Most American industries rely on a healthy mix of public funding and private investment to keep churning. From transportation and timber to mining and manufacturing, the formula is the same: The government provides the seed and soil—in the form of land, roads and an educated workforce—and then private enterprise blossoms. In the art world, however, this formula is altogether broken—toxic, even. Dependence on eroding public funding is killing American art. To save it, artists need to drastically rethink where they fit in the capitalist ecosystem.

In the recent past, arts organizations have tried a novel remedy. They know governments are cash-strapped, so they endeavor to prove the arts are good economic engines in order to get public funding. For example, a museum might ask a city council for funds to relocate to a depressed downtown, claiming it will draw nightlife, foot traffic, tourism and high-priced condos to the area.

To back up these claims, artists and arts organizations cite studies like a 2002 paper from Americans for the Arts, which trumpets, somewhat suspiciously, that “4.4 percent of all businesses” in the United States are arts-related. And yet, for all the great economic benefits the arts are supposed to have, arts institutions are dropping like flies. In Seattle, it’s become normal to open the arts pages and read about another community institution going down in flames. Fifty-eight percent of arts organizations nationwide will run a deficit this year—triple the number from 2000. It seems clear that neither downtown redevelopment nor sheer size is the “magic bullet” that will save American art.

To find that bullet we should look, fittingly enough, to the Rand Corporation, the Defense-industry think tank. Rand recently published a new study, Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Benefits of the Arts, which argues that art provides two kinds of benefits: instrumental benefit, like the economic boost explained above, and intrinsic benefit, i.e., the way art enriches people’s lives. Arts orgs scraping for funds lean too heavily on the instrumental benefit, Rand says, and don’t focus enough on the intrinsic. Forget about the arguments for economic development. That just gets you further from the real purpose of art—to entertain, enlighten and provoke.

The Rand study is important because it gets us thinking about the value of art itself. Knowing this value is the first step to truly integrating art into a capitalist economy. And to quantify it, we must also understand what purpose art serves.

Art is society’s feedback loop. It’s how we take our pulse and measure our progress. By holding the mirror up to nature, to borrow Hamlet’s phrase, artists tell us who we are more beautifully, and with more import, than any census data or telephone survey ever could. Artists, like journalists, doctors and pollsters, provide us with the status reports that keep our society healthy. Art offers a timeless insight. Which endures—a history book on the Spanish Civil War or Picasso’s Guernica? The 1972 presidential election results or Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ?

Why, then, is it so hard to make a living doing this vital work? Why can’t the arts survive in the marketplace?

The short answer is that we, as a public, haven’t built the right infrastructure. We haven’t provided the right seed and soil. Without infrastructure there’s no market—so of course the arts are undervalued. Imagine what would happen to automakers if the government stopped spending billions a year on highways. Cars would suddenly be pretty worthless. Or, better, how many people would buy over-the-counter medicine if there were no FDA to ensure their safety? The same is true of the arts: The market for art will continue to shrink unless the government works to expand it.

So what sorts of seed and soil do we need? What can the public do? The Rand study has a suggestion, and it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: Get ’em while they’re young. They cite early “gateway experiences” as a vital way to increase participation in the arts. In other words, by training the next generation of savvy art consumers today, we can ensure a thriving arts marketplace tomorrow. Art will be better, our communities will be healthier and our lives will be more purposeful.