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Post by: LoneLictor
Yesterday my somewhat crazy brother went on a rant about how history has a very liberal trend. He traced back from like the fething dark ages, talking about how things steadily get more and more liberal. He talked about how the more advanced a society is, the more welfare there is and that sort of thing. Even though I mostly agree with him (mostly, some of the stuff he said was still crazy and stupid) I kinda stopped listening at that point. Then he started going through American History, and how far we've gone from the US's quite libertarian-ish beginnings to the society we have now.
So, I figured this might as well start an intellectual conversation or at least an entertaining flame war. Does history have a liberal trend? If so, will it continue? And where will it stop?
Discuss.
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Post by: Frazzled
It was extremely liberal in Stalinist Russia, especially in the gulags. One for all and all for one Comrade!
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Post by: Do_I_Not_Like_That
History is written by the victors, be they Soviets, Nazis, weiner dogs etc etc. If history seems too liberal, it is because we live in a liberal society.
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Post by: LoneLictor
Frazzled wrote:It was extremely liberal in Stalinist Russia, especially in the gulags. One for all and all for one Comrade!
To clarify, the picture represents the argument that you're using.
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Post by: dæl
I would say yes, now most of the population can vote, people can air their opinions without fear of reproach, and people have basic human rights. IMO the most advanced societies are the social democracies of Scandinavia, where they have referenda on pretty much every issue, but actually trust the public's opinion to make the right choice.
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Post by: AustonT
It depends on what time period you are looking at and who is writing the history. Marxist historians are clearly going to look deeper into the social policies and extrapolate a Marxist historical hypothesis. Revisionist historians will also generally take a closer look at social constructs, and generally you'll find the more wealthy a civilization is the more liberal it's policies become the poorer the more austere. Realistically there is a certain liberal bent to History but it has to do with mankind growing more adept at solving it's problems than a political agenda.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
For most people, empathy and Christian (or Bhuddist, Islamic, etc) charity compel them to help the weaker of society. The increasing wealth of modern society has created greater and greater surpluses to allow this sort of charity to be undertaken.
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Post by: biccat
LoneLictor wrote:Yesterday my somewhat crazy brother went on a rant about how history has a very liberal trend. He traced back from like the fething dark ages, talking about how things steadily get more and more liberal.
Define liberal.
LoneLictor wrote:He talked about how the more advanced a society is, the more welfare there is and that sort of thing.
"Welfare" - as in transfer payments - are not liberal.
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Post by: Palindrome
Frazzled wrote:It was extremely liberal in Stalinist Russia, especially in the gulags. One for all and all for one Comrade!
Im not quite sure how you can call one the most authoritarian regimes in history liberal.
In general history has become more liberal, at least in terms of personal freedoms. I wouldn't as far as to say that we have an actual liberal society though.
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Post by: SilverMK2
Palindrome wrote:Frazzled wrote:It was extremely liberal in Stalinist Russia, especially in the gulags. One for all and all for one Comrade!
Im not quite sure how you can call one the most authoritarian regimes in history liberal.
I believe he was being facetious 
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Post by: dæl
biccat wrote:
"Welfare" - as in transfer payments - are not liberal.
"Welfare" as in providing for those without the capacity to provide for themselves is liberal. Or should the disabled starve to death?
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Post by: Frazzled
Palindrome wrote:Frazzled wrote:It was extremely liberal in Stalinist Russia, especially in the gulags. One for all and all for one Comrade!
Im not quite sure how you can call one the most authoritarian regimes in history liberal.
In general history has become more liberal, at least in terms of personal freedoms. I wouldn't as far as to say that we have an actual liberal society though.
My sarcasm icon wasn't working.
You were doing good until you went to the second sentence. General history ebbs and flows. Seome time more liberal under this definition,. sometimes less.
Compare North America and Europe now to 1939 you betcha. Compare 1939 to 1925 no way Jose.
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Post by: Ahtman
Reality has a well-known liberal bias. - Stephen Colbert
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Post by: Frazzled
Ahtman wrote:Reality has a well-known liberal bias. - Stephen Colbert
Except by its very natural it can't. Its just reality.
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Post by: biccat
dæl wrote:"Welfare" as in providing for those without the capacity to provide for themselves is liberal.
That's not liberal. At least, not according to the "liberty" definition of liberal.
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Post by: dæl
biccat wrote:dæl wrote:"Welfare" as in providing for those without the capacity to provide for themselves is liberal.
That's not liberal. At least, not according to the "liberty" definition of liberal.
Does in the sense of "liberal amount" 
We both know that liberty as in personal freedom, and liberal as in progressive thinking are separate entities.
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Post by: biccat
dæl wrote:biccat wrote:dæl wrote:"Welfare" as in providing for those without the capacity to provide for themselves is liberal.
That's not liberal. At least, not according to the "liberty" definition of liberal.
Does in the sense of "liberal amount"
We both know that liberty as in personal freedom, and liberal as in progressive thinking are separate entities.
Which is why I asked what the OP was referring to when he said "liberal". Oddly enough, the most liberal progressives tend to be the most illiberal.
But no, there is no trend towards liberty, or liberalism. Freedom and totalitarianism ebb and flow.
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Post by: Palindrome
Frazzled wrote:
Compare North America and Europe now to 1939 you betcha. Compare 1939 to 1925 no way Jose.
Hence why I said in general. 20th century Europe was far more liberal than 10th century Europe. There will always be variations, both geographical and chronological.
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Post by: Joey
Part of the problem here is that americans don't know what "liberal" means. Pretty much every western nation is liberal.
In general, societies are more liberal the more wealth they produce, in Europe anyway. Hence why western Europe became more and more liberal during the 17th-19th century, culminating in the modern world.
It's worth noting that Russia was never liberal - Stalin didn't take away liberties they didn't have.
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
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Post by: AustonT
Joey wrote:
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
I suppose you must be talking about a different Napoleon than the one that reinstated the slave trade in 1802?
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Post by: Joey
AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
I suppose you must be talking about a different Napoleon than the one that reinstated the slave trade in 1802?
The one that established The Napoleonic Code in Europe, which led to pretty much every mainly European democracy today.
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Post by: AustonT
Joey wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
I suppose you must be talking about a different Napoleon than the one that reinstated the slave trade in 1802?
The one that established The Napoleonic Code in Europe, which led to pretty much every mainly European democracy today.
In other words: No
It also did not "lead to" any European democracies, it was "used by." There's a rather large difference.
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Post by: Joey
AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
I suppose you must be talking about a different Napoleon than the one that reinstated the slave trade in 1802?
The one that established The Napoleonic Code in Europe, which led to pretty much every mainly European democracy today.
In other words: No
It also did not "lead to" any European democracies, it was "used by." There's a rather large difference.
His actions more or less directly lead to the widespread revolts of 1848. He was a catalyst of the spark of revolution in Europe.
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Post by: AustonT
Joey wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
I suppose you must be talking about a different Napoleon than the one that reinstated the slave trade in 1802?
The one that established The Napoleonic Code in Europe, which led to pretty much every mainly European democracy today.
In other words: No
It also did not "lead to" any European democracies, it was "used by." There's a rather large difference.
His actions more or less directly lead to the widespread revolts of 1848. He was a catalyst of the spark of revolution in Europe.
ROFL.
Bullgak.
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Post by: Frazzled
Joey wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
I suppose you must be talking about a different Napoleon than the one that reinstated the slave trade in 1802?
The one that established The Napoleonic Code in Europe, which led to pretty much every mainly European democracy today.
No. WWI killed the royals. WWII killed the dictators. The Napoleonic Code didn't have jack gak to do with it, other than being superior to the UK/US legal code. Automatically Appended Next Post: Joey wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
Hitler was basically a reaction to Napoleon - one conquered Europe and freed it, the other conquered to enslave. Obviously, he failed
I suppose you must be talking about a different Napoleon than the one that reinstated the slave trade in 1802?
The one that established The Napoleonic Code in Europe, which led to pretty much every mainly European democracy today.
In other words: No
It also did not "lead to" any European democracies, it was "used by." There's a rather large difference.
His actions more or less directly lead to the widespread revolts of 1848. He was a catalyst of the spark of revolution in Europe.
Yes thats why they had a Kaisar, Tzar and various nobles ruling pretty much everything but France. It wasn't lawyers it was the death of millions.
Even France was not the result of that. remember Maximillian got killed by Mexicans...Mexicans!
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Post by: sebster
I think it's a mistake confuse a general trend in the developed world over the past 200 years with the whole of humanity, over it's entire history, or across the whole world today. I don't think you'd find much support for a general trend towards liberalism in Africa today, nor would you find a general trends towards liberalism in Europe before about 1400AD.
What we have seen in the developed world, in the last couple of hundred years is that as people have gotten more educated and wealthier they've become more humane. Both in the level of cruelty we enjoy (things that used to be fairly common, like cat burning, are abhorrent to us today), and in the amount of time and resources we spend to improve the lives of others.
We've also become vastly more tolerant and inclusive as a society.
Whether those things are specifically 'liberal' though, is a more complex issue. Conservatives aren't opposed to people acting humanely, rather the debate is over the extent of such, and who should undertake it.
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Post by: Frazzled
sebster wrote:I think it's a mistake confuse a general trend in the developed world over the past 200 years with the whole of humanity, over it's entire history, or across the whole world today. I don't think you'd find much support for a general trend towards liberalism in Africa today, nor would you find a general trends towards liberalism in Europe before about 1400AD.
What we have seen in the developed world, in the last couple of hundred years is that as people have gotten more educated and wealthier they've become more humane. Both in the level of cruelty we enjoy (things that used to be fairly common, like cat burning, are abhorrent to us today), and in the amount of time and resources we spend to improve the lives of others.
We've also become vastly more tolerant and inclusive as a society.
Whether those things are specifically 'liberal' though, is a more complex issue. Conservatives aren't opposed to people acting humanely, rather the debate is over the extent of such, and who should undertake it.
I'd dispute that strongly. W. Europe has been under a Pax America for decades, after going through the most wrenching bloodiest period in history (outside of China's 1970's of course). We'll see what happens in the future. After all Greece is about seven days from being kicked out of the Euro.
In the words of the immortal bard: We'll see.
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Post by: Orlanth
Liberalism thrives because it plays into the hands of the type of conservative with power. Namely the 'Free Market'.
The Free Market is not free, slavery is now achieved indirectly through debt and interest repayment. The 'free' economic model is propagated because it suits some for that to occur.
The Free Market is also undemocratic, large companies are to a large extent a mimic of the feudal system with 'lords' having 'overlords' (the franchise system and the corporate structure). With anyone on a standard wage being a form of serf with the educated elite as freemen. The banking system provides the top tier in corporate feudalism, and it is largely self serving above autority and highly unstable.
Most large businesses are inherited so the feudal system is again propogated there.
We are 'free' to join this system or be poor.
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Post by: Samus_aran115
I think it definitely has been a liberal trend... since the dark ages, at least. Even before that, the romans were probably what most of us would imagine as liberal.
Is the rise of organized religion considered 'conservative'? And is the fall of religious ideals 'liberal'?
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Post by: sirlynchmob
we're getting more liberal, but at some point we need to start working towards the future.
We can grow enough food and feed the world even at 7 billion. We just need the governments to all be replaced by a computer.to manage all the resources to get where they are needed.
I have a bunch more but kid stuff came up, i'll finish tomorrow 
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Post by: dæl
Orlanth wrote:Liberalism thrives because it plays into the hands of the type of conservative with power. Namely the 'Free Market'.
The Free Market is not free, slavery is now achieved indirectly through debt and interest repayment. The 'free' economic model is propagated because it suits some for that to occur.
The Free Market is also undemocratic, large companies are to a large extent a mimic of the feudal system with 'lords' having 'overlords' (the franchise system and the corporate structure). With anyone on a standard wage being a form of serf with the educated elite as freemen. The banking system provides the top tier in corporate feudalism, and it is largely self serving above autority and highly unstable.
Most large businesses are inherited so the feudal system is again propogated there.
We are 'free' to join this system or be poor.
Totally agree about wage slavery, however I think the times they are a changing and we are moving from Marxism to Neo Marxism and awareness of the exploitation of capitalism is spreading. I firmly believe that by next century we will have become post scarcist, and the concept of money will be a memory, but then, I'm an optimist. That would be a liberal society though, so to answer the OP if we end up there we are definitely moving forward.
And you could not join the current system, if you chose to form a cooperative.
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Post by: Jefffar
Things rise and fall in cycles. To say that there has been an unending trend of liberal progress is to deny the very real cases in which things that once were had were lost.
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Post by: DemetriDominov
It's not necessarily a bad thing that we seem to be getting more liberal, I think it's actually more descriptive that we are actually getting more compassionate as a society. More people are caring for the less fortunate than ever before even as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Society now abhors slavery, when up until the late 1800's (even later in some parts of the world) it was not only acceptable, it was the epitome of capitalism. Things are progressing and though atrocities continue to happen, I think humanity is still experimenting with how to remain just and equal. As Winston Churchill said, If you're young and not liberal, you have no heart, if your old and not conservative you have no brain. The key is always to balance the two.
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Post by: azazel the cat
Well, considering the general principle is that liberalism = progressive change, whereas conservativism = maintaining the status quo, then yes I think it is fair to say that history, in general, has a liberal trend. By that same general principle, it is also fair to say that liberalism = progress.
Generally.
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Post by: sebster
Frazzled wrote:I'd dispute that strongly. W. Europe has been under a Pax America for decades, after going through the most wrenching bloodiest period in history (outside of China's 1970's of course). We'll see what happens in the future. After all Greece is about seven days from being kicked out of the Euro.
In the words of the immortal bard: We'll see.
You didn't dispute anything I said. I suspect you didn't even bother to read what I said.
