Post #1170438

UBI is going round again I see and here's some real life perspective from me, some person with a disability check, sure being disabled is disabling but that doesn't make me useless. I do stuff, some of it is just my art but I also do stuff for other people, I do lights at concerts, I do video at concerts, I film concerts, I mix concerts, I make album covers, and vinyl and CD masters, I restore the audio of old demotapes, I produce and mix records, all for the benefit of someone else, often strangers. All free services that require some technical and artistic knowhow. I have been told many a project would simply not have happened but for my input. Input which at market rates is simply not viable. Just now I was contacted by a German synth band that is about to release a new record and they wanted a video for the single and perhaps one other song, I don't know them, I will likely never meet them, they said they would send me some records. I'm making a little microfiction animaton about an astronaut dying on Mars for the first song. It's not Pixar but it's fine, free assets, an ancient copy of Lightwave and way too many hours of my time for it ever to be a viable commercial project. I'm enjoying myself, I'm broke, disability isn't much but it is just enough for rent and food, I'm worried about the state of the world but I'm not worried about making rent. It's liberating not to worry about making rent. Like probably UBI would be. So many people do pointless busywork, I know, I've had jobs. One of them was typing computer printouts into a different computer. That's not adding anything to society, 12.000 people in Norway had that job. One time I had a 20 hour a week job, doing something actually useful, it was nice, I never felt exhausted when the weekend came around. It was easy to give the job my all 4 hours a day. But it wasn't viable. I was too broke so I had to take on more hours. I don't think everyone will want to be an artist if UBI ever comes around but like, shit, y'all would get to do y'all thing and not be exhausted in the process, I know it won't be watching TV all day but even if it is, that's fine.