A recent discussion on Samizdata weblog reminded me once again that we have too many ministers, secretaries, committees and functionaries that fail to deliver.

Ministry of Culture has proven its vanity many, many times, and it's probably the most expendable one. Arts have always been a discipline where talented individuals or groups pursue some particular goal, in other worlds, it's been business as usual with little need for help.

Private sector took care of Mozart (yes, there was some nobility involved), and the huge globalized market we have today is capable of feeding an unprecedented variety of arts. Demand is diverse, and so is the supply.

If you take the market out of Arts, you eliminated the customer. With state funding of arts, committees decide on who gets the money, and try to shape the public taste. And with that, they inevitably fail.

Public doesn't care what any goddamn bureaucrat thinks of taste and value. People make choices according to their own preferences as they do in a supermarket. Yoghurt or poetry, it's hardly different. And yet, there is no Ministry of Yoghurts.

The United States is one of very few countries that do not have a Secretary of Arts, and it's quite obvious that American cultural products are market leaders everywhere. It's high time that EUrope learns from this lesson, and the governments go on a starvation diet.