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Post by: rockerbikie
Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
Clearly the introduction of human rights, freedom of speech, and reduction of censorship that has occurred over the past 100--500 years has not occurred on planet rockerbikie.
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Post by: rockerbikie
Kilkrazy wrote:Clearly the introduction of human rights, freedom of speech, and reduction of censorship that has occurred over the past 100--500 years has not occurred on planet rockerbikie.
There has been reductions is censorships but it has become crazy in the last 10 years. You don't really have much free speech today, it is too easy to get sued. Human rights has been introduce but whether they have been used or not by figures of authority is another matter altogether.
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Post by: Frazzled
rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
Indeed, the definition needs to be properly made. If we're talking repression vs. Western style FREEDOM!!!(gets out the blue paint) then no, not at all.
1. We have the Arab Spring. Dictatorships being toppled and replaced by...Islamic dictatorships. Er ok.
2. USSR breaking up and going democratic under Yeltsin. Russia is now again a dictatorship.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
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Post by: Joey
Frazzled wrote:
No. WWI killed the royals. WWII killed the dictators. The Napoleonic Code didn't have jack gak to do with it, other than being superior to the UK/US legal code.
And what was the basis for the German/Italian states?
What was the inspiration for Spanish liberals?
Who gave the Jews a taste of freedom?
Frazzled wrote:
Yes thats why they had a Kaisar, Tzar and various nobles ruling pretty much everything but France. It wasn't lawyers it was the death of millions.
Even France was not the result of that. remember Maximillian got killed by Mexicans...Mexicans!
Right. After Napoleon lost, the Ancien Régimes were re-instated in Europe. Then 20 years later there were huge populist outbreaks all over Europe.
Clearly you regard these as coincidences. Populist democrat conquers Europe, loses to reactionaries, then 20-30 years later, populist democrat uprisings abound. Yeah, definitely a coincidence.
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Post by: biccat
Orlanth wrote:slavery is now achieved indirectly through debt and interest repayment
Capitalism, the free market, has made more people more wealthy and free than ever before in human history.
sirlynchmob wrote:we're getting more liberal, but at some point we need to start working towards the future.
Would that be away from liberty?
rockerbikie wrote:copyright laws . . . are not progressive ideas . . . [they] are backwards and stupid.
Copyright laws (and other IP laws) aren't stupid, but you're right that they're not "progressive." They're also not liberal. But they're a net benefit.
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Post by: Joey
biccat wrote:
Copyright laws (and other IP laws) aren't stupid, but you're right that they're not "progressive." They're also not liberal. But they're a net benefit.
They're illiberal but nessesary for free market capitalism to succeed. It's impossible to have real competition if you could just emulate your competitors. Not that this stops me from voting Pirate Party
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Post by: dæl
biccat wrote:Orlanth wrote:slavery is now achieved indirectly through debt and interest repayment
Capitalism, the free market, has made some people more wealthy and free than ever before in human history.
FTFY
biccat wrote:rockerbikie wrote:copyright laws . . . are not progressive ideas . . . [they] are backwards and stupid.
Copyright laws (and other IP laws) aren't stupid, but you're right that they're not "progressive." They're also not liberal. But they're a net benefit.
Copyright in an age of digitised information is in its death throes, the only scarcity is imposed as supply is infinite and therefore digitised information is effectively worthless.
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Post by: biccat
dæl wrote:biccat wrote:Capitalism, the free market, has made some people more wealthy and free than ever before in human history.
FTFY
No, it was correct as written. Ask your ancestors who worked 16 hour days in order to provide enough food to feed themselves and (maybe) their families. biccat wrote:Copyright in an age of digitised information is in its death throes, the only scarcity is imposed as supply is infinite and therefore digitised information is effectively worthless.
Supply is only infinite so long as there is copyright protection. Do you think there would have been an "Avengers" movie without copyright?
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Post by: dæl
biccat wrote:
Ask your ancestors who worked 16 hour days in order to provide enough food to feed themselves and (maybe) their families.
Source please. Kind of counter intuitive that working some fields and hunting takes 16 hours.
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Post by: Joey
dæl wrote:biccat wrote:
Ask your ancestors who worked 16 hour days in order to provide enough food to feed themselves and (maybe) their families.
Source please. Kind of counter intuitive that working some fields and hunting takes 16 hours.
Depends what time of year it was.
Harvest time would indeed be 16 hour working days, since you have to get all the crop in as quickly as possible to prevent it rotting/being eaten.
But there would be times of the year when there was less to do, certainly. At which point you could, what, exactly? Stand in a ditch and die of plague. Good times.
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Post by: Bromsy
'Course there's a liberal trend in History. They run all the schools.
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Post by: biccat
dæl wrote:Source please. Kind of counter intuitive that working some fields and hunting takes 16 hours.
Hunting and gathering are remarkably inefficient.
How many hours a day does one have to work in order to get enough food for a day? 3, maybe 4 hours at minimum wage?
Of course, living in modern society, you probably want amenities like an apartment, maybe a bed to sleep on, a vehicle (or bus pass). These are nice amenities, and are all provided by the market.
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Post by: dæl
Joey wrote:dæl wrote:biccat wrote:
Ask your ancestors who worked 16 hour days in order to provide enough food to feed themselves and (maybe) their families.
Source please. Kind of counter intuitive that working some fields and hunting takes 16 hours.
Depends what time of year it was.
Harvest time would indeed be 16 hour working days, since you have to get all the crop in as quickly as possible to prevent it rotting/being eaten.
But there would be times of the year when there was less to do, certainly. At which point you could, what, exactly? Stand in a ditch and die of plague. Good times.
Build tiny soldiers out of turnips and play a futuristic wargame called warhammer 2k?
@biccat thats not really a source.
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Post by: Frazzled
dæl wrote:biccat wrote:
Ask your ancestors who worked 16 hour days in order to provide enough food to feed themselves and (maybe) their families.
Source please. Kind of counter intuitive that working some fields and hunting takes 16 hours.
He may be talking about factory work.
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Post by: Orlanth
dæl wrote:biccat wrote:Orlanth wrote:slavery is now achieved indirectly through debt and interest repayment
Capitalism, the free market, has made some people more wealthy and free than ever before in human history.
FTFY
point, and in order for the some to be rich others must be poor. the last thing the west wants is even distribution f resources, especially the US. The US wastes an enormous amount of energy because the nation is very big and people are encouraged to be mobile. As reources tighten either wars must be fought to attain those resources (Iraq) or the expected standard of living must drop heavily.
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Post by: AustonT
Joey wrote:
And what was the basis for the German state?
Otto von Bismark.
Joey wrote:
Who gave the Jews a taste of freedom?
The Muslims.
Also The French National Essembly and especially Adrien Duport, in 1791.
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Post by: English Assassin
rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
Yes, because equating the rights of creators to profit from their intellectual property to censorship isn't even slightly misleading and alarmist...
To answer the OP, yes there has been a liberalising trend over the last few centuries of human history. That universal suffrage, democracy, the rule of law and individual freedom all remain prevailing trends in our societies is pretty much a given. Now - ignoring the very obvious fact that liberalism (in its proper meaning) in no way equates to socialism (and that both are meaningless labels to apply in US politics; all your politicians are liberals of one sort or another, none of them are socialists) - the contention your brother seems to have been making is that there has been a similar historical trend to an increase in the power and authority of governments.
This, it would be fair to say, is probably also true; modern governments take on vastly more responsibility for the lives of their citizens than those of previous centuries, principally because there are certain areas (national defence, international relations, jurisprudence and public order, to pick generally-undisputed examples) which states are better-placed to provide than individuals.
The important word there is "responsibility"; if a government thinks it possible that the lives of its citizens would overall be improved by (to pick a contemporary US example) providing free healthcare, then it should feel morally obliged to at least consider the possibility, and to do so objectively. (Whether this is the case, I would not care to comment; what is disappointing is that both sides in the dispute seem guided principally by dogma, rather than by the facts of the case.)
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Post by: sirlynchmob
biccat wrote:
sirlynchmob wrote:we're getting more liberal, but at some point we need to start working towards the future.
Would that be away from liberty?
no maximizing liberty for everyone on earth.
Ever wonder why the republicans and democrats don't publish their goals for the US? is it either they don't have any and are just keeping the status quo? or are they so abhorrent that public opinion would finally shift and neither party would ever win another election? Think about it, if your in one of those parties, what are their goals? I really think that if romney wins his 2016 reelection platform would be to end womans suffrage, I mean really haven't women suffered enough?
IMO
I think the next step is setting up a world government, and passing a universal bill of rights that all countries would be bound by. After that the monetary systems and religions need to go away, along with anything else that is used to divided humanity. The end goal being free housing, food, and well free everything. We up the robotic industry til robots can do all jobs and we put humanity out of work. Then after the robots have everything well in hand we dismantle the government and replace it with a computer who's job is to manage all the resources to make sure the people who need them, get them. We tear down old decaying cities and rebuild them with recyclable materials that are modular. maximizing space, and utilizing clean energy. Think about it, if you didn't need to work anymore, selling your life & soul for basic living stuff, what could you do with your life?
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Post by: Frazzled
You mean other than their party platforms which they do at least every election cycle?
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Post by: dæl
sirlynchmob wrote:biccat wrote:
sirlynchmob wrote:we're getting more liberal, but at some point we need to start working towards the future.
Would that be away from liberty?
no maximizing liberty for everyone on earth.
Ever wonder why the republicans and democrats don't publish their goals for the US? is it either they don't have any and are just keeping the status quo? or are they so abhorrent that public opinion would finally shift and neither party would ever win another election? Think about it, if your in one of those parties, what are their goals? I really think that if romney wins his 2016 reelection platform would be to end womans suffrage, I mean really haven't women suffered enough?
IMO
I think the next step is setting up a world government, and passing a universal bill of rights that all countries would be bound by. After that the monetary systems and religions need to go away, along with anything else that is used to divided humanity. The end goal being free housing, food, and well free everything. We up the robotic industry til robots can do all jobs and we put humanity out of work. Then after the robots have everything well in hand we dismantle the government and replace it with a computer who's job is to manage all the resources to make sure the people who need them, get them. We tear down old decaying cities and rebuild them with recyclable materials that are modular. maximizing space, and utilizing clean energy. Think about it, if you didn't need to work anymore, selling your life & soul for basic living stuff, what could you do with your life?
Bring on the singularity, then we just have to learn the lessons of the Eldar, and not do the whole Fall thing.
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Post by: sirlynchmob
Frazzled wrote:You mean other than their party platforms which they do at least every election cycle?
no long term, 10 years, 25 years, 100 years. not just what they think will get them elected next year.
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Post by: biccat
sirlynchmob wrote:I really think that if romney wins his 2016 reelection platform would be to end womans suffrage
Wow, seriously? This is all kinds of conspiracy-theory nuts. In my not so humble opinion.
Romney doesn't want to end Women's sufferage. I promise.
sirlynchmob wrote:The end goal being free housing, food, and well free everything.
Nothing is free. We live in a world of scarcity. If everything is free people will demand more. Where does it come from? Who provides it?
sirlynchmob wrote:Think about it, if you didn't need to work anymore, selling your life & soul for basic living stuff, what could you do with your life?
It's too horrible to imagine.
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Post by: Frazzled
sirlynchmob wrote:Frazzled wrote:You mean other than their party platforms which they do at least every election cycle?
no long term, 10 years, 25 years, 100 years. not just what they think will get them elected next year.
Er, you think they think longer than that? Who do you think these guys are the Society of Jesus or something? Long term IS the next election.
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Post by: sirlynchmob
biccat wrote:sirlynchmob wrote:I really think that if romney wins his 2016 reelection platform would be to end womans suffrage
Wow, seriously? This is all kinds of conspiracy-theory nuts. In my not so humble opinion.
Romney doesn't want to end Women's sufferage. I promise.
sirlynchmob wrote:The end goal being free housing, food, and well free everything.
Nothing is free. We live in a world of scarcity. If everything is free people will demand more. Where does it come from? Who provides it?
sirlynchmob wrote:Think about it, if you didn't need to work anymore, selling your life & soul for basic living stuff, what could you do with your life?
It's too horrible to imagine.
we live in a world of forced scarcity. If you have everything you need, house, food, computer, clothes, than why would you need more? fossil fuels will be done away with and renewable sources will be used for electricity. solar, wind, geothermal, tidal. These will be built into the cities. robots will grow the food, using all the best science has to offer, like hydroponics. goods will be distributed with unmanned trains and planes and boats.
but think about how your life could go, you could still work if you choose to. all the people enjoy robotics could collaborate together and design more efficient robots, design the robots to send to mars for them to start building cities there and terraform the planet. or you could just stay at home and spend time with your family, and play warhammer online, just like the tabletop game, but without the miniatures. You could design computer games, write books, or anything else you enjoy doing, and put them online for everyone to enjoy. Automatically Appended Next Post: Frazzled wrote:sirlynchmob wrote:Frazzled wrote:You mean other than their party platforms which they do at least every election cycle?
no long term, 10 years, 25 years, 100 years. not just what they think will get them elected next year.
Er, you think they think longer than that? Who do you think these guys are the Society of Jesus or something? Long term IS the next election.
someone is, and if its not your party, then why are you supporting them? who is giving them their orders?
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Post by: biccat
sirlynchmob wrote:we live in a world of forced scarcity.
No, real scarcity. There really are a limited number of goods. And a limited number of time.
sirlynchmob wrote:If you have everything you need, house, food, computer, clothes, than why would you need more?
I would want more. I want more than a roof over my head, food to eat, and warm clothes. Which is why I work.
sirlynchmob wrote:but think about how your life could go, you could still work if you choose to.
For no benefit? Nah, not interested.
sirlynchmob wrote:all the people enjoy robotics could collaborate together and design more efficient robots, design the robots to send to mars for them to start building cities there and terraform the planet.
