You have heard from Hubert Sawyers III on this blog before and this time he is telling the story about a hip hop artist he is working with personally to build a grassroots campaign to fund his debut album via Kickstarter. From “Progress Report: Using Social Capital to Generate Startup Capital,”

When I first met David Allie Strauss aka D. Allie, I was not aware that he would become someone that I would be in constant contact with years down the road. Back then, D. was just another dude that I would share the occasional microphone. I have since retired my dreams of hip hop supremacy, but I am glad to see Dave still at it. He has impressed me with his growing cachet from years of performing, bartending and overall hustle to make his dream a reality. As a former brother-in-the-struggle in the realm of music, I realize music is mainly seen as just entertainment to the end-user and most artists aka entertainers rarely have the end-user in mind. These days, me and D. are on the verge of becoming business partners, mainly because he understands the end-user aka YOU are his boss(es). (Emphasis mine.)

Ah, if only every artist thought like this. It is important to embrace the fact that your audience is your customer, and your customer is your boss. Your job is to make them feel special, wanted, needed, (and if you are Justin Bieber), loved.

I met Dallie a year or two ago at a Tweetup as well as seeing him around town and I remember him distinctly, mostly because he was a nice person. He remembered me and bothered to take time to chat. Maybe he was thinking ahead, maybe he knew, two years ago, the importance of social capital, maybe the fact that he did not blow me off like a lot of cooler-than-though artists do is the reason I donated to his Kickstarter campaign and genuinely want to see him succeed.

Maybe? Absolutely.

A common theme I see creeping up in arts blogs as well as conversations “in the field” is a very us vs. them mentality. From the tone of the writing to the ideas expressed, there is very little that makes me want to be a part of the arts community online, despite the fact that I have every reason in the world to be wholly invested: I consider myself an artist, I come from a family of fine artists, musicians, composers, dancers, and actresses, and uh, I write a blog dedicated to the arts. And to be perfectly honest, most art blogs turn me off. There is so much complaining, so much name-calling, so much blaming for the state of affairs the arts are in, and little responsibility, little genuine community-building, and little problem-solving. (I may be missing something – so please, leave links in the comments.)

So, when I see this project, from someone I’ve met, who was nice to me, who isn’t a complainer…but a doer…I’m all about it, and you should be too.

(I really got a good snicker coming up with this alternative blog post title, so I just had to share it: Oil-Based Art Protests. Har har har.)

Moving on…

A recent article came out in the Telegraph about artists protesting a Tate Britain event due to the Tate’s involvement with BP,

…oil and art came together in a clumsily choreographed pageant of comic absurdity this week at Tate Britain’s Summer Party. A group of spittle-flecked wing-nut demonstrators poured oil down the gallery’s steps as a “protest” against BP’s financial support of the gallery. A hi-vis mop-up army immediately replicated the Louisiana shore in Pimlico, but cleared up to better effect. The party continued.

While it’s easy to see the appeal for staging such a protest and equally easy to see the appeal of making fun of the protesters, author Stephen Bayley brings up a panoply of scenarios in which artists have (more or less happily, or at least ignorantly) been funded by arguably despicable people, companies, and governments,

That anyone should express outrage at BP’s involvement with the Tate is evidence of cringe-making naivety, not to say burping, thigh-slapping and howling ignorance. Artists have always gone where the money is. You either have the Holy See or you have BP. Art and ethics do not have a straightforward relationship, they have a grubbily convoluted one: the great art of the Renaissance was paid for by usury, vice and corruption. Pope Alexander VI was the father of Cesare Borgia, a poisoner, sadist, sexual deviant, intriguer and mercenary syphilitic. The Borgias created the culture in which Bramante and Michelangelo flourished.

Great art has always been involved with great fortunes: it was only a temporary distortion of history, a hangover from the Romantic idea that artists need be poor and tormented, that insisted art must be uncontaminated by trade. Patronage may well be a non-negotiable part of artistic activity. For a while, this principle was blurred when the interventionist economist J M Keynes helped found the Arts Council after the Second World War. Keynes simply made the state a patron. Do the oily protesters advocate refusal of the Arts Council’s “government” money supporting the Tate because the same government money funded an illegal war in Iraq and a tragic war in Afghanistan? Of course they don’t.

