The public money has dried up, in other words, but so has a whole lot of the private money. You might not have noticed the ramifications quite yet, but you will. It’s in the increasingly ardent pleas from your local NPR station, of course, but it’s also just absence: the film festival or day camp or curated exhibition or concert series that just... See more

Here we see a really pivotal moment of change, when art must become something that does not make people uncomfortable, so that they will spend money. The kind of person who is expected to consume art is transformed in the mind of the producer. The people who might very possibly love being expanded by what they see are never given the chance.

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Life expectancy and birth rates are falling; our governing institutions are as leaky and unreliable as the New York City subway; cheap rent, the historic precondition of artistic adventure, has all but disappeared from the country’s major urban centers; productivity growth is stuck in first gear; and for all the blather about “de-risking” and the... See more