Why would we want to do that? We've got everything we need right here. At least according to your hypothetical.
sirlynchmob wrote:You could design computer games, write books, or anything else you enjoy doing, and put them online for everyone to enjoy.
Why would I do anything for anyone else if it's not going to make me better off?
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Post by: Melissia
rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
But censorship isn't exactly a liberal idea. It's a conservative one.
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Post by: Frazzled
Melissia wrote:rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
But censorship isn't exactly a liberal idea. It's a conservative one.
Yet we have speech codes in universities...
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Post by: Melissia
Frazzled wrote:Melissia wrote:rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
But censorship isn't exactly a liberal idea. It's a conservative one.
Yet we have speech codes in universities...
Thanks for proving my point. Universities can be quite conservative in how they act, very resistant to change. Take tenure for example. Liberals have been trying to figure out a way to get rid of tenure for years now, but universities are rather steadfast in keeping it.
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Post by: Frazzled
HAHAHAHA you just called universities conservative. Berkely is conservative? HAHAHAHA!
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Post by: sirlynchmob
@frazzled and biccat, sure my plans for how I think the future of humanity should be focusing its efforts has flaws. but apparently neither of you, nor your elected officials have any plans at all. How sad is that.
computers are impartial and can not be bribed, and moving out to mars gives us more space to live and resources.
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Post by: Melissia
Frazzled wrote:HAHAHAHA you just called universities conservative. Berkely is conservative? HAHAHAHA!
Yes, I did.
And I provided proof of my assertion. What about you?
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Post by: English Assassin
Melissia wrote:rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
But censorship isn't exactly a liberal idea. It's a conservative one.
Strictly-speaking, censorship is, by its nature, an authoritarian practice. Conservative politics are no more inherently likely to be pro-censorship than progressive ones.
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Post by: Melissia
English Assassin wrote:Strictly-speaking, censorship is, by its nature, an authoritarian practice.
Which, in America, is generally equal to conservative, which is most associated with stepping on civil rights, especially of minorities-- IE authoritarian. I'm sure this will cause fraz and bic to spaz out though.
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Post by: English Assassin
Melissia wrote:English Assassin wrote:Strictly-speaking, censorship is, by its nature, aauthoritarian practice.
Which, in America, is generally equal to conservative, which is most associated with stepping on civil rights, especially of minorities-- IE authoritarian. I'm sure this will cause fraz and bic to spaz out though.
America is not the world; the two political trends are not necessarily interrelated.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
Melissia wrote:English Assassin wrote:Strictly-speaking, censorship is, by its nature, an authoritarian practice.
Which, in America, is generally equal to conservative, which is most associated with stepping on civil rights, especially of minorities-- IE authoritarian. I'm sure this will cause fraz and bic to spaz out though.
Mod: I don't think voicing such assumptions is helpful to the polite continuation of the discussion.
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Post by: Jefffar
It's also incorrect.
Conservatives have frequently been quite concerned with the protection of rights while liberals tend to develop government organizations that provide to the populace, but may errode some rights to do so.
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Post by: Ahtman
Jefffar wrote:It's also incorrect.
Conservatives have frequently been quite concerned with the protection of rights while liberals tend to develop government organizations that provide to the populace, but may errode some rights to do so.
They both are concerned with the protection of some rights and both have been known to be in favor of limiting some rights. For example Conservatives (in general) want to limit a womans right to choose and Liberals (in general) want to limit firearms. They both want to control some things and restrict others.
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Post by: Frazzled
sirlynchmob wrote:@frazzled and biccat, sure my plans for how I think the future of humanity should be focusing its efforts has flaws. but apparently neither of you, nor your elected officials have any plans at all. How sad is that.
computers are impartial and can not be bribed, and moving out to mars gives us more space to live and resources.
1. You're living in this marijuana laced flower power utopia land but can't even see that you yourself couldn't abide there. if you believe it, why do you have a computer? Why do you have clothes? You only need food and should just live in areas where clothing is not needed you greedy imperialist dog!
2. I have plenty of plans. Luckily for you those plans won't be implemented. Haven't seen what your plan is though. But we'll just say, an enlightened Frazzled regime will be an interesting regime!
"Imagine all the people living life in peace." John Lennon
"Now imagine all those people doing what I say or they get shot." The ghost of Joseph Stalin Automatically Appended Next Post: English Assassin wrote:Melissia wrote:English Assassin wrote:Strictly-speaking, censorship is, by its nature, aauthoritarian practice.
Which, in America, is generally equal to conservative, which is most associated with stepping on civil rights, especially of minorities-- IE authoritarian. I'm sure this will cause fraz and bic to spaz out though.
America is not the world; the two political trends are not necessarily interrelated.
Nor is her statement a correct one, but I'm not into debating simple concepts like the sky is blue.
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Post by: biccat
sirlynchmob wrote:@frazzled and biccat, sure my plans for how I think the future of humanity should be focusing its efforts has flaws. but apparently neither of you, nor your elected officials have any plans at all. How sad is that.
I thought Romney wants to disenfranchize women. That's a plan, right?
I don't have a plan for how humanity should focus its efforts because I don't presume to know better than anyone else how to run their lives. You call it sad, I call it freedom.
sirlynchmob wrote:computers are impartial and can not be bribed
And where will you get the angels to run the computers?
Melissia wrote:Which, in America, is generally equal to conservative, which is most associated with stepping on civil rights, especially of minorities-- IE authoritarian.
Which, in America, is patently false.
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Post by: Ahtman
Frazzled wrote:I have plenty of plans.
You know we aren't supposed to mention those in public before the unveiling of the Armada.
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Post by: Melissia
Ahtman wrote:Conservatives have frequently been quite concerned with the protection of rights
With the exception of gun control, I can't really think of such an issue where the core concern is civil liberties.
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Post by: Ahtman
Melissia wrote:Ahtman wrote:Conservatives have frequently been quite concerned with the protection of rights
With the exception of gun control, I can't really think of such an issue where the core concern is civil liberties.
Pretty sure I didn't say that.
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Post by: Frazzled
Ahtman wrote:Frazzled wrote:I have plenty of plans.
You know we aren't supposed to mention those in public before the unveiling of the Armada.
True Dat. Unfortunately my wife also has a plan. Its called the "once your life insurance is worth more than you are old man its curtains for you" plan.
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Post by: AustonT
Frazzled wrote:Ahtman wrote:Frazzled wrote:I have plenty of plans.
You know we aren't supposed to mention those in public before the unveiling of the Armada.
True Dat. Unfortunately my wife also has a plan. Its called the "once your life insurance is worth more than you are old man its curtains for you" plan.
So...dont let her drive or the jig is up.
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Post by: poda_t
LoneLictor wrote:Yesterday my somewhat crazy brother went on a rant about how history has a very liberal trend. He traced back from like the fething dark ages, talking about how things steadily get more and more liberal. He talked about how the more advanced a society is, the more welfare there is and that sort of thing. Even though I mostly agree with him (mostly, some of the stuff he said was still crazy and stupid) I kinda stopped listening at that point. Then he started going through American History, and how far we've gone from the US's quite libertarian-ish beginnings to the society we have now.
So, I figured this might as well start an intellectual conversation or at least an entertaining flame war. Does history have a liberal trend? If so, will it continue? And where will it stop?
Discuss.
whatever narcotic your brother is enjoying, pass me some of that!
The only way your brother's argument makes any sort of remote sense is if you account for a variable definition of liberty that accounts for what liberty meant at the time. I mean, sure, if we take Frazzled's comment about liberty at face value, then by and large, stalinist russia was liberal. You could pick and choose your reason for being noticed and sent to the gulag, you could decide whether you are having old Borscht or stale bread for lunch, you could decide whether you joined the army voluntarily or were conscripted.... In a very strict sense, these are still choices. The fact is, by our standards of liberty, no. The vast majority of history shows absolutely no such liberty as your brother argues. Australia and the americas were settled by criminals. Not because they decided to do so, but because britain gave some of them an option to rot in a cell or eke out their own living in the middle of no-where, or simply gave some of them no options and forced them out... Medieval europe was not in the least bit liberal. There was a very clear and structured heirarchy in which it was simply not possible to move out of. Either vertically or horizontally (meaning, moving to be the serf of another lord was at best difficult). Even in a tribal setting, needs must that your choices conform to the social structure. Take for instance cliques, clubs and schools....
Another problem to consider is what is or is not a human being, or a citizen. up until the 18th century, I'd say the status of humanity and citizenship was really good. Enter 19th century. Holocaust, Gulag, African genocide, South american genocide (tribes ARE getting killed out because they cause complications for drug cartels or oil companies). I'm not saying these problems did not exist before the 19th century, but before this point, the reason was always that the offending group was "other". In the 19th century, the application of rationalization made the other groups no longer "other" but "subhuman", which I think is much worse. Now, we have the same thing again where the middle east and the west are at eachothers throats over something ridiculously petty, and your religion decides whether you live or die. The families my mother works with from Iran are "devout Islamists", though, they're really only islamic in the loosest sense of the term because they must be. Their strain of islam is actually a hybridization of their original faith with islam woven into its fabric...
It's all in the eye of the beholder. I stress you could look through history and find nothing but dictatorial patterns of rulership if thats what you were looking for. If you want to find a masonic lodge of 33 running history, then go out looking for the evidence, and you will find it. Insist that we live in an anarchical system and have been doing so since the dawn of time, well... you will find that too. Automatically Appended Next Post: Melissia wrote:Ahtman wrote:Conservatives have frequently been quite concerned with the protection of rights
With the exception of gun control, I can't really think of such an issue where the core concern is civil liberties.
marriage and gay rights, etc.
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Post by: English Assassin
English Assassin wrote:Melissia wrote:English Assassin wrote:Strictly-speaking, censorship is, by its nature, aauthoritarian practice.
Which, in America, is generally equal to conservative, which is most associated with stepping on civil rights, especially of minorities-- IE authoritarian. I'm sure this will cause fraz and bic to spaz out though.
America is not the world; the two political trends are not necessarily interrelated.
Nor is her statement a correct one, but I'm not into debating simple concepts like the sky is blue.
The issue is the correct (or rather the incorrect) use of empirical terminology; don't try to paint it as rationalist hair-splitting.
sirlynchmob wrote:I think the next step is setting up a world government, and passing a universal bill of rights that all countries would be bound by. After that the monetary systems and religions need to go away, along with anything else that is used to divided humanity...
Has it occurred to you that the process of bringing your utopia about would necessitate bloodshed and tyranny on scales hitherto unimagined? I think I'll stick with a government content to preserve society as it is.
Frazzled wrote:HAHAHAHA you just called universities conservative. Berkely is conservative? HAHAHAHA!
Melissia's point is an entirely fair one, universities, like most long-established institutions, tend to mild conservatism - which is to say resistance to (and resentment of) the external imposition of change and support of the status quo. (This is even more true of British academia, where we actually do sit in wing-backed leather armchairs, drink port, and wear long, flowing gowns over our tweed jackets.)
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Post by: sirlynchmob
@English Assassin
It wouldn't have to, to get the whole things started it would take a world wide effort. We can build a utopian society, and we can do it peacefully.
to keep society as it is and never progress anymore is going to lead to more and bloodier wars, especially when the gas runs out.
but who wants to stay stagnant when we can achieve so much more?
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Post by: TermiesInARaider
sirlynchmob wrote:@English Assassin
It wouldn't have to, to get the whole things started it would take a world wide effort. We can build a utopian society, and we can do it peacefully.
to keep society as it is and never progress anymore is going to lead to more and bloodier wars, especially when the gas runs out.
but who wants to stay stagnant when we can achieve so much more?
While I do find these sentiments refreshing, and certainly would love to see something like that come about, I find it highly, unrealistically idealistic. Put simply, there are many, many factions on this world who LOVE things as they are, and would fight heavily to avoid being absorbed in the manner that you spoke of. The USA certainly being one of them. While the product might be lovely, I just personally can't see it ever taking off.
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Post by: Ahtman
sirlynchmob wrote:but who wants to stay stagnant when we can achieve so much more?
Progress is being been continually made in almost all fields and we haven't needed a one world government to do it either.
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Post by: Kovnik Obama
Universities are by structure prone to a mild moral and social conservatism, of course depending on which Faculty you go to. Economy is almost always conservative, Humanities is almost always 'liberal'. It also depends on the country, so blanket statements needs to be handled with care (as always). I should also say that 'conservative' doesn't always mean 'american social conservatism', but mostly that their teachings support individual values that are close or identical to some of 'american social conservatism'.
Now to OP's question ; As said before, 'liberal' is a blanket statement in this case. Political liberalism is defined by Lord Crick as the doctrine which promote absolute value to the right of freedom. It can be refined in neoliberalism where most social freedoms are secondary to economical freedom. It can be further refined as to forego the normal humanist background of modernity and accord legal personnality to fictitious creations like company. The more we refine, the further we go from the original meaning of liberalism, which was to promote individual freedom. Still, in this sense, since individual freedoms where almost never mentionned in ancient laws, at least never in the sense of promoting them on a humanist background, and that they are more and more common now, then yes, there is such a trend, even if it's a blurry one.
Personnally, I'd say that you would be much more correct by saying that there is a humanist trend to history, and that it permeate in most of the political spectrum, except for it's extremities.
The only way your brother's argument makes any sort of remote sense is if you account for a variable definition of liberty that accounts for what liberty meant at the time. I mean, sure, if we take Frazzled's comment about liberty at face value, then by and large, stalinist russia was liberal.
That is not liberalism. Individual freedom isn't supported by freedom of licence, but by freedom of act. Stalinist Russia wasn't liberal under any correct acceptation of the term. Having a freedom of choice isn't liberal freedom. Your entire post is sophistry.
Another problem to consider is what is or is not a human being, or a citizen. up until the 18th century, I'd say the status of humanity and citizenship was really good.
