I think I'm with the wicked anti-creative grumps here. First, I know loads of people who are doing brilliant creative things while also working in day jobs. One of the very nicest things about having a proper day job is that I can do exactly what I want creatively without having to meet the requirements of a patron or customer.
Second, I know lots of people whose day jobs satisfy, at least to some extent, their creative urges; this includes lots of jobs that don't automatically appear to include creative elements.
You don't "owe the world a living". But you do owe yourself a living; to use your skills and abilities to feed and house and clothe yourself, and do whatever else you want. You can do that by getting a job, or by making marvellous creative things and selling them to people, or by going and finding some common ground in a warm place, and a couple of goats, and start knitting the wool into ponchos. I don't much mind.
What I do mind is people who could do one of those things, but instead spend their time seeking their inner creative muppet while I pay taxes to support them. Though even so, I don't much mind people doing a little of this for a while; lives are long and things balance out. Where I lose faith is with people who see no reason to spend time toiling for the common good. Life *is* hard; we do have scarcity and poverty even in this rich country of ours, and however much you may wish to believe that a few rich people are hoarding enough wealth to allow us all to live luxuriously without working, it isn't true.
Having said all that, fandom is a potlatch economy in many ways. As an example, I was on a panel at Interaction where some of the panellists were expressing astonishment that people would wander around wikipedia correcting minor errors in a sort of litter-picking way without thought of personal gain; but most of the audience did this or other similar online tasks in a way that we described as 'digital citizenship'. There are lots of things that I do because I get a feeling of satisfaction having done them; that's the primary benefit rather than external egoboo.
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Second, I know lots of people whose day jobs satisfy, at least to some extent, their creative urges; this includes lots of jobs that don't automatically appear to include creative elements.
You don't "owe the world a living". But you do owe yourself a living; to use your skills and abilities to feed and house and clothe yourself, and do whatever else you want. You can do that by getting a job, or by making marvellous creative things and selling them to people, or by going and finding some common ground in a warm place, and a couple of goats, and start knitting the wool into ponchos. I don't much mind.
What I do mind is people who could do one of those things, but instead spend their time seeking their inner creative muppet while I pay taxes to support them. Though even so, I don't much mind people doing a little of this for a while; lives are long and things balance out. Where I lose faith is with people who see no reason to spend time toiling for the common good. Life *is* hard; we do have scarcity and poverty even in this rich country of ours, and however much you may wish to believe that a few rich people are hoarding enough wealth to allow us all to live luxuriously without working, it isn't true.
Having said all that, fandom is a potlatch economy in many ways. As an example, I was on a panel at Interaction where some of the panellists were expressing astonishment that people would wander around wikipedia correcting minor errors in a sort of litter-picking way without thought of personal gain; but most of the audience did this or other similar online tasks in a way that we described as 'digital citizenship'. There are lots of things that I do because I get a feeling of satisfaction having done them; that's the primary benefit rather than external egoboo.