Um... socialism?

So I’ve been trolling around the Internet lately looking on the business/investment side of writing.  In some random little blog I read that JK Rowling received a government grant whilst she was a single mum writing the first book of Harry Potter.  Obviously deserving because she had a kid to take care of … but she also wrote a pretty significant book or seven.

I have a million thoughts about that as a writer.  Duh.  But I’m going to take my own hopes and ambitions out of this for a few moments.  Because what resonated with me first about that little vignette is, um, socialism.

One of the things I love about London, unsurprising, is the theater.  I have seen so many brilliant plays there.  Each time I go to the National.  Funded by the government.  High quality theater.  One of the absolute best productions of Much Ado About Nothing I’ve ever seen was staged there.  Amazing.  On the government dime.

Is it a handout?  To a lazy bunch of artists with no work ethic?  What’s the return?  A packed house full of tourists who pay for a ticket and then go out to dinner on the South Bank.  Who stay in a hotel, who go shopping the next day.  Who put money into the English economy. 

So what about that out of work mother?  Was that welfare to give her money to write a book?  Or was that an investment in a product?  Now she’s richer than the queen.  How many other corporations have benefitted from that government grant?  Warner Brothers, Coca Cola, and every major bookseller in the world.  WORLD.

Yes, there is only going to be one JK Rowling.  That’s what makes her so amazing.  Obviously there are a lot of poor artists out there who are, well, frankly poor in quality and will never appeal to the masses in quite the same way.  But isn’t that business?  Isn’t the rule of business that the majority of them fail?  So why do we turn our noses up at investing in people?  Minds.  Creativity.  Invention.  Why is it considered a socialist handout to give an individual a chance to hone their craft and make something the world will want to buy?  Whether it’s a book or a play or music or a car or a computer or a … child that will grow up someday to be a JK Rowling?

What if this amazing author didn’t live in a country with socialism?  How many capitalists would lose out on the profit from her creativity?