Category: Politics and Economics

This is the question that those of us who oppose the war get asked. And we must ask it of ourselves, too.

As a socialist, it pains me to say that capitalism is probably a large part of the solution. Drop the sanctions. Resume trade with Iraq.

Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying that capitalism and free trade may be the most efficient way of quickly raising the standard of living for the poorest people of the world. (No really–this does keep me awake. Ask Abi.) Capitalism in itself is no guarantee of the American ideal of “liberty” that everyone seems so worked up about, but it does bring about wealth. And wealth buys you clean water, sanitation, and healthcare. And that means you don’t have to worry that your baby is going to die from malnutrition, or diseases so curable the Western world has practically forgotten how to spell them.

At the same time, if we’re genuinely worried that Saddam Hussein poses a military threat to the rest of the world, we need to practice aggresive containment. By all means provide military aid and assistance to Iraq’s neighbours, but only so long as it is clear that the forces are for defensive purposes. Make it clear that attacking one of them is not a good idea.

But that won’t happen, because this war is no longer about oil. It was, once, but now it’s about stupidity, and machismo. Last year, Bush pursued a political strategy so aggresive that he left himself no way out. He has no way of backing down without losing face, and admitting he was wrong. For him, there is no choice any more. “No war” is just not an option.

And that’s just plain stupid. As all competent strategists know, and as Q summed up so clearly in The World is Not Enough , “Always have an escape plan.”

Well, we did actually make it along to the anti-war demonstration in Glasgow on Saturday. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite get all the way to the rally.

We left Edinburgh quite late (something to do with Alex scribbling on the furniture), and got caught in traffic heading into the Glasgow. In a fit of imagination, we decided to cut off the motorway early and come up on the South side of the Clyde. We figured that we’d get parked somewhere near the Science Centre, and then cross one of the bridges to get to the SECC, which is where the rally was taking place.

Plenty of parking at the SECC, but no luck crossing the bridges. The police had them blocked off at both ends. The two options we then had were a) to walk a couple of miles to the next bridge along, and then have another couple of miles to walk back to a point only a couple of hundred yards from where we’d set off, or b) take the car into the centre of Glasgow and try to find a parking space (along with the fifty thousand or so other folk…).

It was about 14:45 by that point, and the rally was in full swing. It was a lovely day for a walk, but we were both feeling a little intimidated by the crowd on the other bank, and the waves of cheering and megaphone rhetoric that drifted towards us. So we chose option (c), and drove to Stirling instead, where we wandered around a bit, and let Alex play on a spider-shaped slide in one of the shopping arcades.

Are we wimps of travelling all the way to Glasgow, and then not making the effort to go the last few miles? Maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. Abi has been to political demonstrations before, but this was my first. I think we just need some more practice.

We may be going to the anti-war demonstration in Glasgow on Saturday. Pictures and verbiage will follow if we do.

Via the Shifted Librarian:

“Experiments are rife in the music business these days — and Boston will be a test market for one of the most novel of them. Clear Channel Concerts, the nation’s largest concert promoter, has ambitious plans to record live CDs of its shows and sell them to patrons within five minutes after those shows end. Clear Channel is targeting Boston as the first site for the new plan, according to sources within the organization.

Multiple CD burners would be brought in, and the live CDs would probably sell for around $15 in the same way that T-shirts and other merchandise can be purchased after concerts. No one knows what the demand would be, but the project is expected to begin at club shows within a couple of months, then be refined and work its way up to the amphitheater level, though that may not happen until next year, sources say.” (Boston Globe)

How cool is this? $15 to get a CD of a gig you’ve just been to, right after it has ended! I know that whenever I’ve just been to a good concert, I’m all jumped up on happy endorphins and almost eager to spend money on merchandise. (Unfortunately, Clear Channel is talking about trials in a “couple of months”, so the pilot will probably be to late for my road trip.)

I can see this making huge inroads into the way people get their recorded music. Rather than listening to bands on the radio, and going out to a shop to buy their CD (of which you may have heard one or two tracks), you get recommendations from friends about good concerts, and when you like one you buy the CD. Maybe there’d be more “compilation” gigs, with several bands on stage in a night, so you could sample your new music at live venues, rather than on the radio.

And this way, people wouldn’t all end up with exactly the same recording of a particular song. Because it’s live music, every gig is different. The music promoters would also start actively encouraging file sharing and swapping, because that would drive more people to their concerts. If the concert were at was particularly good, surely you’d want to have copies of those particular versions of the songs?

Yes, you could wait until someone else bought the CD and gave you a copy, but then we’re back to the fact that you’ve just been jumping and singing for two hours, you’re in a great mood, and you’re highly receptive to the idea of parting with your money.

There are a couple of articles I’ve read recently (“Piracy is Progressive Taxation” by Tim O’Reilly, and “Embrace file-sharing, or die” by John and Ben Snyder) that discuss the current battle between music publishers and the file sharing community. Anyone who isn’t in the music publishing industry (or is paid by them) seems to eventually come to the same conclusion:
File-sharing networks don’t threaten book, music, or film publishing, they threaten existing publishers.

There’s no law that says musicians and bands must go to existing publishers. If Clear Channel’s idea takes off, then it’s the concert promoters who will be the publishers of the next century. Bands won’t sign recording contracts with record companies, they’ll sign concert deals with promoters.

