This was pretty much what set me on the path to radicalisation.
The system felt so unfair and then to learn that there were people who could do exactly this just because they were born into a family with large capital it was infuriating.
That’s why I dislike these kinds of memes that say, “Oh, I shouldn’t be working all day; I should be living a life of leisure and free to create”.They feel like the conservative strawman of the “lazy leftist who just envies the rich”.
Living as the meme describes inherently requires the exploitation of labor. Unless a society becomes technologically advanced enough to achieve fully automated post-scarcity, meeting a person’s needs still requires a certain amount of human labor. The issue under capitalism is that some people do live as the meme describes, and they do so by exploiting the labor of others through capital. As a result, the rest of us struggle even more.
Not exactly a rebuttal, more of an addendum:
Artists can seek personal fulfillment, which may indirectly contribute something of value for society, or they can directly contribute value to society by creating art for others. If this value is greater than or equal to that which is required to sustain them, then exploitation is not inherently necessary.
Hey want to throw up? Here’s a Koch heir using daddy’s blood money to be a pretend “creative.”
