We decide the winners, but what put the ideas in our head in the first place to make these decisions? Also, things like art and beauty are subjective, but then there also tends to be things that have much greater appeal by a wide audience then other things... such as the beauty of a sunset on the beach.
There are two main ways we learn/know anything.
Conscious decisions.
Non-conscious default.
What is the difference?
Conscious decisions are like having a bouncer outside Club 54 checking out the people in line who want to get in. If somebody isn't "cool" enough the bouncer/doorman tells them to get lost.
Non-conscious default is passive acceptance of ideas, myths, prejudice, culture, nomenclature, gossip, misinformation.
It is like accepting soup from a stranger with peculiar tidbits floating around inside. You swallow everything indiscriminately and accept the result.
Now, how does that answer your question? (Q: what put the ideas in our head in the first place to make these decisions?)
Until we BECOME a consious and rational adult we are at the mercy of our parents, friends, society and milieu (or Ethos, as the Greeks would say).
What kind of ART or MUSIC you are subjected to and how your parents, friends, peers COMMENT on same is, for you, a 'GIVEN' or received "truth."
How could you have "other"?
Only by straying consciously OUTSIDE of your envelope...outside the box...outside your socio-economic status...outside your immediate education opportunity can you ACQUIRE a W...I...D..E..R set of choices.
Beans and Rice will keep you alive. But, there are more choices!
A bottle of Thunderbird will get you high. But, there are more choices!
Art and Music exist in a VAST lineage of human culture over centuries of human development.
Unless and UNTIL each of us takes the bother to investigate the BIG PICTURE of what precedes us and exists OUTSIDE our own narrow spectrum of "givens" we don't so much have TASTE as we do PREJUDICE about Art and Music.
The Bank Tellers presumably have not spent their lives in personal discovery of the entire art milieu and seeing the contrast between ordinary talent and genius, conceptual commonplace and vision, mastery and mere technique.
I spent 20+ years in the Art World and there are more bullshit artists than the other kind! A lot of poseur madness sloshes around in that pool.
Or, to put it yet another way....would you rather have a graduate of medical school perform surgery on you or merely somebody who watches lots of doctor shows on television??
Something like that. EXPERTISE is not merely talent. It is countless hours of dedication to splitting the difference between this and that and making CONSIOUS choices. Being the bouncer at the entrance of your own mind will keep the riff raff out of your brain!