Will musicians end up with a better deal out of it? Maybe, but probably not. Concert promoters are in the game for the money just as much as the current record companies are, and by all accounts both industries are equally big nests of vipers. The difference is that Promoters will want the public to swap files, and will do everything they can to make this easy, while the Publishers won’t.

The public will love this, and technology companies will love it, too, because there’s a fantastic opportunity for them to make money from new hardware. The CD-R idea is just a transitional one. iPod and its lookalikes are the future of personal music players. Sooner or later, all music players will feature a firewire or USB2 port for sucking down hours of music in seconds. Concert venues will feature banks of docking cradles, or transfer cables, where you can swipe your credit card and suck down the gig in en eyeblink.

Suddendly the future of music publishing doesn’t look so grim any more. The only thing that could stand in the way of this revolution is if the current music publishers start buying concert promoters, and lock down this new business model before it can even start. That would suck.

Copyright is forever, not just for Christmas

The Eldred vs. Ashcroft case was decided, in Ashcroft’s favour, by the US Supreme Court last week. This was the case calling into question the constitutionality of the Mickey Mouse copyright extension act. Lawrence Lessig (one smart cookie) was Eldred’s lawyer, and he writes about the defeat in his blog. He has already proposed a comeback, which would allow an estimated 98% of copyrighted works to enter the public domain as if the copyright extension hadn’t been upheld. It sounds like a fair compromise, that people from all sides of the argument could rally to. So it’ll probably fail.

Fuel efficiency is for pussies

Via Webword come two articles (here and here)on how SUVs are not nearly as safe as their manufacturers would like you to think, and how their owners are generally more aggressive and careless behind the wheel. And they have concrete facts and figures to back this up.

“To illustrate the kind of selfishness that marks some SUV drivers, Bradsher finds people who rave about how they’ve survived accidents with barely a scratch, yet neglected to mention that the people in the other car were all killed. (One such woman confesses rather chillingly to Bradsher that her first response after killing another driver was to go out and get an even bigger SUV.)

“The tragedy of SUVs is that highway fatalities were actually in decline before SUVs came into vogue, even though Americans were driving farther. This is true largely for one simple reason: the seatbelt. Seatbelt usage rose from 14 percent in 1984 to 73 percent in 2001. But seatbelts aren’t much help if you’re sideswiped by an Escalade, a prospect that looms yet more ominously as SUVs enter the used-car market. Not surprisingly, last year, for the first time in a decade, the number of highway deaths actually rose.”

If you’re going to drive a tank, chances are you’re going to treat the road like a battleground. And vice versa. It’s a nice self-fulfilling prophecy that does nothing but stuff money into the pockets of the car manufacturers and–most of all, the oil companies. Yes, them again. Remember: by driving an SUV, you’re supporting terrorists.

Truth in advertising? No thanks.

Also via Webword (people will start accusing you of being a Socialist soon, John 🙂 comes notice of another US Supreme Court case up for consideration soon: are corporations entitled to “free speech?” The simple answer is “no,” but unfortunately corporations have gained so much political power in the Western world that they’ll probably come out with a “yes”, or at the very least a strong “maybe.” If the justices do come out with a “no”, it’ll be framed in such a way that it still leaves the door open for corporations to be treated as “persons” in plenty of other areas of the law. Cynical, moi?

War on Iraq

Via Charlie Stross, a highly eloquent article in the Times from John Le Carré. There are circumstances in which war is justified. This war, though, is predicated on dishonesty. If it goes ahead at all, the US and British governments will have won their first victory already: they will have defeated their own people. That first battle is being fought with PR, spin, defective reasoning and outright lies. Decades of television and media infestation have worn down our intellectual defenses. “If we say you can go to war, will you please let us go back to our soaps and our reality TV?”

Wake up. Saddam Hussein is a bad man, but this isn’t the way to get rid of him. It isn’t the way to put a stop to terrorism. (Would an invasion of Ireland have put a stop to the IRA bombings in the 70s, 80s, and 90s?) And it sure as hell isn’t going to stop the proliferation of nuclear or biological weapons, as North Korea is busy proving. Or are we going to invade them, too? (Hmm. I think not.)

Overall: grrr

At some point I’ll have to do my paranoid rant about how I think corporations have developed some kind of gestalt consciousness of their own, and are controlling the world at a level beyond the comprehension (and influence) of ordinary humans. (It’s a Gaia kind of thing, but more selfish and less benign.)

Stories like this one are becoming increasingly prevalent of late (via WebWord). Some of them are simply made up, some are exaggerated to make for better propaganda, but some of them are just true. It makes me a little bit worried that with all the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and anti-Bush stuff I’ve written this last year, I’ll find myself on a no-fly list when Scott and I do our Toad the Wet Sprocket road trip next year.

We’ll see. I do find it encouraging, though, that both right- and left-wing voices (the Lew Rockwell site on which this article appeared bills itself as “the premier anti-state, pro-market site on the net”–not my usual reading matter) in the US are expressing dismay and fear over the policies and practices that could turn the USA into a police state. “Land of the free,” and all that, remember?

And while I’m in the politics/economics zone anyway, Andrew Orlowski in The Register has an interesting article about the beginnings of a backlash against short-termism in investment markets. Well worth reading.