Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right.

It would be nice if that were true.

AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or graphics the way they otherwise might.

Anyway, I'm very curious if anyone has a good argument for why anyone who wishes to be an artist is owed a living wage for merely their desire to be recognized as economically valuable.

Software engineers should be asking themselves that same question day in and out. All know workers actually. The cost to produce art has dropped to zero. The cost to get knowledge on a topic - effectively zero. The cost to write basic software - effectively zero. The cost to produce today’s software will never be higher than today. In six months the chances that it’s significantly cheaper to do so are very high.

I think that AI isn't the only thing exacerbating this issue. More people are doing artistic like things as hobbies. The internet makes it easier to learn and the cost of entry has gone down - paints, canvases, brushes, guitars, pianos, film equipment, the low end has gone up in quality and down in price.

I do some painting and I've met quite a few local artists. Some are amazing and some not so much. I haven't met anyone making a living from it though, not the creative stuff anyway. A couple of them do make a living by doing commercial work. One friend, who seems to try the hardest, does book illustrations, runs classes, prints and sells her own work, and makes a loss every year so is supported by her partner, who is a builder.

There are two art galleries in town. I go to both regularly. The work has never been flying off the shelves. And some of it deserves to.

None of the above has anything to do with AI. It was the same before AI, and AI doesn't paint physical pictures anyway. I've seen some digital art prints but they're really not popular for whatever reason.

To answer your question then: my argument is that most artists don't expect to earn a living from it at all. And if more people are engaged in creation (not a bad thing) then it would logically follow that there is less chance of making money.

Probably the most tragic thing in my opinion is that if I visit the art exhibition for my local town, the artwork on display is wonderfully varied in quality, style and imagination, and when I visited a national gallery recently displaying the works of modern artists who have "made it" to that level, it was all absolute shite. Actual technical ability seems to be being relegated to poverty artists.

> Pieces like this all seem to be written with an unspoken assumption that anyone who wants to make a living wage from being an artist should be able to, as if it's some sort of right.

Comments like yours seem to be written with the unspoken assumption that everyone's life should be hard unless they can please the market, which technology makes increasingly difficult. It's deeply anti-human.

> AI has exacerbated this issue. Suddenly we're faced with the uncomfortable truth that much of human artwork is "mid" as the kids would say and people aren't willing to pay for songs, writing, and/or graphics the way they otherwise might.

Is that news to anyone? But mid people exist, they worthy people, and they need to eat. AI is leading us to a dystopia where, unless you're in the top 0.1% of talent, the market has no use for you. And guess what happens to you then?

> Anyway, I'm very curious if anyone has a good argument for why anyone who wishes to be an artist is owed a living wage for merely their desire to be recognized as economically valuable.

Because that was the last promise the tech bros made: our tech will replace you, then you get to be an artist, be creative! Now it will take your creative job, and free you up for draining monitoring tasks and manual labor.