There’s this whole totally unnecessary controversy right now in Israel about some play about some Arab who kills some soldier and the State having to subsidize the play but not wanting to, and somehow not subsidizing a play with with tax money is tantamount to violating free speech.
If that’s so, what I’m doing right now is not free speech because the government isn’t paying me to do it. I can’t tell if the people who say these things are actually that stupid, or they are just incredibly dishonest. Probably a mix.
Then there’s another play about Yigal Amir somewhere that other people don’t want to be subsidized. And again, both sides hate each other.
Here’s an idea. Don’t subsidize any play whatsoever, and let people watch or not watch them, and leave us all alone. Ah, but then there will be no more plays at all, in fact no cultural activity at all, says Nitzan Horowitz! Wow!
Moshe’s pretty good in this one. Horowitz says something like “If you take away state money from cultural activities, you could say the same about education, housing, and everything else!”
Feiglin: Yes, exactly.
Horowitz: Then there will be nothing!
Feiglin: So you’re saying that if the Minister of Outer Space suddenly resigned, then the cosmos would stop existing.
Now that’s good stuff.
Only one objection. Feiglin says that no one should be forced to subsidize any plays, and Horowitz correctly says that he shouldn’t be forced to pay for settlers. That’s a good point, and Horowitz is correct there.
Moshe tries to answer with a non-sequitur, saying that he doesn’t pay for settlers because settlers are more productive than other sectors. But that’s nonsense. He pays for their protection and everything else public in Judea and Samaria regardless of how productive they are, and he shouldn’t have to because he has a moral problem with where they live. Moshe can’t say that though because then he becomes an anarcho capitalist so he has to say something illogical to keep his minarchy intact.
The other nutty thing about this video was the subtitle that appears around minute 4: “Privatization of Culture: A good solution or morally bankrupt?”
Privatization of culture is morally bankrupt of course. Before the State, there was no culture. First there were people who were in charge of everyone who told the little people who they stole from how to do culture. Then they did culture. Without governments, there would be no culture, and we’d basically be monkeys. Yeah. Sounds right. Sometimes I can’t stop thinking how sick this State is.
The Jewish Libertarian 
Actually I agree that if there were no state funding for films, there would be no films.
In Britain the number of films produced rapidly in the 80’s when the government stopped subsidizing. Then in the 90’s, the Blair government came into power and raised subsidies. Then the Harry Potter films came out, along with other films.
Also in small countries with small numbers of native speakers, whether it’s Hebrew or Macedonian, or Welsh, the market really is too small to make a film. Those sorts of foreign language films must have a subsidy. You can’t even rely on films done privately in a private co production with USA like the way films are made in Ireland and the UK because the beurocracy here in Israeli is hell…People can’t even build a house here because of the beurocracy, never mind produce a blockbuster film.
However plays, or orchestras are a different issue as the initial financial funding for them is smaller.
State funded art? Can’t help it.
Don’t worry, music from the rest of countries is the same if not worse. Variations of using the words “peace, love, fighting demons, understanding, euphoria, awesomeness etc.”
On Eurovision people get to vote for 50% the rest is established by experts working for the Cultural Ministry of each country.
Everyone argues intensely on why is the music that bad, “can’t you do anything about it?” Waste of breath.
What really happens though is that people begin to decipher political friends and enemies from the countries’ vote. Remember people can travel in Europe on day the of show if they want to vote their own country because they can’t do this at home (to insure fairness of course), so this gives you a clue of how deluded anyone who maps the future from those votes is.
They are less deluded than those who think that if in 30 years or so music has always been bad and sometimes artists really can’t sing, things are never going to change. Is too mean to say never?
I will end with another example, from a country that has not a few of best-selling artists – UK. Yet this is their Eurosong:
Must be that mean Goddess Venus demanding poor artists sacrificing themselves for art, or the energies of the universe slashing through vibrating black holes, who knows? But it is proven that for art the only thing that work is genuinely acquired success. Even if it’s cheap, it’s still competent cheapness, quality cheapness.
I suggest all Ministries of Culture research the name of the demon called Kitsch who is definitely defeating them even as they began the entire process as a noble templar knights hunt after the evil beast that people in their weak minds were allowing to creep in and deluding them to buy bad music and bad books that most surely must not like and they need someone to tell them what to buy. Beast won in the end because it knew Govts are the best customers when it comes to poor taste.