There is a culture war going on in the west, and our side is losing it. "Dumbing down" the general population is a major weapon of the elites on the other side. An uneducated, ignorant population, living at a mere survival level, suits them just fine. They are easy to manipulate.
As for being "forced to pay for likes" - what you are actually doing is contributing to the the common weal, because some things are just done better in bulk. All of these things are open to you as a member of the public. If you dont want to take advantage of those facilities, that's YOUR business. Would you advocate just paying for the bit of road you personnaly use, or beautifying just the corner of the square that you can see?
You are mixing several unrelated items together. We agree that there is an intentional dumbing down of the population. That is driven by...government intervention in the education market. The direct cause is government schooling. Let’s end the governments monopoly on education, both the physical act and the regulation of what is or isn’t an education.
Your intentions, however good, are misguided in the area of government subsidizing ‘museums’. Should they subsidize the museum of porn? Historically, museums were funded and sponsored by the wealthy. Let that be the case today. I like culture and am well educated in a classical education across great music, visual art and literature. I don’t need your confirmation of such, nor the financial subsidy of music, art or literature by government. No thank you.
To presume that culture will collapse without government intervention is to ignore the War on Culture that our very government is waging. The dumbing down of Americans is a direct result of governments culture campaign. I mean should we be subsidizing the Kennedy Center or would the K Street crowd be able to fund it themselves out of the spoils of politics?