No clue where you get this from.
marriage and gay rights, etc.
By your account KKK are social right protectors because they had an opinion on the social right movement.
Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
Censorship is millenium old. Not exactly a liberal idea. Nor is it a conservativ one by essence.
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Post by: poda_t
Kovnik Obama wrote: marriage and gay rights, etc.
By your account KKK are social right protectors because they had an opinion on the social right movement.
uh, no. Go back and re read what's posted there, and read the context into it. I don't know where you got that interpretation from. Also, your response regarding my comment about stalisnt russia proves my point. By changing the scope of definition of what Liberty entails, you change the perception of whether an era or setting granted any freedoms. In a hundred years from now the definition will have changed again, and there will be arguments about whether or not we today were liberal enough, too liberal, etc. Consider that you do not vote for kings, and yet, kings can still leave a fair degree of liberty for the public in what religion they pursue, where they live, or whatever else. Depending on your mores, a monarchical system could still be construed as non-liberal by virtue of the fact that it's not a democratic system.
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Post by: CthuluIsSpy
AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
And what was the basis for the German state?
Otto von Bismark.
Joey wrote:
Who gave the Jews a taste of freedom?
The Muslims.
Also The French National Essembly and especially Adrien Duport, in 1791.
I thought it was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It did offer British support for a Jewish homeland in the middle east, after all. Automatically Appended Next Post: sirlynchmob wrote:@English Assassin
It wouldn't have to, to get the whole things started it would take a world wide effort. We can build a utopian society, and we can do it peacefully.
to keep society as it is and never progress anymore is going to lead to more and bloodier wars, especially when the gas runs out.
but who wants to stay stagnant when we can achieve so much more?
I bolded the silly part.
Utopias are impossible. Do you know what Utopia means, if you were to break it down into its etymological roots? It means nowhere.
It is impossible to have a perfect society, bereft of strife, and possessing access to limitless supplies. Especially one that was formed peacefully.
And even if it did exist, there will most likely be something horribly wrong with it (See: Brave New World)
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Post by: AustonT
CthuluIsSpy wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
And what was the basis for the German state?
Otto von Bismark.
Joey wrote:
Who gave the Jews a taste of freedom?
The Muslims.
Also The French National Essembly and especially Adrien Duport, in 1791.
I thought it was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It did offer British support for a Jewish homeland in the middle east, after all.
The first country to emancipate the Jews in Europe was the French Republic just before the Reign of Terror.
The Balfour Declaration was simply a public declaration of the British government's support for the establishment of a Jewish National Home which would eventually be passed in the League of Nations.
Joey has a somewhat "loose" grasp on history which must be taken with a grain of salt...this one.
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Post by: CthuluIsSpy
AustonT wrote:CthuluIsSpy wrote:AustonT wrote:Joey wrote:
And what was the basis for the German state?
Otto von Bismark.
Joey wrote:
Who gave the Jews a taste of freedom?
The Muslims.
Also The French National Essembly and especially Adrien Duport, in 1791.
I thought it was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It did offer British support for a Jewish homeland in the middle east, after all.
The first country to emancipate the Jews in Europe was the French Republic just before the Reign of Terror.
The Balfour Declaration was simply a public declaration of the British government's support for the establishment of a Jewish National Home which would eventually be passed in the League of Nations.
Joey has a somewhat "loose" grasp on history which must be taken with a grain of salt...this one.
Oh I see. Thanks, I did not know that ^^
Wasn't there still anti-semitism in France though? I mean, there was that whole Dreyfus thing a century later.
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Post by: AustonT
One could argue that antisemitism vice antijudiasm grew directly FROM emancipation. Emancipation was really more about legal freedom and full civil rights and liberties; not acceptance. There is still antisemitism in France today, forget the 18th and 19th century. They had real heated debates over whether or not Jews were human!
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Post by: Kovnik Obama
poda_t wrote:Kovnik Obama wrote: marriage and gay rights, etc.
By your account KKK are social right protectors because they had an opinion on the social right movement.
uh, no. Go back and re read what's posted there, and read the context into it. I don't know where you got that interpretation from.
Admittedly, a non-sentence is a hard point to start with. The question was ''Which civil rights protection, apart from gun control, has the conservative been preoccupied with? You answered 'Marriage and Gay rights'. One of which they only defend a very strict and narrow definition of, which isn't civil at all, while in the second case they oppose them. This is not civil right defense, it's right's denial. And before anyone ask the stupid question, no, you do not have a civil right to the biblical or traditional definition of marriage. Also, your response regarding my comment about stalisnt russia proves my point. By changing the scope of definition of what Liberty entails, you change the perception of whether an era or setting granted any freedoms. In a hundred years from now the definition will have changed again, and there will be arguments about whether or not we today were liberal enough, too liberal, etc.
Consider that you do not vote for kings, and yet, kings can still leave a fair degree of liberty for the public in what religion they pursue, where they live, or whatever else. Depending on your mores, a monarchical system could still be construed as non-liberal by virtue of the fact that it's not a democratic system.
Except Liberty has a very definitive meaning, just like free-will, justice and alterity. It's the individual's ability to govern himself. Note : not to choose. Each and everyone of the subtypes of liberalism are deviations on the theme, and do not invent a new liberty. They just restrict the vision that the government (and by consequence of propaganda and social culture, ours)has of the meaning of Liberty. A monarchical system is by structure and essence a non-liberal system. A liberal system needs to rest on a humanist foundation, which means that personal liberties find their justifications on the fact of individual personality. But to secure the argument, most modern monarchies are more liberal in fact than previous monarchies. Automatically Appended Next Post: And yeah. Napoleon didn't conquer Europe to free it, or to bring the Revolution's spirit to the monarchists. He did it to establish himself as a monarchist (one could argue a proto-fascist). Although the opinion that what Bismarck did was only made possible because of the conquest of the various Germanic countries is pretty widespread. The Code was never meant to be ''a gift of freedom'' to Europe, just a much better legal system than what was in place at the time. And he did restrict personal liberties on a horrible level : he was incredibly racist toward blacks, at a time where French women were really, really getting into interracial sex (which was, incidentally, another form of racism). A French women caught in bed with a black was stripped of her rank and possessions if she was outside of France, and was shipped back to the Continent. The black man was killed.
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Post by: sebster
Joey wrote:Right. After Napoleon lost, the Ancien Régimes were re-instated in Europe. Then 20 years later there were huge populist outbreaks all over Europe.
Clearly you regard these as coincidences. Populist democrat conquers Europe, loses to reactionaries, then 20-30 years later, populist democrat uprisings abound. Yeah, definitely a coincidence.
You're ignoring that populist democrat uprisings occurred before Napoleon. In fact, exploiting the weakness after a populist democrat uprising is exactly how Napoleon gained power in the first place. Automatically Appended Next Post: biccat wrote:No, it was correct as written.
Ask your ancestors who worked 16 hour days in order to provide enough food to feed themselves and (maybe) their families.
I agree with you that the modern capitalist economy is the greatest producer of wealth in human history.
But you're wrong that people would work 16 hour days to simply provide sustenance. Subsistance farming actually left most workers idle for most of the day. That's kind of how the whole industrial revolution happened, surplus labour in the countryside was booted off, with the remainder expected to work more hours.
We're seeing the exact same thing in China right now. Subsistance farmers from the countryside are sent to the city as extra labour, without any drop in agricultural production. Automatically Appended Next Post: Frazzled wrote:He may be talking about factory work.
But then that'd be part of capitalism, and his point would have become 'capitalism now is better than capitalism then'... which is true but kind of a pointless thing to say. Automatically Appended Next Post: Orlanth wrote:point, and in order for the some to be rich others must be poor. the last thing the west wants is even distribution f resources, especially the US. The US wastes an enormous amount of energy because the nation is very big and people are encouraged to be mobile. As reources tighten either wars must be fought to attain those resources (Iraq) or the expected standard of living must drop heavily.
Or we'll continue to take an uneven share of the resources, and the poor will continue to take in the shorts as they always have. That's kind of the thing about the system, the ones with nothing have no resources with which to force a change.
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Post by: poda_t
Kovnik Obama wrote:poda_t wrote:Kovnik Obama wrote:
marriage and gay rights, etc.
By your account KKK are social right protectors because they had an opinion on the social right movement.
uh, no. Go back and re read what's posted there, and read the context into it. I don't know where you got that interpretation from.
Admittedly, a non-sentence is a hard point to start with. The question was ''Which civil rights protection, apart from gun control, has the conservative been preoccupied with? You answered 'Marriage and Gay rights'. One of which they only defend a very strict and narrow definition of, which isn't civil at all, while in the second case they oppose them. This is not civil right defense, it's right's denial. And before anyone ask the stupid question, no, you do not have a civil right to the biblical or traditional definition of marriage.
Okay, now please be so kind as to articulate what series of conclusions entitle you to make the accusation that I am making an argument supporting the bigotrous statements contained in a flawed ancient document that was mutated with every retelling and likely the product of an overactive schizophrenic imagination centering on the notion of the metaphorical existence of some bi-polar schizoid cosmic all-knowing boogeyman with magic powers?
I grant that your dictionary definition of liberty is correct, but it is not a reasonable poll of its working definition.
TLDR: We collectively agree on what is or is not liberty, and try to run with it because we have to live together. Otherwise we'd live in an anarchy.
I think what you are forgetting your lessons from Rousseau. You insist that certain definitions are predicated on absolute facts and exist in a vacuum. This is not the case. Bear with me, I need to build up the argument and there's much that's obvious, so don't take it as snide remarks. The fabric of our society is built on a social contract, and what's at issue is what does or does not constitute an element in the social contract. Gun control, gay marriage, (and god forbid, the gak Satan Helper--whoops, sorry, i had a slip, I meant Stephen Harper-- is pushing through: e-monitoring, and permitting FBI agents free reign in Canada) are examples of issues on which people disagree about. Competing notions of morality orm the basis of opinion, and whatever philosophy informs that morality decides what that individual will or will not consider as morally correct. You can go on about how inhumane it is to restrict the rights of the GLBBT community, but you will have advocates from every corner arguing how wrong it is, either for religious perspective, biological wrongness (which, again, is also mis-informed because that kind of stuff is fairly common in nature), or the dumbest argument pertaining to progeny (we're at 7 billion people with a capacity to feed, what, twice that amount, and have trouble feeding 5 billion?). All of this is given, but given that the social contract is in a continuous state of re-forging, you have to accept competing notions of what is right and wrong are vying to establish themselves as the "correct" definition. If you dismiss another's viewpoint out of hand, simply because it doesn't conform to your own conception of reality, that doesn't make you correct, it merely makes you ignorant. I'm not on about tolerance, but finding resolutions through dialogue.
You could argue this from a Hegelian perspective or from Mill's perspective, about how we need to reach the next higher order through increasing our awareness, but in the end, practicality demands you have to run by the mores of the majority. I understand why it's called "tyranny of the majority", but you can't establish a method of governance centered exclusively around appeal to minorities and interest groups. If you start pandering to every minority or interest group, you won't have a single body of rules, just a large body of exceptions. This is fine in an anarchical system, but given that as common men we do not live in an anarchical system, we need common ground to hold us together, not just politically, but socially. Since social interaction is a relevant component in all political interactions, and that social behavior insists on being bizarre and founded on irrational beliefs, politics will be impacted by that senseless irrationality--like Satan Helper--oops, did it again, Steven Harper--'s need to openly permit foreign agents into Canada. It's sufficient that how you establish change is by forcing dialogue and an evaluation of the arguments presented, and making more information available for individuals to make their own decisions. Now as I understand it, while gay rights are not universally recognized across the united states, more liberal states do recognize GLBBT rights, while certain other states don't. The way to establish a greater respect for a liberal viewpoint is by enabling people to make their own decisions for them. You can shove down their throats GLBBT, gun control and Satan Helper's agenda all you want, if you offer no option, the human natural inclination to resist kicks in.
You can argue with me that "Liberal" or "Liberty" is a clear and absolute singular definition out of the dictionary, but I guarantee you that the only working definitions are the ones that favor the most popularity and share the greatest consensus. There is after all a reason we do not exist in an anarchical society. Automatically Appended Next Post: AustonT wrote:One could argue that antisemitism vice antijudiasm grew directly FROM emancipation. Emancipation was really more about legal freedom and full civil rights and liberties; not acceptance. There is still antisemitism in France today, forget the 18th and 19th century. They had real heated debates over whether or not Jews were human!
Shocking as it may seem, they still have these debates behind closed doors. The same debate exists with regard to Gypsies.... And that is a catch 22. Here's a group that is located across europe, identifies itself as its own nationality, and transient. With a lack of permanent ties or common social connection, nobody is attached to them and ejects them from the working order of society. Being outside the working order, individuals will resort to any means necessary to make ends meet. If an entire cultural/ethnic group is subjected to this treatment, that entire cultural/ethnic group needs to do the same things to make ends meet. Fast forward a few years--be it decades or centuries--and you have cross-cultural resentment between the groups where one wants to be rid of the other, and the other abuses every concession given by the first. In many cases it's similar to the some of the issues that come up dealing with first nations, because you have to find out what to do with a population that's essentially been sidelined, in the hope that the problem would sort itself out, and now find some way of integrating it constructively.
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Post by: reds8n
AustonT wrote:
The first country to emancipate the Jews in Europe was the French Republic just before the Reign of Terror.
Actually I would suggest that it was in fact England under Cromwell who were first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interregnum_(England)
I'm not saying it was a picnic for them by any means whatsoever, but better than it was anyway.
EDIT : need that last bracket in the url 
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Post by: rockerbikie
Melissia wrote:rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
But censorship isn't exactly a liberal idea. It's a conservative one.
Yes, banning anything remotely homophobic is such a conservative way, same as banning something slighly rascist or politcally incorrect. All very conservative, right Mel? Automatically Appended Next Post: English Assassin wrote:rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.