That artists always go (must go?) where the money is, is often lamented as the “sad reality” of being an artist…because art is supposed to transcend the meanness of money-making to achieve the sublime goal of inspiring and enlightening. Art and artists seem to be stuck because not only are they encouraged not to think of their art as products, but the act of displaying and disseminating art is not a mere business transaction, but something sacred. It is because art is treated this way that higher standards have ostensibly been set (even if subconsciously) for its funding sources. But Bayley provides more examples of what could be considered the inevitable clash of morals in the arts.

Any inflated posturing about the relationship of art to ethics and to money is bound to end in an embarrassing collision of principles. Teeth-rotting sugar, mother’s ruin booze and blood diamonds have funded great galleries around the world. Profits from the slaves’ torment of the Middle Passage made Liverpool and Bristol great cities of art. The Guggenheims became philanthropists only after polluting Philadelphia and running some mining interests that would, perhaps, today be criminal. Never mind if commissioning Frank Lloyd Wright was an after-the-event expiation of corporate sins, New York’s Guggenheim Museum is a benefit to us all.

–

Throughout the Twenties, The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper owned by Henry Ford, frequently published articles about the menace of “The International Jew”. Ford sponsored the vicious, spurious and anti-semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The same Ford also mobilised poor Americans with his Model-T, paid his workers with fabulous generosity and commissioned the Communist Mexican painter Diego Rivera to create epic murals about the proletariat’s struggles in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Right now, London’s Frieze Art Fair is one of the most successful art fairs in the world. It’s the creation of Matthew Slotover, whose parents, full declaration, are friends of mine. And Jewish. Slotover, more sensible than the howling pack who emptied their sump of resentment over the Tate, is quite comfortable that the Frieze Art Fair is sponsored by Deutsche Bank which, in 1999 agreed to contribute to a fund of several billion pounds for Holocaust survivors who could still remember that it financed IG Farben, producer of Zyklon-B, the murderous gas used in Auschwitz.

Another Frieze sponsor is BMW, whose owners made their fortune from producing the batteries that powered U-boats and the V2 missile that pounded London. BMW is also sponsoring our bomb-site Olympics. We move on.

These examples abound. Artists, it seems, cannot be too picky about their customers. But why should this really be a dilemma? Do we boycott the local hardware store because a serial murderer paid for the rope and plastic sheets he used to kill his latest victim? I know that is a horribly crude analogy, but I’m trying to illustrate that the stain of the profit can perhaps be removed, cleansed so to speak, when it is cycled through an artist’s hands, transformed into something else…then again, maybe not.

What is the solution? How can artists reconcile these moral and fiscal dilemmas? Just as many artists find no hypocrisy in monetarily supporting and praising the art of a child rapist, perhaps they can similarly continue to take money from gulf-destroying corporations without feeling any moral incongruity?

I suppose one argument is that the artist is never beholden to take funding from BP, Ford, BMW, or any government in particular – but it does seem the list of despicable offenders that have enough cash to pay for art are greater in number than the squeaky-clean philanthropists and good samaritans.

Bayley concludes,

These are not so much conflicts as inevitabilities. And they arise not from any disingenuousness of clients nor from any cynical opportunism by patrons, rather from the confused nature of our understanding of “art” in the contemporary world. An art that requires to be institutionalised and displayed in expensive galleries is inevitably going to cost someone a lot of money.

And if it is BP’s money rather than ours, then that’s to our common good…And while I am not the person to exonerate a dirty and dangerous energy company, who has the methodology to calculate whether an oil spill causes more damage to civilisation than mendacious and greedy bankers? Perhaps the misery caused by the wicked speculations of Lehman Brothers was, in the long run, more injurious to human dignity and well-being than a dirty-and-dangerous oil platform. Lehman Brothers supported the Lincoln Center, the American Ballet School and Kathleen, wife of the notorious CEO Richard Fuld, was vice-chair of the Museum of Modern Art.

In the long run we are all dead, declared Keynes. In the meantime, let’s do what we can with what we have got. Frieze Art Fair is a very good thing, even if Deutsche Bank funded the Gestapo. Tate Britain is a very good thing, which is made even better by oil money, although we do all wish BP were a little more fastidious about its day job. Only a peevish hypocrite would deny these things.

