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Kickstarter Trumps the NEA

1. Nathan
   at 10:05 am on March 3, 2012

   I think this is a good thing that KickStarter is raising this kind of money, but a bad thing that the government is not.

   What amazes me most is that people freak out over the NEA getting that small amount of money while we waste that much on weapons systems the military doesn’t want.

2. Nick Moran
   at 10:13 am on March 3, 2012

   Nathan, I couldn’t agree more. Each year, the government awards the equivalent of one F-22 Raptor fighter plane to our nation’s artists. One.

   http://www.militaryeducation.org/military-equipment/

   Now out of production (as of 2011), Lockheed Martin has built 185 F-22 Raptors which are now sitting in their hangars, collecting dust.

3. Patrick
   at 10:14 am on March 3, 2012

   I’ve seen this tweeted a lot lately, and it’s a great sentiment, but it’s misleading. Look, I love Kickstarter, but the notion that its funding goes to artists exclusively is kind of missing the point. It’s just as often a tech incubator, a means of securing cash for things that might be creative in a sense (apps, iPhone cases, etc.), but don’t exactly qualify as art. Sure, it helps people publish books (and write them) and make films and do all sorts of wonderful artistic things, but the Kickstarter model is just as much DIY venture capital as it is DIY arts funding.

4. Nick Moran
   at 10:17 am on March 3, 2012

   I agree with that, too, and I was talking with a friend last night about the same sentiment. His take was that Kickstarter’s a great place to raise “a third” of the money you need, whereas the NEA — while harder to navigate and ultimately be granted funds — would assure you of more of the funding necessary for your art. There’s room for both.

5. Double7 Images » Blog Archive » What Is Kickstarter? Hear from One of the Founders! (VIDEO)
   at 11:02 pm on March 29, 2012

   [...] year Kickstarter is expecting to raise more than $150,000,000 for its users’ projects — $4,000,000 more than the “entire fiscal year 2012 budget for the National Endowment of the [...]