The reality is that the vast majority of people would rather entertain themselves shopping in retail than going to a symphony. Pass judgement all you like, but it won’t change the reality that people simply don’t value “the arts” as much as you do (or at least, the specific arts that you do).
Should the symphony pay them all six-figure salaries until it becomes insolvent, and then closes anyway?
I'm not sure what you want to happen here.
It seems like the people of San Antonio are not interested in paying for a symphony. That's their prerogative. Many cities don't have a symphony. There's a great many goods and services that take years of skill to master that I don't pay for because I don't want them.
From a union of musicians perspective, I think they made the right choice. No symphony for San Antonio, no reason to return to the table. Maybe other cities will be a little more careful than they would have been with raising and using funds.
They aren't expressing shock at the city, they're expressing shock at one or two comments on here that they deem morally disgusting. It's totally unnecessary (we can read) but pretty standard.
The rebuke of the performers for not negotiating is right in the OP. It's not the performers fault that there's no workable solution for the cities level of interest in a symphony. If the symphony goes down in quality there will be even less money.
As I said, the San Antonio Symphony does not appear to be a public organization. Of course I could be wrong, I just read the article. Wikipedia appears to confirm my interpretation. Though even if it were a city can't do "whatever it wants" they still have budgets and stuff. But it isn't so your point is moot.
I never said it was the performers fault. No idea what you're responding to.
The point being argued was that someone is disappointed by comments in these threads and somehow their upset is inappropriate. Looking at the comments many of them back this management being disappointed that performers and their union destroyed this public good by not negotiating when offered lower compensation.
The city as a whole is saying it can't afford a professional symphony and that's fine. That isn't the performers fault and they were protected from a downward spiral by having a union that didn't let them go into poverty either working for free to their no longer compensated standards or losing more and more funding through poorer quality while they worked other jobs.
No one would accept the argument that IT workers are in the wrong if they refuse ever increasing pay cuts to stay in an environment that is no longer able to support them.
The morally disgusted comments at the tenor of the discussion were posted 8 and 9 hours ago, respectively. The sole comment posted prior to that, as far as I can tell, with anti-union sentiment was
"If the musicians weren't unionized, wouldn't they all be better off right now since they'd still be employed?"
which has a bunch of pushback in the replies immediately. So again, the point that the moral outrage at the HN crowd and their anti-union sentiment trying to force the musicians into poverty seems unnecessary.
"many of them back this management being disappointed that performers and their union destroyed this public good by not negotiating when offered lower compensation"
I don't see many. Feel free to share (posted before the morally outraged comments, of course).
I cannot believe the discussions occurring here surrounding professional musicians, people who have trained for years to hone their skills. I cannot believe that the attitude towards a union -"wouldn't they all be better now since they'd still be employed"? These are statements made by someone who never had to face the reality of the fact that sometimes a job offers so little money that you are BETTER off not working. The reality in many poor countries is that you could work for 5-10$ a day, but people choose not to work jobs but rather to engage in subsistence farming as that offers them at least food to survive, whereas the 5-10$ a day wouldn't. I cannot believe the narrow mindedness of such statements...
I found it offensive that I used to make more than someone playing in a symphony as someone working in retail. I found it offensive that I made more money in a week than they did in a month and all I did was peddle more garbage for people to buy to make themselves feel better about their empty pointless and gluttonous lives...
I feel sad that at this point this is where art is headed. Its shocking to see that art is potentially returning to the same dynamic that we saw in the Middle Ages - where some wealthy benefactor is needed to allow artists to continue their activity. Each time something like this happens we lose big chunks of what and who we are as a species. We're normalizing the death of art, of imagination and of beauty and assume that everything needs to have a monetary value attached to it, that everything needs to yield ROI. It's repulsive...