I think it is fairly obvious that Hollywood is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the blend of free markets and free speech. I also think it is amazing that movies are routinely made demonizing recent Presidents, trashing the very economic mechanism that allows a director to successfully produce his film, and glorifying racists, genocidal maniacs, and homophobes without even the slightest apology or hint of irony. No one associated with these films gets jailed, stoned, or hung and the only form of censorship (to my knowledge*) is a role played freely by individual market actors by withholding their entertainment dollars, or having freedom to speak out against movies they disapprove of. (*Although, the history of the NEA clearly demonstrates the government actively censors art of all kinds when public dollars are allocated for their creation and consumption.)

Of course, many artists are not likely to share my rosy view of artistic freedom for a variety of reasons, but I maintain we have it pretty good in the free world compared to many other countries.

Economist Alex Tabarrok wrote a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal about how often Big Business is cast as the villian in movies and rarely are entrepreneurs and businessmen shown in a positive light,

Capitalism hasn’t had much good press lately, and when it comes to the movies capitalism never seems to get a fair shake. In the movies, capitalists are almost invariably cast as villains. Has someone been murdered? Are the residents of a small town dying of cancer? Is an environment being despoiled? Look no further than the CEO of some large corporation. Quick, name as many movies as you can that feature capitalists as heroes. “Batman Forever” and “Iron Man” do not count. There are a few (“The Edge,” “You’ve Got Mail”), but it’s a short list. Now name as many movies as you can that feature mass-murdering corporations and corporate villains? That one is easy: “The Fugitive,” “Syriana,” “Mission Impossible II,” “Erin Brockovich,” “The China Syndrome” and “Avatar,” to name only a few.

Most moviegoers can’t get enough of these storylines, but they are so hackneyed for my taste that I have a hard time keeping from laughing out loud in otherwise serious films where the villian is revealed as some Big Business operator where the scandal goes “all the way to the top” sometimes to the White House for extra added punch, depending on which party is portrayed in office.

Tabarrok correctly points out that,

In the big picture, art and capitalism work well together. The greatest periods of art history were often times of relative wealth and economic growth, as economist Tyler Cowen discusses in his book “In Praise of Commercial Culture.” It’s capitalism that creates the wealth that supports artistic creation, and it’s capitalism that provides artists with new technologies and media to work with. But when it comes to making particular movies, capitalism and art stand in conflict.

I find artists are often loathe to admit the benefits of the free market, though are happy to silently reap those benefits to line their pockets when their particular art is in favor with mass culture. In my opinion, this truth is one of life’s little ironies that deserves being uncovered and made fun of a bit, to shake artists from their holier-than-thou attitudes about art and business. The fact of the matter is, all successful artists (defined for purposes of this post as those who are able to earn a decent living off their art), whether they like to admit it or not, are successful business people and that means being part of the capitalistic mechanism.

I saw this quote from Mick Jagger at least 5 times in different blogs in my Google Reader,

…people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.

I think people are fascinated about what Jagger has to say since he is one of the most wildly successful and no doubt wealthy recording musicians of all time with career longevity most artists envy. Plus, he’s rich, right? Is he saying it was just good timing? (Nah, I’m certain some of that musical genius and epic charisma had something to do with it.) However, despite Tyler Cowen’s friendly rib that Jagger is no economist, the phenomenon Jagger is talking about is no less true and is explained further by Daniel Wolf of Renewable Music,

That date [Jagger is referring to] in the late 90′s coincides rather precisely with the mass introduction of cheap digital recording equipment and media as well as the widespread use of portable digital players.  The old model of radio advertising paying royalties for recorded music which was licensed cheaply for broadcast with the idea that randomly-heard broadcasts of songs were advertisements for the purchase of albums — which allowed the listener to select particular songs on their own — pretty much collapsed at that point in time.  The technological innovations leading to ever-cheaper and ever-more accurate recording and storage capacity were inevitable but the whole thing gets ugly when one considers that the firms selling the new recording technologies were, in many cases, also publishers of the music that was inevitably going to be recorded.