Yes, because equating the rights of creators to profit from their intellectual property to censorship isn't even slightly misleading and alarmist...
To answer the OP, yes there has been a liberalising trend over the last few centuries of human history. That universal suffrage, democracy, the rule of law and individual freedom all remain prevailing trends in our societies is pretty much a given. Now - ignoring the very obvious fact that liberalism (in its proper meaning) in no way equates to socialism (and that both are meaningless labels to apply in US politics; all your politicians are liberals of one sort or another, none of them are socialists) - the contention your brother seems to have been making is that there has been a similar historical trend to an increase in the power and authority of governments.
This, it would be fair to say, is probably also true; modern governments take on vastly more responsibility for the lives of their citizens than those of previous centuries, principally because there are certain areas (national defence, international relations, jurisprudence and public order, to pick generally-undisputed examples) which states are better-placed to provide than individuals.
The important word there is "responsibility"; if a government thinks it possible that the lives of its citizens would overall be improved by (to pick a contemporary US example) providing free healthcare, then it should feel morally obliged to at least consider the possibility, and to do so objectively. (Whether this is the case, I would not care to comment; what is disappointing is that both sides in the dispute seem guided principally by dogma, rather than by the facts of the case.)
Many lawsuits are plain stupid though. I can find many examples where copyright claims are just plainly just going after profits rather than protecting their own intectual works.
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Post by: CthuluIsSpy
rockerbikie wrote:
Many lawsuits are plain stupid though. I can find many examples where copyright claims are just plainly just going after profits rather than protecting their own intectual works.
Yeah, copyright is a joke. Before it was fine, it was a system that was genuinely intended to protect the intellectual property of the creator.
Now its used by corporations to make a quick buck and to crush competition.
Copyright needs to be changed so that its more up to date. It appears that the system we are using now is 50+ years old and therefore does not take into account digital information and large corporations that are capable of claiming the IP of their employees.
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Post by: reds8n
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/20/spanish-novelist-quits-piracy-protest
An award-winning Spanish novelist claims that the illegal downloading of ebooks has forced her to give up writing and start looking for a new job.
"Given that I have today discovered that more illegal copies of my book have been downloaded than I have sold, I am announcing officially that I will not publish another book for a long time," Lucía Etxebarria announced on her Facebook page.
Etxebarria told the Guardian that Spanish authors faced a difficult future as online piracy spreads from music and film to literature.
She pointed to Spain's position at the top of the world rankings for per capita illegal downloads. "We come after China and Russia in the total number of illegal downloads but, obviously, there are a lot more of them so we win on a per capita measure," she said.
"People are making millions out of online piracy by setting up in places like Belize, which is where the money goes," Etxebarria said. "They are a powerful lobby and our government doesn't dare legislate."
The outgoing socialist government of the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, ditched a proposed anti-piracy law this month. "They were too scared," said Etxebarria.
She said she was not convinced that the new conservative People's party government of Mariano Rajoy, who became prime minister on Tuesday, would be any braver.
Etxebarria, who has won several of Spain's best-known literary prizes, said she could no longer justify devoting three years of her working life to producing a book.
Her latest novel, The Contents of Silence, was published in October and although previous books have been bestsellers, this one is ranked low down the sales list on Amazon's Spanish site.
It is not available as a legal ebook but can be downloaded in pdf format from numerous websites. The print edition costs more than €20.
"We decided against publishing it as an ebook because that is easy to pirate. It would have been like throwing it straight to the lions," Etxebarria said.
She said she was now considering a job offer, and was also thinking of allowing her books – which have been translated into 20 languages – to be published only in French and German, as the laws in France and Germany offer greater protection to authors.Her vow to stop writing provoked a torrent of abuse from downloaders who filled her Facebook wall with insults. Some said they did not earn enough to buy her books.
"Literature is not a profit-making job, but a passion," said Kelly Sánchez, one of the least vitriolic critics. "If you had a real vocation then you wouldn't stop writing."
Others wanted to know how Etxebarria had spent one of the world's richest literary prizes, the Planeta prize, now worth €601,000 (£502,000), which she won in 2004. She has also won the Primavera prize, currently worth €200,000, and the prestigious Nadal prize.
Writers currently near the top of the Spanish-language illegal downloads list include the British novelist Ken Follett and John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
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Post by: CthuluIsSpy
People pirate books? Really?
That seems odd. They usually target games, music and movies.
I suspect she might be hiding something.
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Post by: dæl
She sounds like an interesting author, I should download a book or two 
I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.
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Post by: reds8n
CthuluIsSpy wrote:People pirate books? Really?
Yes, of course they do.
http://www.havocscope.com/book-piracy/
At the end of 2011, an estimated 20 percent of all ebooks downloaded on to e-readers were believed to have been pirated.
That seems odd. They usually target games and movies.
I suspect she might be hiding something.
Instead of blaming the victim ( a long standing tradition here I know) it'd make for a much better attempt at a discussion if you try to come up with ideas and facts to support an argument instead of just making them up.
http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/the-culture-of-entitlement-illegal-downloads-and-how-it-all-totally-pisses-me-off/
Before I begin, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those people, and you are in a fantastic moral majority, thankfully, who have paid for my book. Whether you loved it or hated it or fed it to the dog, thank you. Loving message ends. Rant begins.
What’s up with Western civilisation right now? A burning sense of entitlement. That idea we have rights and expectations of reward just for breathing. Yeah, of course I mean the dole cheats and the folk who never work, the chaps that claim disability allowance and get caught doing backflips. I don’t have an issue with the government wanting to cap benefits (unemployment payments, American people. Not your rights to holidays and sick pay). The social safety net is one of the greatest moral achievements of Western democracy, and marks the human race out for being if not individually even-handed, at least somewhat corporately. But benefits and rights have gone too far, it’s doing stuff it never was intended to do, like trapping people, like giving people an excuse not to get off their lazy arses, like bankrupting the continent.
The SF community is left-leaning, so I expect some bother for that. But before you cut up your The Guardian to send me anonymous hate mail, hang on, here’s a digression. Author Neal Asher, whose books I really enjoy, tweets a lot of stuff that is deemed right-wing. I retweet it not because I agree wholeheartedly with him, but because I want to see the other side aired. One thing that winds me up about politics and people is that both are wholly partisan. I hear dross peddled from all sides by folks who don’t question their political convictions, convictions often inherited from their parents. (No, of course I don’t mean you, you are much too intelligent to be taking things at face value just because they accord with your micro-cultural preprogramming).
I’m also saying this: The super-rich at the top, the plutocrats, also have a ludicrous sense of entitlement, an entitlement to massive bonuses they don’t deserve, to not pay a fair amount of tax, and to squander money and resources because they can. I’m sure many SF types will agree with that, so flame off? ‘Kay?
But then, I’m also going to say, it’s me and you too. I assume you’re in the squeezed middle. SF is, after all an overwhelmingly bourgeoise pursuit. Pardon me if I’m wrong.
I grew up expecting to live in a big feth off house. To effortlessly get a good job, to be able to piss around and do what I damn well please provided it didn’t impact on anyone else (this last standpoint I clung to for a very long time, but even that kind of watered down moral relativism — leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone — doesn’t help societies work, so I’m re-evaluating). A lot of people like me spent a good part of the 90s and noughties living high off the hog on fake money. Credit cards and profits from house sales buoyed me through endless drunken nights, hallelujah and pass the beer. All non-money enabled, in the main, by New Labour’s economic miracle, which was miraculous in that it conjured money out of thin air by the very bankers we purport to so loathe now. Don’t blame them, we were all at it.
In the “middle class” (whatever the hell that is these days), we get do much hand-wringing, without thought as to how we can pay for all the good, honest, well-meaning services and so forth we wish to provide our fellow men so we can get on with our privileged lifestyles guilt free. An argument you’ll hear in the right-wing press, but it goes much further than that. We might complain about our slipping standards of living, but compared to some poor dude working on a dump in Lagos stripping wire from junk, and the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of others like him the world over, we’re frankly still having a ball. As much as the hippies I know make me grind my teeth sometimes (I grew up among hippy refugees, fleeing the end of the sixties, I know a lot of neo-hippies now. I must be attracted to them), at least they’re trying to do something about their outmoded 20th century lifestyles with their pigs and ducks and druids in their orchards. Never mind that they proselytise this lifestyle in a somewhat patronising manner, and overlook the fact that you have to be loaded to be able to afford to do what they say we should all be doing. At least they try.
Somehow, I can’t see all we hand wringing pseudo-liberals (I am one too, from time to time) wanting to give up our multi-room houses, cars and regular meals so we can all equally enjoy the bounty of Mother Earth any more than bankers want to give up their obscene bonuses. We’re all hypocrites, just a little bit, if you think about it.
Which brings me on to my real point here: Illegal downloads. We’re so damn entitled, we think we should get stuff for free, all the time! Hooray! I have people who are related to me (I won’t say who) who insist on giving my son copied DVDs, despite the fact that I tell them not to. They maintain copying is not illegal in their country of residence (it most certainly is, but sadly it is so culturally acceptable it has destroyed the arts industries there. A further note – I am not saying all copyright laws are the same worldwide. But the differences in the territories I am talking about are not that great), and they can’t see who they’re hurting. In fact, they’re often congratulating themselves on how much money they have saved, and on the great quality of whatever movie they have ripped off.
The gentleman of this couple was most offended this Christmas. He had produced an illegal copy of a famous animated movie to watch, and he said “Good isn’t it? It did really well in its day, made $30million dollars!” To which I said, “Well, they won’t be getting any money for that copy, will they?” Cue shocked look, and mouthed upset. I don’t see Mega-Entertainment inc being fleeced of a few pennies here, I see some poor ex-kid actor or struggling screenwriter living off his residuals who ain’t going to be having Christmas next year because of people like you. (Yeah, I know most of the money goes to Mega-Entertainment inc, but the people at the bottom won’t be getting what pittance is due them either).
I tell you who else they’re hurting, through their furtherance of the acceptability of stolen entertainment, they indirectly hurt their own family. They’re hurting me, they’re hurting my kid.
I’ve found several illegal copies of Reality 36 knocking about on the web. Every time I do, I tell my publishers and they shut it down. These copies are usually tailed by dutiful thanks from all the mendacious, thieving bastards who were too damn tight to prise open their wallet to pay the £2.00 it costs to get it legitimately. On one forum, I found a lady thanking the person who had provided the copy to copy, saying “the epubs I use are usually my own, but…” What?! That’s not your book, that’s my book. It’s not yours to give away. You didn’t write it.
Another note – I don’t expect to make my living from this book, nor I am not out to get rich. It stands on its merit on lack thereof alone. What I do expect is to be paid for goods I provide.
Am I being precious? I look at the fat, buttery face of super-rich Kim Dotcom of Megaupload fame and I think not. Someone’s getting rich anyway, aren’t they?
I’ve spent twenty years trying to get published. I’ve had dozens of rejections. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words. I’ve had my work demolished over and again, and I kept doggedly coming back for more. Why? Because one day I wanted to get a book published. Because I wanted to be writer. Writing of any kind, unless you are lucky or really good, or both doesn’t pay well. I am hugely in debt. I live in a small terrace house, I don’t have an office. I work in a gap on the landing between the bannisters and my bedroom wall. I spend hours writing this blog to publicise my work and provide a point of contact for those lovely folks who do pay to read my stories. Seeing as my old job went when Death Ray closed, what I earn from writing fiction is more important than ever.
I get 8% of every sale price of each book. So, each time someone downloads it illegally, I lose 16 new pence, give or take, at the current discounted price for the e-version (really! You can get it in the Angry Robot sale for two quid! Go on, buy it). You might say, so what’s the big deal? It’s only 16 pence (give or take, remember). But I say, every 16 pence I lose is a 16 pence more I have to earn twice, effectively, as I tread the slow road to paying off my (small) advance.
More importantly, every illegal download goes uncounted by publishers who use sales figures to determine if they commission more books from an author. At the early stages of a writer’s career, like now for me, every tick in the box is crucial, one more penstroke in the flimsy wall of ink between me and a job behind a till at a supermarket.
You’re not entitled to my work for free, just like you’re not entitled to unemployment payments while you are working a job, and I’m not entitled to make you carry my bags around and give me pedicures for nothing. I assume that the people who do look for free copies are intelligent. I also pray then that they are moral. Here’s a message for you: You are literally taking food out of my kid’s mouth. Literally. He’s three. I might be an angry fether worthy of your contempt, but he’s an innocent casualty in your quest for free gak. (Okay, I admit, I’m overegging it there. Sorry. He never goes hungry).
And you do yourself a disservice. A lot of people who download Reality 36 for nothing might love the book. They might well want to see more Richards & Klein adventures. But if enough people pinch it, there won’t be any more. Not because I’m sulking, but because I’ll be processing your shopping at the supermarket, if I’m lucky enough to find a job.
Or I’ll be chasing you out of the door as bacon slides out from under your coat and skids all over the floor. Downloading stuff is exactly the same thing as shoplifting. Exactly the same thing.
I paraphrase a quote I read the other week, I can’t find the original, but it went something like this:
“A society that is unwilling to pay for art will have to learn to live without it.”
For art also read Star Trek, and novels about cyborg detectives.
It’s pennies over £2.00. For God’s sake, don’t be a gakker.
haven't picked up the 2nd one but I can recommend "Reality 36" very much, if you dig the cyberpunk genre BTW 
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Post by: CthuluIsSpy
reds8n wrote:CthuluIsSpy wrote:People pirate books? Really?
Yes, of course they do. http://www.havocscope.com/book-piracy/
At the end of 2011, an estimated 20 percent of all ebooks downloaded on to e-readers were believed to have been pirated.
That seems odd. They usually target games and movies.
