You know I don’t like being a thief and a crimbinal
and pyrite all these years and I wusched I could better make it
one. So I am thinking on the obvious fo awhile now and I
b’lieve I have come up with Project UP – that is the Universal
Pamacea guaranteed to solve all our problems and then some.
As I understand it there’s tens of millions of men who
growed up with roof over their head and food on the table and some
even took vacations and had families to occupy their spare time with.
Mostly they got the roof and grits but the other stuff is further and
farther betwixt.
You ask them is this bothers them and they say “No,
I’m keeping busy and something’s bound to turnup.” What
do you expect? “Sure it bothers me and I got a 12 gauge under the
bed in case it really bothers me.”
That’s problem number one.
Problem number two, which we are all intimately
acquainted with is people who spend too much time online and
especially appropriating the legally owned property of other law
abiding, hard working, tax paying and property owning citizens.
Dudn’t no one see the connection?
It’s
very simple - give me a job that pays 80 thou
A
year and I won’t have the time to spend all day downloading stuff
- I may even pay for it with my new found wealth.
Changing the focus. I used to write a blog which
eventually gravitated to the business of the companies that
controlled multimedia on the web. This was late 9
1990’s.
And I got totally pissed because a lot of people
Had
gotten into the field and the major companies, rather then allow them
to enter the market place dragged their heels and basically sabotaged
it.
The result was the crash of 2000. There have been so
many crashes we can’t keep them straight but rest assured – after
each crash we come back a little weaker then we went in.
I don’t want to blow anyones mind but the piracy thing
could have been stopped years ago – just make a product too large
to be downloaded – suffice to say I didn’t want to give the
creeps any ideas because they have a knack for taking good ideas and
turning them into shit.
Okay so that was year 2000 – but the idea of
deliberately impeding technology to maximize profit continues till
today – and frankly it’s a drag.
State
of the art – thirty years ago
This
is the famous amorphic wall as in Bill Gates house . It’s
been around for ages, since the 80’s.
If you look at Firefox the add ons and such are
impressive which is the way things should be but aren’t because
Firefox is open source.
I’m not a developer far from it. But when the
first mp3 apps came out, like macamp and winamp part of the
Coolness
was being able to chose between many skins – all made by
outsiders and free. Now look at I-tunes – I
never cared for it. And worse yet as they developed I-tunes they started stripping down the original QT player so to get a playlist for example you must use I-tunes which is bloatware and non skinable.
never cared for it. And worse yet as they developed I-tunes they started stripping down the original QT player so to get a playlist for example you must use I-tunes which is bloatware and non skinable.
The reason Apple has become a dirty word among
developers (this is old news) is first they moved to OSX and
removed classic capability soon after which mean that all the little
guys in basements who had spent ten years on their product were
effectively fucked. The big companies in comparison could
upgrade quite easily – and at a tidy profit. Then to add
insult to injury the move from PPC to intell meant another tranche of
software became obsolete.
It wasn’t that OSX and Intell cpus were bad ideas,
it’s just they left a lot of people behind – people that
like those laid off in their fifties – are never going to catch up.
It’s all ancient history now and I mention it
not to diss Apple so much as to suggest that there’s a much better
way to do things and what is more you don’t have to live on bread
and water to do it.
I happened to make a few people rather well to do when I
told them to buy Apple at it’s low point, because I go with
management and especially in tech industries that’s the way to bet.
But now? We shall see, won’t we?
Nevertheless the lesson to be learned, which
is that a closed system dedicated to personal profit cannot compete
with an open system which spreads the profit around has already been
learned, many times. That systems dedicated to the good of the
few have existed is not news either. The thing is such systems
have to be held in place by procedures that we generally think of as
repressive, if not brutal, or even genocidal.
In reality most systems are somewhere in the middle and
I am not about to be the one who decides what kind of regime you or I
function under. I will o so far however as to point out that we
must not delude ourselves into believing that it is in the interest
of those in the upper hierarchy to encourage innovation if such
changes will remove them from power.