The “gets ugly” Wolf is referring to is the loss of revenue to individual artists. (Check out this scary graphic re: distribution of profits in the music world via NewsObserver TechJunkie.) This is admittedly a problem for most artists aiming to have a recording and performing career. Wolf further notes, and correctly in my opinion,

Although recordings and webcasts may have some advertising function, in the end, the grand experiment [of commodifying music] may leave us back where we started, with live performance the most important — and in many cases, only — opportunity for a musician to earn money.

While I will only mention the can of worms that is the issue of Baumol’s cost disease in live performance, I think Wolf is correct in that performance is likely to be the most lucrative way to make money. It is undeniable that the business model for artists is subject to rapid change, in particular when technology is introduced and dramatically alters the landscape artists have to work with.

However, I find it curious that despite the fact that individual artists are likely to have low(er?) chances of making it big financially in music, introduction of technology has helped achieve what has long been considered one of the most troubling aspects of becoming and artist and disseminating work: access to distribution channels. Never before in history have so many people been able to access A) ways to make and distribute their own music cheaply B) ways to hear music of all kinds cheaply. This is an undoubted improvement, as far as egalitarian ideals of access to the arts are concerned.

So, are we dealing with trade-offs (sacrifices) between access and profitability? Are there other business models that could evolve to put even more control of revenues into individual artist’s hands? Is what is “wrong” with the music industry the big labels in charge promoting watered down music, or the poor tastes (and thus, demands) of mass consumer culture?

I had no idea the topic of unpaid internships was so contentious when I first blogged about it on Let’s Level the Playing Field by Ruining Everyone’s Chances, as it elicited vociferous and emotional responses from readers and fellow arts bloggers alike. I assumed it was clear that by forcing arts organizations to pay set wages for specific periods of time, it would reduce the availability of internships and ultimately hurt the pool of hopeful interns trying to get their foot in the door. In the already-competitive world of the arts, depriving interns of choices just makes it that much more difficult to get necessary experience and resume-building opportunities.

Since then, the unpaid internship debate has been making some headlines, with pro and con opinions abounding online.

Wall Street Journal, “War on Interns: Making It Illegal to Work for Free”

While the Department of Labor may insist the world owes these kids a living, the truth is that many young workers are willing to trade free labor for a chance to demonstrate their skills and build a resume for the next job. Especially in a bad labor market, the choice college students face may be to work without pay, or hang by the beach.

This isn’t exploiting young people. It’s letting young people exploit an opportunity.

The Washington Examiner, “Obama’s war on internships (and female employment)“

Pricing interns out of the market proves especially salient for women, who make up 76 percent of the internship pool nationwide, according to the American Psychological Association. When opportunities evaporate for would-be unpaid interns, women will be the hardest hit.

The Future Majority “Unpaid Internships Bridge on Slave Labor“

Despite the overall con opinion, even Future Majority writer says,

I’ll admit I did unpaid internships while in college full time and working part time and many of the innovative online experiments I run in campaigns I am only able to do with the support of a staff of unpaid internships because campaigns don’t want to pay their staff to try new things. So I rely very heavily on interns both for support staff and for new and sometimes crazy ideas.

To be clear, it appears the administration is only cracking down on unpaid internships with for-profit organizations, which seems it would not greatly affect non-profit arts organizations, but who knows what the future holds.

The major flaw in thinking with those who want to crack down on unpaid internships is they believe organizations will replace all previous unpaid job opportunities with paid opportunities and pull from the same pool of unexperienced workers. Like it or not, most internships often include a component of “real” work in addition to the educational experience that is supposed to be provided, and employers offering internships are likely to be more discriminating about the prior experience of applicants when they have to pay for it. Furthermore, it seems odd to have to pay a student to give them an education – this model is unlike any educational model I’ve seen – which all require payment by the student for their learning experience (either through tuition or taxpayer support).

The most amusing response I read on the topic shed light on the ultimate hypocrisy of our government in this debate. From Donald Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek:

It’s unclear, however, why the same young people whom the President judges to be unfit to choose for themselves whether or not to work as unpaid interns at for-profit firms are fit to choose for themselves whether or not to work as unpaid interns at not-for-profit organizations.  So I urge this administration, which is ever-vigilant at protecting us from our irrational and helpless selves, also to prohibit young people from working as unpaid interns at not-for-profit outfits – such as political campaigns.