I suspect she might be hiding something.
Instead of blaming the victim ( a long standing tradition here I know) it'd make for a much better attempt at a discussion if you try to come up with ideas and facts to support an argument instead of just making them up. http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/the-culture-of-entitlement-illegal-downloads-and-how-it-all-totally-pisses-me-off/ Before I begin, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those people, and you are in a fantastic moral majority, thankfully, who have paid for my book. Whether you loved it or hated it or fed it to the dog, thank you. Loving message ends. Rant begins.
What’s up with Western civilisation right now? A burning sense of entitlement. That idea we have rights and expectations of reward just for breathing. Yeah, of course I mean the dole cheats and the folk who never work, the chaps that claim disability allowance and get caught doing backflips. I don’t have an issue with the government wanting to cap benefits (unemployment payments, American people. Not your rights to holidays and sick pay). The social safety net is one of the greatest moral achievements of Western democracy, and marks the human race out for being if not individually even-handed, at least somewhat corporately. But benefits and rights have gone too far, it’s doing stuff it never was intended to do, like trapping people, like giving people an excuse not to get off their lazy arses, like bankrupting the continent.
The SF community is left-leaning, so I expect some bother for that. But before you cut up your The Guardian to send me anonymous hate mail, hang on, here’s a digression. Author Neal Asher, whose books I really enjoy, tweets a lot of stuff that is deemed right-wing. I retweet it not because I agree wholeheartedly with him, but because I want to see the other side aired. One thing that winds me up about politics and people is that both are wholly partisan. I hear dross peddled from all sides by folks who don’t question their political convictions, convictions often inherited from their parents. (No, of course I don’t mean you, you are much too intelligent to be taking things at face value just because they accord with your micro-cultural preprogramming).
I’m also saying this: The super-rich at the top, the plutocrats, also have a ludicrous sense of entitlement, an entitlement to massive bonuses they don’t deserve, to not pay a fair amount of tax, and to squander money and resources because they can. I’m sure many SF types will agree with that, so flame off? ‘Kay?
But then, I’m also going to say, it’s me and you too. I assume you’re in the squeezed middle. SF is, after all an overwhelmingly bourgeoise pursuit. Pardon me if I’m wrong.
I grew up expecting to live in a big feth off house. To effortlessly get a good job, to be able to piss around and do what I damn well please provided it didn’t impact on anyone else (this last standpoint I clung to for a very long time, but even that kind of watered down moral relativism — leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone — doesn’t help societies work, so I’m re-evaluating). A lot of people like me spent a good part of the 90s and noughties living high off the hog on fake money. Credit cards and profits from house sales buoyed me through endless drunken nights, hallelujah and pass the beer. All non-money enabled, in the main, by New Labour’s economic miracle, which was miraculous in that it conjured money out of thin air by the very bankers we purport to so loathe now. Don’t blame them, we were all at it.
In the “middle class” (whatever the hell that is these days), we get do much hand-wringing, without thought as to how we can pay for all the good, honest, well-meaning services and so forth we wish to provide our fellow men so we can get on with our privileged lifestyles guilt free. An argument you’ll hear in the right-wing press, but it goes much further than that. We might complain about our slipping standards of living, but compared to some poor dude working on a dump in Lagos stripping wire from junk, and the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of others like him the world over, we’re frankly still having a ball. As much as the hippies I know make me grind my teeth sometimes (I grew up among hippy refugees, fleeing the end of the sixties, I know a lot of neo-hippies now. I must be attracted to them), at least they’re trying to do something about their outmoded 20th century lifestyles with their pigs and ducks and druids in their orchards. Never mind that they proselytise this lifestyle in a somewhat patronising manner, and overlook the fact that you have to be loaded to be able to afford to do what they say we should all be doing. At least they try.
Somehow, I can’t see all we hand wringing pseudo-liberals (I am one too, from time to time) wanting to give up our multi-room houses, cars and regular meals so we can all equally enjoy the bounty of Mother Earth any more than bankers want to give up their obscene bonuses. We’re all hypocrites, just a little bit, if you think about it.
Which brings me on to my real point here: Illegal downloads. We’re so damn entitled, we think we should get stuff for free, all the time! Hooray! I have people who are related to me (I won’t say who) who insist on giving my son copied DVDs, despite the fact that I tell them not to. They maintain copying is not illegal in their country of residence (it most certainly is, but sadly it is so culturally acceptable it has destroyed the arts industries there. A further note – I am not saying all copyright laws are the same worldwide. But the differences in the territories I am talking about are not that great), and they can’t see who they’re hurting. In fact, they’re often congratulating themselves on how much money they have saved, and on the great quality of whatever movie they have ripped off.
The gentleman of this couple was most offended this Christmas. He had produced an illegal copy of a famous animated movie to watch, and he said “Good isn’t it? It did really well in its day, made $30million dollars!” To which I said, “Well, they won’t be getting any money for that copy, will they?” Cue shocked look, and mouthed upset. I don’t see Mega-Entertainment inc being fleeced of a few pennies here, I see some poor ex-kid actor or struggling screenwriter living off his residuals who ain’t going to be having Christmas next year because of people like you. (Yeah, I know most of the money goes to Mega-Entertainment inc, but the people at the bottom won’t be getting what pittance is due them either).
I tell you who else they’re hurting, through their furtherance of the acceptability of stolen entertainment, they indirectly hurt their own family. They’re hurting me, they’re hurting my kid.
I’ve found several illegal copies of Reality 36 knocking about on the web. Every time I do, I tell my publishers and they shut it down. These copies are usually tailed by dutiful thanks from all the mendacious, thieving bastards who were too damn tight to prise open their wallet to pay the £2.00 it costs to get it legitimately. On one forum, I found a lady thanking the person who had provided the copy to copy, saying “the epubs I use are usually my own, but…” What?! That’s not your book, that’s my book. It’s not yours to give away. You didn’t write it.
Another note – I don’t expect to make my living from this book, nor I am not out to get rich. It stands on its merit on lack thereof alone. What I do expect is to be paid for goods I provide.
Am I being precious? I look at the fat, buttery face of super-rich Kim Dotcom of Megaupload fame and I think not. Someone’s getting rich anyway, aren’t they?
I’ve spent twenty years trying to get published. I’ve had dozens of rejections. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words. I’ve had my work demolished over and again, and I kept doggedly coming back for more. Why? Because one day I wanted to get a book published. Because I wanted to be writer. Writing of any kind, unless you are lucky or really good, or both doesn’t pay well. I am hugely in debt. I live in a small terrace house, I don’t have an office. I work in a gap on the landing between the bannisters and my bedroom wall. I spend hours writing this blog to publicise my work and provide a point of contact for those lovely folks who do pay to read my stories. Seeing as my old job went when Death Ray closed, what I earn from writing fiction is more important than ever.
I get 8% of every sale price of each book. So, each time someone downloads it illegally, I lose 16 new pence, give or take, at the current discounted price for the e-version (really! You can get it in the Angry Robot sale for two quid! Go on, buy it). You might say, so what’s the big deal? It’s only 16 pence (give or take, remember). But I say, every 16 pence I lose is a 16 pence more I have to earn twice, effectively, as I tread the slow road to paying off my (small) advance.
More importantly, every illegal download goes uncounted by publishers who use sales figures to determine if they commission more books from an author. At the early stages of a writer’s career, like now for me, every tick in the box is crucial, one more penstroke in the flimsy wall of ink between me and a job behind a till at a supermarket.
You’re not entitled to my work for free, just like you’re not entitled to unemployment payments while you are working a job, and I’m not entitled to make you carry my bags around and give me pedicures for nothing. I assume that the people who do look for free copies are intelligent. I also pray then that they are moral. Here’s a message for you: You are literally taking food out of my kid’s mouth. Literally. He’s three. I might be an angry fether worthy of your contempt, but he’s an innocent casualty in your quest for free gak. (Okay, I admit, I’m overegging it there. Sorry. He never goes hungry).
And you do yourself a disservice. A lot of people who download Reality 36 for nothing might love the book. They might well want to see more Richards & Klein adventures. But if enough people pinch it, there won’t be any more. Not because I’m sulking, but because I’ll be processing your shopping at the supermarket, if I’m lucky enough to find a job.
Or I’ll be chasing you out of the door as bacon slides out from under your coat and skids all over the floor. Downloading stuff is exactly the same thing as shoplifting. Exactly the same thing.
I paraphrase a quote I read the other week, I can’t find the original, but it went something like this:
“A society that is unwilling to pay for art will have to learn to live without it.”
For art also read Star Trek, and novels about cyborg detectives.
It’s pennies over £2.00. For God’s sake, don’t be a gakker.
haven't picked up the 2nd one but I can recommend "Reality 36" very much, if you dig the cyberpunk genre BTW
Fascinating read! I had only considered the outcome of Piracy on large corporations, not on authors and small businesses. I will have to restructure my opinions on copyright, it seems. And the reason why I said that about the first author is that it just came off as sketchy. It did not provide enough detail, and the general feel of it was a bit off. The second article was a lot better, and provided more information.
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Post by: Ratius
More importantly, every illegal download goes uncounted by publishers who use sales figures to determine if they commission more books from an author. At the early stages of a writer’s career, like now for me, every tick in the box is crucial, one more penstroke in the flimsy wall of ink between me and a job behind a till at a supermarket.
Key point imho.
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Post by: reds8n
I think most people are like that really.
It's easy to think that EVIL MEGA CORPORATION won't miss/can do without your meagre contribution. And they probably can.
But these things add up.
That said there is some evidence that THE PIRATES do ( at times) go on to spend actual money : http://boingboing.net/2011/07/31/french-copyright-enforcers-pirates-are-big-spenders-on-legit-content.html
But I'm not terribly convinced by this really, and I certainly don't think it applies to a majority of individuals here either.
Plus, of course, if EVIL MEGA CORPORATION decides they're not making enough money then they'll either stop producing whatever it is, pay or bribe I mean lobby in a correct manner Govts. to pass ridiculous legislation, or just lay people off. And it's never the top executives who go then, it's Mr and Mrs. ordinary Joe who get the boot.
It's a tricky situation indeed.
Mr. Haley did a follow up post as well
The post I made on 27 January certainly got a lot of people stoked up, that’s for sure. Which is really good, because I want people to read this blog, because I want people to know who the hell I am and consider buying my books, but more on that later. And now, some more on the subject. You’ve had emotive me, now here’s something a little more reasonable.
I warn you, there are more questions than statements in today’s blog. The topic is: Pirates – evil sea-rapists who terrorised shipping for a century, or lovable cultural memes and suitable subjects for children’s parties?
1. Entitlement
Referring to the first part of my previous blog, it seems that an awful lot of people feel entitled to download free things off the internet. From a strictly “Thou shalt not steal” point of view, that’s baaaad. But is it as simple as them being very naughty, amoral villains, and me being a poor little author? Shall we see? Okay then.
2. Try before you buy
There’s suggestion (not just you lot, but research and that) that some pirates are super-consumers, ie, they’ll consume creative stuff, and if they like it enough, they’ll pay for it. If they like it a lot, they’ll pay for a lot of it. They just might try it for free first, or pay for it when they feel like it, but enough of them generally contribute money to a creative venture to make it worthwhile.
The problem is for creators and publishers is that this removes all control (control is a loaded word, I choose it deliberately). How do I know if my book will be paid for by the majority of people who try it for free, or none of them at all? This is frightening for me, and my mortgage.
3. This is not a new problem, and is it a problem?
Copied tapes, bootleg videos, unauthorised reprints of Dickens – this has been going on forever. Is it, even, a necessary corollary of the distribution of entertainment? (Let’s leave other idea “sharing”, like patent infringement, out of this). One comment on my other post suggested pirated copies should be regarded as shrinkage/wastage. Maybe it should.
Here’s a positive example, again inspired by a comment – the entire anime SF subculture in the west might never have been as big as it is were it not for those bootlegged, home-translated videos of Japanese shows doing the rounds in the 80s and 90s. I’m no otaku, but I’ll bet there are still self-taught anime freaks translating the latest Naruto before the official DVD comes out and banging it on the web. Without that, there’d be no action figure, spin-off/original manga or dodgy little schoolgirl cosplay costume sales. Or even legit Naruto sales. Is anime an entire geek subculture, a lucrative one at that, founded in piracy? I don’t know, answers in the comments box please.
4. Someone is making money
Whether it’s the operators of upload sites coining it in off advertising (have you seen how many advertisements are on those site?) or it’s the more obvious villains selling copied DVDs at a car boot sale, someone is generally making some money off the distribution from illegal copies. You might do it because it’s free, if you’re of a particular mindset you might think you’re getting one over on “The Man” – those Hollywood coke-snorting whoremasters, or Wicked Publishers Inc, but instead you’re giving money to criminals. At the lower, non-internet, car-boot (yard-sale) end, a lot of this cash goes into more serious crime. So, er why not just give the money to the person that made it?
I’m not for a second suggesting upload sites should all be shot down in a cyber-orgy of digital destruction while we all wave the Stars and Stripes (why the hell would I do that? I’m English) and hit people offenders in the face with rolled up SOPA manifestos. Upload sites do have legitimate uses, I use them for such. However, I don’t have the facts, but I’d be really surprised if the majority usage is legit… Still, they do have legitimate uses. Like guns, yeah. You can shoot targets with them, not just people! (I’m joking, chill out). And the people who run them can stop it dead themselves: Don’t allow illegal crap on your sites. Easier said than done, but if there’s enough legal threat, they’ll employ people to do just that. Enough legal threat to outweigh the ad revenues, at any rate.
On the other hand (there’s a lot of hands in this post), the advent of the digital age actually cuts out revenue for baseline crims. A copied physical book sold on by Mr Dodgy does not the same social impact as Joe Average getting my book for free.
I still don’t get paid mind, but I’m thinking bigger. Isn’t that big of me?