It is not going to happen regardless of the constant
misinformation campaign seeking to convince us that it will.
However to quote someone,”If you keep going in a circle eventually
you wind up where you started.”
And sometimes it’s a mobius
transformation. That is when the revolutionary becomes the
opposide side of what they believed they were fighting for – a
tyrant.
I have thought long and carefully about Marx’s
declaration that one of the most effective ways to destroy capitalism
is to give it everything it wants. This is not that far from
the suggestion that the last capitalist will be hung on a rope he
just sold.
We have seen the practical application in the past forty
years. When all regulations were removed the problem was not
limitless power but instability. (Suffice to say, the dirty little
secret of Wall Street is one mans instability is anothers
opportunity.)
Riding a bicycle is comparatively simple, but try doing
it when after a night of drinking and it becomes impossible.
Again, this time to refer to Darwin’s suggestion
that without private property the natives of Tierra del Fuego were
doomed. These were people that lived on the southern most tip of
South America in a primitive state. They now are extinct.
So we say, “Information wants to be free.” Right?
That is the mantra of the basically good guys. We do not wish
to see the goddess opportunity chained in some dungeon at the command
of the horrible beast from Redmond, for instance. Nor do we want the
best things in life to only go to the few.
Still private property, for better or worse, is one of
the realities of our world. There are many of us who, for a
variety of reasons, jealousy perhaps or love of freedom
want to preserve or in some cases create individual freedom. We
like it. A surprising number of people don’t understand this
but it has to be taken, as Jefferson would say, as self evident.
The freedom to walk across a field conflicts with the owners property
prerogatives – so there’s a conflict inherent here.
Here we go through the looking glass.
In the real world the case for open source software –
for instance- or free content file sharing has been made. The
open source software advocates have a very powerful argument
that their products have consistently proven better then the
corporate ones. If that doesn’t convince you I can give you
an even more convincing argument. War.
Wars are almost always won by the sides that work
together of their own free will and are not forced to do things by
paymasters. I doubt one could find a more crucial application of
business necessity.
So why isn’t open source the norm? For the
same reason CEO’s make hundreds of times more then line workers –
because among other things, in the absence of war the necessity of
justice is not appreciated or considered.
That’s where we come in. It is our job to make
people appreciate not the desirability but the absolute necessity of
justice – economic justice.
We have waited many years and we may yet wait many years
more, but our day will come and our vision will persevere .
To sum up then. Theres the lord of the manor, initially
all powerful. Theres the serfs, the microserfs if
you will, and there will be a union, or guild, call it what you will.
But I have had my head handed to me enough times to know that we must
become aware of and adopt the strategies of the opponent.
I feel like L Ron Hubbard in a way when he talks about
the powers needed for survival. We must learn from the masters –
the corporations. We must learn to emulate their lies, to intimidate
the weak and deceive the powerful. If god isn’t on our
side we can make a deal, Make God a deal he can’t refuse.
Choose the battle well, like Alexander don’t fight unless victory
is probable.
These are the maxims of the cold war – of the new cold
war that is being waged within the walls of the empires.
If this repels you. If the knowledge that you are above
the hunt and degrading opportunity then you are free to do what you
want.
Of course there will be doubt. When the Muslims
invaded Spain under the flag of God there were those who could not
see why they should fight. In truth, in those days especially
Islam was probably a more open ideology the Christianity.
As a young boy I would sit at the feet of men who
had fought in the second world war. These were no armchair heroes
flattering fools, they were people who had seen war upfront.
And they said “There were bad things done on all sides.”
I never discovered exactly what these bad things were
but one can guess.
Fortunately in this new game such violence is counter
productive and ironically we must guard against the accusation that
it is in our interest to use it.
- back to the normative essay
My orientation has changed a little. I used to think of
the virtual state as a way of circumventing the current power
structures and in part without getting them mad at us. Another
way to look at it is to try to imagine the freedoms we currently
grant to corporations – to circumvent national laws, regulation and
taxes – being given to if not to individuals, then smaller
corporations.