Indeed, Mr. Obama should not only apologize to the thousands of young, unpaid volunteers whom he exploited in 2008 for his own profit – namely, to win his election to the highest pulpit in the land – he should also give to each and every one of them back pay (with interest) for their efforts on his behalf.

The bottom line in this entire debate is that people should be free to work for free if they want to. End of story.  The argument that young people are too stupid to make the decision to work for free and are being exploited because they are afraid to call out evil would-be employers is just laughable! I’m assuming they are equally free to quit the job? The argument that only rich kids can afford to work for free is equally comical.

Again, increasing the wage of internships will not increase their availability and many people need to work for free to gain experience. If someone truly cannot afford to work for free, their path may be longer and more indirect or they may need to work two jobs (one paid in an unrelated field and one unpaid) in order to gain experience. The reality is, an unpaid internship is simply a formalized extension of the oldest business and networking advice, “Do people favors for free.” This puts you on their radar, shows you are a go-getter, and makes you far more likely to get a paid position when it becomes available.

Oops, the free market did it again. That is, made goods cheaper due to competition and innovation. Why we think this model only works in the music industry but not in others is beyond my comprehension, but hey, apparently it should make you think twice before downloading full albums on iTunes.

From Billboard,

The Universal Music Group could rewrite U.S. music pricing when it tests a new frontline pricing structure, which is designed to get single CDs in stores at $10, or below.

Beginning in the second quarter and continuing through most of the year, the company’s Velocity program will test lower CD prices. Single CDs will have the suggested list prices of $10, $9, $8, $7 and $6.

For those of you who like to watch “Big Business” squirm, check out competitor reactions,

On March 16, executives at the other majors were nervous about the UMG move, calling around to accounts for information on the move. Privately, some appeared annoyed by the move. “Why does Universal feel the need to get below $10?” a senior distribution executive at a competing major asked.

I’d ask him, “When was the last time anyone bought a physical CD other than because it wasn’t available for immediate download for less?”

• Georgia asks taxpayers, “A penny for the arts?” But all that change can really add up.
• Is the EU “wasting” millions of Euro on what many are calling dubious arts like hip-hop dance and circus skills? This is sure to spark some fascinating debate.
• Are you struggling with your creative career? Check out this career coach who caters to the creative class.
• The art, economics, and politics of museum exhibit funding. Two views of the climate change debate and museum exhibits funded by so-called “deniers.” From Huffington Post. From USA Today.
• I thought I was bold because I have no Blackberry or iPhone. But this journalist gets by without even a cell phone – a good read.
• “If music is free, how do artists get paid?” From the Wharton School of Business website: “Tarzan Economics,” on the crisis and fight for survival to make money in the music industry – you might want to hear this view. Check out a message board on the topic too.

Sometimes I just don’t get the time to blog about all the things I would like to. So I’m going to start doing what all the cool kids in the blogosphere do, just post the links and let you guys do the hard work.

• Most everyone has heard about how Detroit’s got this famous blighted house covered in ice. So, is this art because people who call themselves artists made it?
• In other news, Detroit is now the most affordable city for artists. Just ask this artist who bought his own blighted house for $100.
• The economic slowdown has negatively affect “art transactions,” but not as much as some expected,

…2005 was a peak of its own in the three-year trend coming out of the steep post-internet boom recession of 2002. If the art market can consolidate above the 2005 level at is trough, the hypothesis that the art market has entered a new, global phase that offers much greater expansion in terms of both volume and price has some value.

• High profile fair use fight over art. Images of the Korean war memorial depicted on a US stamp vs. the actual sculptures of the Korean war memorial.
• Even higher profile arts smackdown: China out-arts France. What could it be? Could it be…mmmm, Satan? Or just the associated evils of capitalism?
• And an interesting twist on the price elasticity of demand argument for luxury goods – turns out that art as mere luxury good may not be as accurate as art as alternative investment or store of long-term value.

“While outright global demand was weaker for luxury collectibles and consumables, there has also been a shift in luxury purchasing habits, as many HNWIs looked to secure their wealth in assets with long-term tangible value,” says the report. “This has worked strongly in favour of the art market, with art now recognized as a viable alternative investment asset.

I have to be honest, my fiction consumption is woefully lacking, replaced in recent years with poring over economic tomes and a little too much time on Facebook and Twitter.