5. This is not just you
I’m no psychologist, but a large number of the responses I’ve had (except for the one in Spanish that told me to have sexual congress with my dear old ma – funny, I didn’t approve that one) have come from people who are attempting to justify copying. I use justify, because they kind of sound like they know they’re doing something a bit wrong. But it’s not just you. What about those corporations who advertise on upload sites which have a large amount of illegal content – they know that site has a large audience because of its illegal content. Do they care? Um, not really.
6. Fair usage
“But I loan books!” Yep, so do I. And DVDs, and I copy my CDs onto my computer, and I buy second-hand books. So what? But, someone, originally paid for even that secondhand book. That’s the killer difference. And it’s legal.
My industry relies on sharing, it’s called word of mouth. More on this later. It’s the killer question, I’m saving it for last. Is potentially millions of people not paying for something the same as lending a book to your sister? No, but then I ask myself, is it really “millions” of people downloading this stuff?
7. The nightmare scenario
This is the thing that keeps scaredy pants like me awake at night: What if we get to a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR ANYTHING EVERY AGAIN. And I don’t mean in a Captain Picard “Oh, hero Cochrane from the past, we do not have money anymore, we’re all communists now, and it works!” kind of First Contact way. I mean in a culturally inculcated, why should I pay when I kind have it for nothing,?kind of way. It doesn’t matter if it’s still there when it’s been taken, if no one pays, no art, and no job for me. This is happening in some countries/ cultures.
8. What will happen
But honestly, do I think this will happen? No. I think people are in the main too moral. I think people who enjoy the kind of stuff I write aren’t that stupid. I think people are of this mentality: “Hey guys, if we like oranges, let us pay the orange growers to grow oranges and we can all have yummy oranges forever and a day.” And not the “BURN ALL ORANGE TREES AND STEAL THE FURNITURE!” Viking-types (heck, even the Vikings were more of the former, not the latter, unless you were a monk. I don’t think they ever really saw the point of monks).
People do pirate, have pirated, and always will pirate. But it’s important it does not get out of hand. SOPA and the rest are not the answer, that’s a 20th century solution to a 21st century issue.
People pirate not just for free stuff, but for flexibility, to try things out, to experience new, foreign stuff. The solution to the “Oh Christ, they’re downloading my crap for free!” is one of accommodation. The current situation has arisen from an imbalance between what people expect, the technology that enables them to do what they want, and the slow response by the industry. The equation’s a complex one, but it can add up for everyone. Rock stars might not be living it up quite like they used to, but then I don’t see many begging on the streets either.
And “free” can work. Spotify? Artists get money per play. Libraries? You actually get money every time someone takes your book out. Very cheap and instantly available works even better. iTunes? I buy a ton more music than I ever did and funny, all of it is legitimate. Do I think Ebooks are overpriced? Absolutely. Would I rather sell ten million books for £1.00 (at my 8% I’d get £800,000) or ten thousand for £7.99? (I’d get £6392) What the hell do you think?
9. Publicity and exposure
The internet is a very powerful tool, that’s for sure. I was advised by my publishers to start this blog. I use it as a kind of diary, and an archive of work I’ve done –there’s a fragment of my journalism here, but when I have chance, I put more up. (By the way, the copyright on that I do not own, but I asked permission to reprint it). On average, I’d say I get about one hundred hits for every post.
By deliberately choosing something contentious, like piracy (heartfelt though, it’s not fake, I wouldn’t do that, but I did think about it), I’ve had well over six hundred hits. I’ve sold books. A lot of people who have no idea who I am have at least glimpsed me, even if some of them think me a jerk. That’s me exploiting the internet, not the other way around.
By that extension, is the wide availability of my book for free on the internet actually good for someone like me? Or is stealing simply wrong?
I give work away for free for publicity. Here is a sample from Reality 36. Here from Champion of Mars, here’s a free Richards & Klein short story. Here’s another free short, and another. There’s plenty on this site, I’ll be putting more here over time. But that’s my right to do so, it’s not a pirate’s right, because it’s my frigging stuff.
And I will say, people do expect to have everything given to them for nothing. And I will also say, when my book is available as cheaply as you want, as conveniently as you want, when there are free samples of it here and on my publisher’s site and it meets all the other halfways and market forces we’ve been discussing and you still choose to download it for free? Then you really are ripping me off.
It’s all going to change. New encryption systems and bigger computers will eventually put the lid on this (mostly). I wouldn’t be surprised if every piece of entertainment in the world has free elements, but then quantumly encrypted, embedded programming demands payment every time you get past that. Whatever, I reckon this whole debate will be of far less importance in a few years time. Seeing my work given away for free by people who have no right to do so upsets me right now, though. Still, creators and consumers will meet halfway.
Thanks for reading, and commenting.
http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/arrrgh-me-hearties-the-pirates-reply/
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Post by: dæl
I'm afraid I don't agree with the article in regards to there never being any art if people can't make money off it. There are many great artists of history who died in poverty but never stopped creating.
We have an outmoded system where people with no talent are making the majority of the money from people's art. This is what is wrong with the situation. If said author self published and put copies of his work for sale online for 50p, it would be a forth of the price but he would make three times as much.
The system needs to change, and as with all change those who do not keep up will be lost at the wayside.
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Post by: reds8n
dæl wrote:I'm afraid I don't agree with the article in regards to there never being any art if people can't make money off it. There are many great artists of history who died in poverty but never stopped creating.
So how many did stop creating as they couldn't eat/pay rent/etc etc then ?
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Post by: dæl
reds8n wrote:dæl wrote:I'm afraid I don't agree with the article in regards to there never being any art if people can't make money off it. There are many great artists of history who died in poverty but never stopped creating.
So how many did stop creating as they couldn't eat/pay rent/etc etc then ?
Undoubtedly countless more, we may well have lost some great works.
How many are currently stopping because they aren't making even 10% of the money from their works? A friend of mines fiancée is a signed musician who has put out a number of albums, but constantly has to take other jobs as they make so little from album sales, live shows however are absolutely worthwhile, do the publishing company or the record label have to moonlight? They create nothing and are parasites living off the brilliance of others who they treat awfully.
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Post by: reds8n
do the publishing company or the record label have to moonlight? They create nothing and are parasites living off the brilliance of others who they treat awfully.
I'm pretty certain that publishing is an act of creation.
They don't do nothing : they make sure the CDs are physically made, delivered, have covers, that the # sold is kept track of so the artist can get paid, deal with blanksthenameoftheorganisationthatdealswithradioairplaypayments , arrange for and pay for promotional activities etc etc.
I'm not saying they're kind hearted almost charitable organisations doing it for the sheer love of the business nut they play they part.
Of course there's been innumerable examples over the years of groups and artists having issues with such companies and accordingly adjustments have been made.
Bit too late for Seb. Bach and Skid Row perhaps but there you go !
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Post by: dæl
You're right I was a bit blanket with my assertion
There are some great organisations who treat their artists with respect and allow them a lot of creative license, Warp and Matador for example, and they do undoubtedly work in the interests of the artists. I doubt these are the majority of organisations though.
It could be argued that publishing is an act of reproduction rather than creation, but that all semantics really.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
dæl wrote:She sounds like an interesting author, I should download a book or two I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.
How can an author make a book that cannot be digitised? I own a scanner I bought for £80 that will colour copy A4 and make the document into a PDF. With a bit of effort I can digitise any book of that size and publish it as an illegal PDF. If I want to do that on an industrial scale, the scanner at work will automatically feed pages up to A3, scan both sides, stitch the document together in correct page order, and email the output. I buy one of them (a few thousand £) and I'm away! I can appreciate that a music group might put out an album for free, and make their living off live performance, which cannot be digitised. That's how I think the musicians will make their money in future. Is an author supposed to write books for free and give readings that people will buy tickets for?
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Post by: English Assassin
rockerbikie wrote:Many lawsuits are plain stupid though. I can find many examples where copyright claims are just plainly just going after profits rather than protecting their own intectual works.
Which doesn't change that fact that the present system is the law and should be respected as such; if you disapprove of it from a moral standpoint, there are, since you live in a democracy and enjoy freedom of speech (within the previously discussed limits of slander, incitement, etc.), entirely legal ways to register your displeasure and strive to change it. Moreover, regardless of the percentages creamed-off by publishers, managers and their ilk, performance and writing royalties (however low they may be as a proportion of a book or record's cover price) are, for many performers and writers, their principal source of income.
dæl wrote:I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.
Radiohead, a band who had cultivated a vast fanbase, seen their records certified multi-platinum and played stadia around the world before internet piracy became commercially significant, are a very poor example. Simply put, the up-front costs for a new artist or writer to record/print and promote an album or book are such that most will require external backing; that means signing a contract and taking an advance from a publisher. Now it goes without saying that recording and publishing contracts are a byword for cruel corporate exploitation of artists, but then it's seldom considered that the the vast sums gouged from successful artists also have to cover the cash lost on unsuccessful books and records which never recoup their advances.
Now don't presume I feel the least affection towards, say, Harper Collins or EMI, but the present system - one within which successful artists and writers were able to profit in the pre-internet age - seems, like democracy, to be the least worst of all possibilities. Oh, and it's worth pointing out that short runs of vinyl records and other "special edition" issues (for which I am a terrible sucker) function principally as a tax dodge for record labels, their higher costs allowing the total cost of the limited run to be written-off as a promotional expense.
Reds8n: Guy Haley's article is a very impressively lucid summary of the situation; well done for finding it. Since I have promised (amusingly amateurish rock and metal fanzine) Heavy Magazine an article on music business piracy for their first proper issue, I shall be using him as reference material.
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Post by: dæl
Kilkrazy wrote:dæl wrote:She sounds like an interesting author, I should download a book or two
I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.
How can an author make a book that cannot be digitised?
I own a scanner I bought for £80 that will colour copy A4 and make the document into a PDF.
With a bit of effort I can digitise any book of that size and publish it as an illegal PDF.
If I want to do that on an industrial scale, the scanner at work will automatically feed pages up to A3, scan both sides, stitch the document together in correct page order, and email the output. I buy one of them (a few thousand £) and I'm away!
I can appreciate that a music group might put out an album for free, and make their living off live performance, which cannot be digitised. That's how I think the musicians will make their money in future.
Is an author supposed to write books for free and give readings that people will buy tickets for?
To be perfectly honest, I don't know. Books is a weird one. I don't download novels, legally or otherwise because I prefer a hard copy of a book (and I can read in the bath, try that with a laptop) which can then live on my bookshelf (and show how incredibly intelligent and cultured I am of course ). I do remember reading a collection of short stories by Will Self called Liver and the Hardback of that seemed a really nicely made book, it felt well made, out of quality materials. But the situation isn't going to be resolved by a better quality paper. Perhaps e-books should be much cheaper and much easier to buy, iTunes has shown people will buy music if its easily available online.
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Post by: reds8n
Mr Haley's blog is well worth a nose around, I plan to pick up his 2 most recent releases come payday.
the interviews and reviews he's done are quite good IMO.
Whilst I'm sure he'd be fine, flattered even, might be worth sending him a message just to check he's hunky dory with being refereed to or wishes to rephrase things and so on.
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Post by: dæl
English Assassin wrote:
Radiohead, a band who had cultivated a vast fanbase, seen their records certified multi-platinum and played stadia around the world before internet piracy became commercially significant, are a very poor example. Simply put, the up-front costs for a new artist or writer to record/print and promote an album or book are such that most will require external backing; that means signing a contract and taking an advance from a publisher. Now it goes without saying that recording and publishing contracts are a byword for cruel corporate exploitation of artists, but then it's seldom considered that the the vast sums gouged from successful artists also have to cover the cash lost on unsuccessful books and records which never recoup their advances.
Now don't presume I feel the least affection towards, say, Harper Collins or EMI, but the present system - one within which successful artists and writers were able to profit in the pre-internet age - seems, like democracy, to be the least worst of all possibilities. Oh, and it's worth pointing out that short runs of vinyl records and other "special edition" issues (for which I am a terrible sucker) function principally as a tax dodge for record labels, their higher costs allowing the total cost of the limited run to be written-off as a promotional expense.
Reds8n: Guy Haley's article is a very impressively lucid summary of the situation; well done for finding it. Since I have promised (amusingly amateurish rock and metal fanzine) Heavy Magazine an article on music business piracy for their first proper issue, I shall be using him as reference material.
I chose Radiohead as they were the most notable example of self publishing in music to date, which is kind of telling as I bet they aren't the only to try it. But we are only at the beginning of this "new age."
Recording these days isn't expensive, I have Ableton, and some instruments and could make an album for pretty much nothing. Even recording in a small studio isn't that expensive, I used to volunteer in a studio in Bristol and that place didn't charge massive amounts. It just seems to me that the creative industries are not populated with creative people, and this is down to the monopoly held by publishing companies. Its a bit like patent law, its so expensive that your average person will need backing from somewhere else and that somewhere else has far more business acumen and will make far more cash for doing relatively little work.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
dæl wrote:Kilkrazy wrote:dæl wrote:She sounds like an interesting author, I should download a book or two
I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.
How can an author make a book that cannot be digitised?
I own a scanner I bought for £80 that will colour copy A4 and make the document into a PDF.
With a bit of effort I can digitise any book of that size and publish it as an illegal PDF.
If I want to do that on an industrial scale, the scanner at work will automatically feed pages up to A3, scan both sides, stitch the document together in correct page order, and email the output. I buy one of them (a few thousand £) and I'm away!
I can appreciate that a music group might put out an album for free, and make their living off live performance, which cannot be digitised. That's how I think the musicians will make their money in future.
Is an author supposed to write books for free and give readings that people will buy tickets for?
