want to do is sit around drinking our Budweiser on our front porch, right? And we have to somehow make those people better through the coercive force of government and give them art in the bargain. Well, they don't want it. And that has to matter, too. And the fact that we're sitting here talking at all about cutting any programs like this in any way is astonishing to me. Because once a government program is born, it rarely dies. Yes. Now, now notice what happens as well. If you have government funding for arts, then then all sorts of things get funded that actually even in the majority of artists' opinions isn't good art. Yet if you if you have the market funded, that is, the artists put their stuff out there and people who think it's valuable will willingly pay for it. Those who don't don't. What you do is you create competition amongst the artists for not for the government's attention in terms of grant getting, but for the public's attention in terms of what is this that turns you on. I give you a good case in point. My sister is a professor of theater and dance and in an attempt to draw in the NASCAR crowd, she staged a ballet based on NASCAR, in which the dancers were the cars dressed with advertisers, logos on them, the whole thing. She had an official caller come in and call the race. And lo and behold, what happened? People who normally would never set foot in a theater to see a ballet came and paid their good money to see this because she appealed to what people actually value. That actually sounds dreadful to me. But look at what I can do. I can choose not to go. That's right. That's nice and simple. Right. And the simple fact of the matter is, is that when we start talking in majoritarian terms, I think that what most people consider to be art is lost on me. Right. So people go into the mall and they buy these trashy, awful Thomas Kincaid paintings. Hey, man, if that's what you want to do with your money, go ahead. Me, I'm not interested. But I don't have to be interested in Thomas Kincaid. Right. He opens his story, takes his chances. And he either sells this nonsense or he doesn't. And it doesn't come out of my pocket. Right. As Jefferson said in another context, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. And if those two things are true, then seriously, what do I care? Each to his own, go participate in whatever tasteful or tasteless thing you want. But but don't come requiring me to support you. What you'll notice here is there's a reasonable argument that, look, the NEA line item in the budget is a small thing. It's not that big of a deal. Let's just let it go and we have art. The art people are happy. And the cost to the average American is pennies, right? A year. The problem with that argument is there's lots of things, not just art. Right. There's there's national public radio. There's PBS and you can step out of art and go on to lots of other things that where people are asking the government for a small amount of money to fund this one thing, it's not going to cost the country that much. But you do that tens of thousands of times. And all of a sudden you've got a lot of money on the table. That's right. Once you've uncorked this bottle, it's very difficult, if not well, not impossible to get the cork back in. Right. And that's just it. Right. And I think PBS is a remarkably good example because PBS was funded once upon a time when there were generally speaking in most places at most three television channels, right? The three major networks. And then here comes PBS. But then comes cable television along with literally hundreds of channels making PBS utterly superfluous. And yet here it is year after year after year, crying poor to the American people. Meanwhile, Sesame Street featuring Elmo raking in money hand over fist, right? We should all have problems like this. PBS has no money, please, just please. And yet the argument is exactly, as you say, it costs each of us so little. And it's the perfect case of dispersed costs and concentrated benefits, right? Everybody pays a little tiny bit and a couple of people make out like bandits. But nobody should make out like a bandit at the rest of our expense. And that's, I think, where we're sitting right now, all of a sudden, for all kinds of strange and wondrous reasons. But it's a good conversation to be having. And it's the first time we've had it seriously in as long as I can remember. Right. So let's have it and let's have it seriously. It's important to underline here that we're not saying that PBS and NPR should not be funded. That's not at all what we're saying. What we're saying is that the funding should be decided by individuals voluntarily handing over their money in exchange for product, rather than by other individuals using the force of government to take money out of people's pockets and hand it to these organizations. I'm perfectly comfortable saying that PBS NPR, things of that nature should not be funded by the government. Not at all. Because what we're saying then is that people should be forced to fund them. And if people want to choose to fund them by all means, write your check, send it in, put the ads up, listen to the product, watch the product. Any way you want to go about your business there is going to be just fine by me. But don't force anyone. I think that's all we have time for this time, James. Yeah, that's right. So that's all we've got. But be sure to click below and check out the other videos up for offer on fee.org and come on back next week when we'll have something hopefully even more fascinating to talk to you next week. James, see you later.