I don’t need a fuckin miracle. I’m prepared to
keep refining the concept until it works because I have nothing
better to do. Also I want to avoid the trap of thinking that one
person can make a difference. In other words it’s not a matter of
one person inventing the wheel it’s a matter of the wheel waiting
to be discovered.
That’s a whole nother mind trip – ut maybe if in
fact we have regressed to the middle ages economically and socially
with the corporations playing the role of the manors and barons we
should accept that.
The difference between CEO’s and line workers in the
US has continued to increase – now it’s over 300%
And
I don’t see any corrective mechanism for that
It’s like with Obama, who I don’t particularly
dislike – unlike his predecessors, but as Naomi
Klein has noted - “Where’s the policies?” I don’t at
this point care why I’m just dealing with what is.
Fuck. Maybe humans just like being slaves. They seem to
revert to it time and time again – but to get back to the middle
ages analogy what we want to do is the equivalent of making
buildings- it’s a task that requires a lot of different skills –
but not too different.
The actual masons , who were formed as a response to the
nobility are still around, actually tat group is kinda set in it’s
ways and has a protestant orientation. FWIW – In MA Bell the Masons
had a lot of power to promote and as in many of these cases
with organizations it was also used to obstruct persons deemed not
team players.
Don’t let this fuck you up but a lot of players in NYC
meet through their dealers, heroin dealers. It’s an exclusive club
and everyone is sure to be discrete. Like I say lets be honest a lot
of players are or were junkies at some point. It’s not my thing but
I have worked with them and let’s just say they are not always
reliable.
Then in TV there’s the gay mafia, again like junkies,
these guys and girls, in the past especially are exceptionally
discrete, employing “beards” ( hetero role playing partners) and
you can’t blame them because in many cases it’s hideaway your
real self or starve.
And we all do it to some extent.
And it’s not entirely a lie. A guy says he’s in the field
for the love of music and not just to make money, despite the fact
that he seems to do everything possible to make money, we
really don’t have the right to throw stones.
I saw the phil spector movie recently. Phil was an early
hero. David Mamet wrote and directed and apparently made the case
that Phil was innocent of killing the girl. But Phil was his own
worst enemy.
For
a long time he has come off as crazy as a loon.
I
don’t know what the story is there. He made some damn good records.
I realize I’m changing the subject and this “essay”
is wandering all over the place. So to wrap it up and put it together
what I am saying is that artists have to learn to act like
businessmen – instead of being repelled by the three piece suits.
I realize I’m changing the subject and this “essay”
is wandering all over the place (as usual). So to wrap it up and put
it together what I am saying is that artists have to learn to act
like businessmen – instead of being repelled by the three piece
suits.
It's almost counter intuitive, which may be why it's not
often tried. It's like injecting order into chaos in order not
to lessen it but rather to increase it.
My
first thought is to think of the famous universal syllogism.
"First
there is a mountain
Then
there is no mountain
Then
there is"
or
the zen version
“before
satori one chops wood and carries water
then one does not chop wood or carry water
after satori one chops wood and carries water"
Then,
of course, I could put on my tough guy hat and read the riot act. For
instance one could inform the capital markets that they had better
make nice with the workers or they will face consequences that they
will find far less comfortable then the alternative.
To
put this in the medieval terms "Either pay the bricklayers a
decent wage or you will have no cathedral - and we all know what
happens to cities with no cathedral - that's right, they go to
hell and burn forever."
Woody Guthrie one time in the fifties got talked into
trying out in the Rainbow Room which is a restaurant at the top of
the NBC building/Rockefeller center. And so he gets
there and rides the elevator up. Steps out, looks around for
ten minutes and gets back on the elevator. He just didn’t
want to do it. It wasn’t for him.
Can you imagine some “suit” saying “What’s
this talking blues thing? Where’s the melody?”
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