But there is nothing that tickles me more than when fiction is just as strange as the truth, and this description of Swedish crime novels (a genre which I am a huge fan of, crime novels, that is) makes me want to dive back into the fiction pool.

Via the humanities via n+1 magazine,

Swedish crime fiction—and in our historical moment, Sweden is the crime fiction capital of the world, with growing suburbs in Denmark and Norway—owes its greatest debt to its British forebear, whose plots it cheerfully rips off. But the Swedish model distinguishes itself by infusing these plots with a social and political consciousness.

My husband is always playfully chiding me that he can tell within the first 10 seconds of a film if it is one that I will like: blue lens filter with an aerial shot of Washington DC, courier type scrolling across the screen revealing confidential information where we find out a government agent has gone rogue.

So, you can imagine a trilogy set against the backdrop of the wretchedness and treachery of the world’s most beloved quasi-socialist state would pique my interest.

To read the 1,802 pages of the Swedish crime novelist Stieg Larsson‘s Millennium trilogy is to be told that, for all their perceived virtue, the institutions of social democracy are a farce. In Larsson’s books, American readers will find the Sweden they expect: the welfare-state comforts, Volvo security, and Ikea practicality for which the country is known. But they will also find a country they didn’t expect. In this Sweden, the country’s well-polished façade belies a broken apparatus of government whose rusty flywheels are little more than the playthings of crooks. The doctors are crooked. The bureaucrats are crooked. The newspapermen are crooked. The industrialists and businessmen, laid bare by merciless transparency laws, are nevertheless crooked. The police and the prosecutors are crooked. And the criminals, of course, are crooked, though not always: it’s often the case that criminal acts committed by do-gooders in the name of justice—from petty larceny to massive bank fraud—are the only means by which to overcome the comprehensive failure of the world’s most comprehensive welfare system.

I think it is interesting to show that empirical evidence may verify the tales the book tells. Although folklore from those in love with government intervention and centralized control would have us believe Sweden is a rich, happy, and smoothly-running socialist country (just LOOK at Ikea!), this video shows us that Sweden’s roots are in the free market, and is just now recovering from a bout of poor decision-making throughout the 1970′s by releasing government controls to right the economic wrongs of their recent past.

In fact, the biggest marks against Sweden are their prohibitively high tax rates, outrageous levels of government spending, and stifling labor laws. While at the same time, their protection of property rights, ease of investing in and operating businesses, and trade policies are remarkably free and guided by rule of law. Check out the strange disparity in economic freedom ratings here.

Sometimes I am so baffled by new legislation and the arts.

Via Arts Admin via Createquity…

Getting a degree in arts administration is expensive, and that has an impact on who is financially able to pursue the degree. Does the prevalence of unpaid internships exacerbate the issue? Via Createquity*, the Guardian says that a report by the UK’s Arts Group

… has called the large number of unpaid jobs in the creative sector “exploitation” and is calling for legislation to regulate the use of unpaid internships by arts organisations, suggesting that all placements over a month should be paid the national minimum wage.

As someone who had chosen to work for free in order to gain valuable experience and is not a trust fund baby, I can assure you I am perfectly capable of deciding whether and when I am being so-called exploited or not. Certainly if I have decided to volunteer my time and services to an activity I feel will benefit me in the long run, or if I’m simply feeling altruistic – I should be allowed to do so and organizations should be allowed to offer such opportunities in abundance as long as there are takers!

Legislation does not need to “fix” what simple economics has been capable of solving since the dawn of time: supply and demand. Clearly there is ample supply of free workers as well as work for them to do. I must be missing the handcuffs in this equation.

Furthermore, the additional perks of working at arts organizations, for free or paid – are numerous! In college, while I had a paid (state subsidized) internship with an arts organization – I had access to incredibly valuable networking opportunities, social and educational events, not to mention incredible performing arts programming almost every day of the organization’s season! I would have done this work for free.

As I commented on Michael Rushton’s blog,

I can’t imagine what forcing arts organizations to pay minimum wage will do other than dramatically decrease the availability and duration of internships.

The idea is so comical and detrimental to the arts I have a hard time believing something like this would pass. But satire is dead, and I’m shocked on a daily basis by the things people will allow governments to do to routinely erode their freedom of choice – even when it comes to volunteerism!