To be perfectly honest, I don't know. Books is a weird one. I don't download novels, legally or otherwise because I prefer a hard copy of a book (and I can read in the bath, try that with a laptop) which can then live on my bookshelf (and show how incredibly intelligent and cultured I am of course ). I do remember reading a collection of short stories by Will Self called Liver and the Hardback of that seemed a really nicely made book, it felt well made, out of quality materials. But the situation isn't going to be resolved by a better quality paper. Perhaps e-books should be much cheaper and much easier to buy, iTunes has shown people will buy music if its easily available online.
You should get a Kindle. It's really easy to buy books. Anything larger than a paperback or with detailed or colour illos does not work, or course. It's great for typical paperbacks, though.
The problem on Kindle is the amount of crap published because it's really easy to publish your own works or else reformats of public domain works.
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Post by: dæl
Kilkrazy wrote:
You should get a Kindle. It's really easy to buy books. Anything larger than a paperback or with detailed or colour illos does not work, or course. It's great for typical paperbacks, though.
The problem on Kindle is the amount of crap published because it's really easy to publish your own works or else reformats of public domain works.
I'm a bit of a luddite on the kindle front, theres an iPad in the house so I could see how I get on with reading on that, but books are books, they smell of book. If you know what I mean.
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Post by: reds8n
Note that most people who downloaded their first digital only album didn't pay for it
http://rb101182.hubpages.com/hub/From-Disc-to-Digital-Music-Industry-Business-Practices-in-the-21st-Century
Radiohead’s debut album Pablo Honey was released in 1993, and was followed by the release of The Bends in 1995, both of which have sold over 1.3 million copies to date (Elberse, 2008). But their peak album sales was in 1997, when their third album Ok Computer was released, which has sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide (Sexton, 2000).
In 2007, after Radiohead’s contract with EMI Records had expired, the band decided to self-release their new album In Rainbows as a digital download from their website, and allow users to select their own price for the album. The worldwide results showed that an average of 60% of users downloaded the album for free, while the other 40% paid for the album. The average price per paid download was $6.00 worldwide, and in the U.S. was $8.05 (Cabral, 2009).
In its first week, In Rainbows sold 122,000 copies, which was a significant drop from the band’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief, which sold 300,000 copies in its first week (Kafka, 2008). To date, it is estimated that In Rainbows has sold approximately 3 million copies, also a significant drop from their Ok Computer sales of over 4.5 million (Randall, 2011). However, even though the consumption of Radiohead’s music had changed, shifting from paid physical album sales to name-your-own-price digital downloads, production and distribution also played an important role in their changing business model.
Michael Laskow, CEO of the world’s leading independent A&R company, TAXI, states that “While the band, its fans and artists alike are celebrating what looks like a success for Radiohead's bold move in releasing their new album using the ‘pay what you'd like’ model, I think everybody has overlooked one very important aspect of this, and it doesn't bode well for the future of the music industry: Radiohead has been bankrolled by their former label for the last 15 years. They've built a fan base in the millions with their label, and now they're able to cash in on that fan base with none of the income or profit going to the label this time around. That's great for the band and for fans who paid less than they would under the old school model” (Cabral, 2009). So essentially, even though Radiohead may be selling less albums than in previous years, they’re also able to keep a much larger percent of the profits by producing and distributing the album themselves.
Radiohead’s front man Thom Yorke agrees with this statement, saying that “In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record (In Rainbows) than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff” (Byrne, 2007).
In terms of their contract expiration with EMI, Yorke also states that “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F___ you' to this decaying business model" (Tyrangiel, 2007). But Yorke also believes that this method only works for them because of where they are, and the large fanbase they’ve built. For emerging artists, Yorke suggests, “Don't sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority” (Wired, 2007).
Even under the most lucrative record deals, artists can end up with less than 30% of overall sales revenue, which is then often split among several band members. But according to Time Magazine, even though record sales are declining, the concert business is booming (Time, 2007). Yorke also agrees with this, stating that “At the moment, we make money principally from touring” (Wired, 2007).
Luis Cabral argues that the most significant trend in the past decade is the “decrease in recording revenue and the increase in other income sources, especially touring.” According to Billboard’s editor Rob Levine, “Touring is the cash driver in the music business as album sales decline” (Cabral, 2009). For Radiohead, this also proves to be true. According to Billboard’s Boxscore, in September of 2003, Radiohead’s gross ticket sales were between $459,739 – 600,769 per show (Billboard, 2003). In November of 2003, Boxscore results were similar, totaling a gross of $598,944 per show (Billboard, 2003). However, in August of 2008, less than a year after their In Rainbows release, the band’s gross total had increased to $1,652,061 (Billboard, 2008). They also made Pollstar’s list of “Top 100 North American Tours” in 2008, grossing an average of 933,709 per show (Pollstar, 2008). But one of the highest figures was in May 2009, where their Billboard Boxscore gross totaled $5,175,752 (Billboard, 2009). Therefore, even though Radiohead’s album sales may have declined over the past decade, their concert sales have greatly increased.
Clearly, self-releasing In Rainbows was a smart business move on Radiohead’s part. Because of the small profit percentage with major labels, it makes more sense for artists today to either go with an indie label or self-release an album in order to actually turn a profit. So essentially, even though artists like Radiohead may have had a decline in album sales in recent years, they’re also keeping about ninety percent of the profits from In Rainbows because it’s self-released.
Radiohead has changed their business model by embracing the digital era and all the tools it has to offer. In the old business model, the band’s albums were produced and distributed via their label EMI, and music was primarily consumed by purchasing a physical album at a set price. In the digital era, Radiohead has now changed their music production, distribution and consumption by parting ways with their major label and self-releasing their album via digital downloading at a name-your-own price, which has resulted in a higher profit percentage for the band.
In addition, Radiohead has also been a prime example of how the music industry’s business model today primarily profits from concert sales. This case study shows that Radiohead’s album sales decreased from 4.5 million in 1997 to 3 million in 2007, however their concert sales increased from as low as $459,739 per show in 2003 to over 5 million per show in 2009. This is a clear example of how the primary revenue source for the music industry today has shifted from concert sales to album sales, and although album sales may be on the decline, concert sales are still increasing.
and then this year...
http://voices.yahoo.com/will-radioheads-digital-sales-strategy-7897738.html?cat=9
Is Higher Cost of "The King of Limbs" an Indicator
Obviously, Radiohead believes the "In Rainbows" test run worked. However, the fact fans now have to pay $9.99 and $14.99 for Radiohead's new album download leads me back to the question of digital sales and promotion, and the financial sustainability for musicians.
The download pricing is higher on "The King of Limbs." On the Radiohead ordering website, it is also offering a deluxe, artwork-infused "newspaper album" for $48 and $53. Perhaps the thinking is: that this new release is so amazing, if someone cannot afford the stupendous deluxe package, surely nine or fourteen dollars for the download looks more inviting.
Maybe it is marketing genius. For all the boisterous hype, maybe digital music sales are not nearly stable enough to stand entirely on their own yet.
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Post by: mattyrm
I'm enjoying this rather OT debate, I recall numerous posters, in fact I'm pretty sure Albatross and I were in the clear minority here, vehemently disagreeing with us because we pointed out that piracy really isn't cool.
As I said then, at the end of the day, if you create something, and spend plenty of time making it, be it a book, a tune, or an intellectual property, then if some fether gives it to a million people, you are being massively seen off.
I'm not saying I never download anything without paying for it ever, and I can certainly see both sides of the argument. I would never buy something I've just watched randomly off the cuff on DVD for £17.99 or anything, but its definitely not as black and white as the pro-piracy camp seem to make it.
Shuma whom I always enjoying going back and forth with feels extremely strongly about the topic and wound up calling me Hitler or something, so I look forward to him turning up and arguing with me again.
All in, I really do think it boils down to this...
A burning sense of entitlement.
Sums up everything that is wrong with the Western world in one sentence. You arent "lucky" enough to get unemployment or dole or child benefit or council tax benefit.. No no. Its fething "MINE" and "I deserve it"
feth em. If you don't put any effort in, then you don't deserve a reward. I would be way harsher with cutting benefits than Mr Cameron has been. I think I'd make Thatcher look like a puppy-dog!
Child benefit as well eh? What the feths that all about? It's not like we have a population problem, If you cant afford kids they should take them off you, liquidize them, and then feed them to criminals via a tube like on "The Matrix"
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Post by: AustonT
reds8n wrote:AustonT wrote:
The first country to emancipate the Jews in Europe was the French Republic just before the Reign of Terror.
Actually I would suggest that it was in fact England under Cromwell who were first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interregnum_(England)
I'm not saying it was a picnic for them by any means whatsoever, but better than it was anyway.
EDIT : need that last bracket in the url
You could suggest it, but you should know that the CATHOLICS were not even emaciated in England until the 19th century...which is mentioned in the easiest to find link...sometimes I hate wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_the_Jews_in_the_United_Kingdom
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Post by: reds8n
That's nonsense, we emaciated countless Catholics.
Say what you like about Cromwell but you can't deny the work ethic.
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Post by: AustonT
reds8n wrote: That's nonsense, we emaciated countless Catholics.
Say what you like about Cromwell but you can't deny the work ethic.
I'm still rolling a little form the Brit poster that said Cromwell was a republican victory for England.
One of the many reasons Cromwell brought the Jews back to England, you know past the economic and educational benefits, was to piss off the Pope. Which at the time must have been delectable.
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Post by: reds8n
He was definitely an angry chap.
IIRC at school I was taught that more than this he brought them back to England as this would, in some way or other, help bring about the return of Jesus and therefore the end of the world.
.. Which... well..... can't deny the ambition of the plan I guess.
Dull dresser too, especially compared to the Cavaliers who, at the very least, had fantastic hair and hats.
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Post by: English Assassin
dæl wrote:I chose Radiohead as they were the most notable example of self publishing in music to date, which is kind of telling as I bet they aren't the only to try it. But we are only at the beginning of this "new age."
That Radiohead are high-profile doesn't make them any less worthless as an example, since when they released In Rainbows for (effectively) nothing as a publicity stunt/vee-sign to EMI, they were sitting on the accumulated proceeds of fifteen-odd years of international megastardom achieved while signed to the aforementioned label. You might as well be pointing to SwanSong (the vanity label created by LEd Zeppelin at the time the were the highest-grossing rock act in the world) as a successful indie label. Point me to a band/artist established in the last decade who have achieved even moderate commercial success (let's say - setting the bar very low - charting an album in the top forty on either side of the Atlantic and headlining an arena tour) without having been signed to a label, and your argument might have something to stand on.
dæl wrote:Recording these days isn't expensive, I have Ableton, and some instruments and could make an album for pretty much nothing. Even recording in a small studio isn't that expensive, I used to volunteer in a studio in Bristol and that place didn't charge massive amounts. It just seems to me that the creative industries are not populated with creative people, and this is down to the monopoly held by publishing companies. Its a bit like patent law, its so expensive that your average person will need backing from somewhere else and that somewhere else has far more business acumen and will make far more cash for doing relatively little work.
Let's say you and your three-piece band want to record and tour your first album. Total the costs of studio time, producer's wages, pressing, artwork, promotion, venue hire, equipment hire, transport, roadies' wages, travel and subsistence and solicitors' fees, and you'll be talking a five-figure sum in pounds stirling, all of which you would have to meet before you had any chance to profit. Yes, the music industry is run by crass, money-grabbing shysters; that is not news, but they fulfil a necessary commercial role.
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Post by: Ahtman
English Assassin wrote:Point me to a band/artist established in the last decade who have achieved even moderate commercial success (let's say - setting the bar very low - charting an album in the top forty on either side of the Atlantic and headlining an arena tour) without having been signed to a label, and your argument might have something to stand on.
Do you mean ever or that just did well at some point without a major label?
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Post by: dæl
English Assassin wrote:dæl wrote:I chose Radiohead as they were the most notable example of self publishing in music to date, which is kind of telling as I bet they aren't the only to try it. But we are only at the beginning of this "new age."
That Radiohead are high-profile doesn't make them any less worthless as an example, since when they released In Rainbows for (effectively) nothing as a publicity stunt/vee-sign to EMI, they were sitting on the accumulated proceeds of fifteen-odd years of international megastardom achieved while signed to the aforementioned label. You might as well be pointing to SwanSong (the vanity label created by LEd Zeppelin at the time the were the highest-grossing rock act in the world) as a successful indie label. Point me to a band/artist established in the last decade who have achieved even moderate commercial success (let's say - setting the bar very low - charting an album in the top forty on either side of the Atlantic and headlining an arena tour) without having been signed to a label, and your argument might have something to stand on.
If you count being on your own label as self publishing then there is ¡Forward, Russia!, and Bright Eyes, and Foreign Beggars, and µ-Ziq (don't know if he's charted but has a cult following, and glitchy idm rarely charts)
English Assassin wrote:
Let's say you and your three-piece band want to record and tour your first album. Total the costs of studio time, producer's wages, pressing, artwork, promotion, venue hire, equipment hire, transport, roadies' wages, travel and subsistence and solicitors' fees, and you'll be talking a five-figure sum in pounds stirling, all of which you would have to meet before you had any chance to profit. Yes, the music industry is run by crass, money-grabbing shysters; that is not news, but they fulfil a necessary commercial role.
As I said, you don't need a studio, just your rehearsal space, a laptop and Logic Pro. Production is hard to learn, but again you don't need to pay massive wages, I have a number of friends who have incredible abilities in production. Artwork can again be done by friends. Touring shouldn't be a case of heres an album, lets hire Wembley, it should be organic and evolve from smaller venues. This is whats wrong with the modern music scene, you have bands like the Arctic Monkeys, who were thrust into the spotlight without the necessary experience.
What I'm trying to say is just because something is happening in a certain way now, doesn't mean that's how it should. Which dovetails quite nicely with the whole point of this thread, we need to progress into a new way of thinking about art, remove the monopolies of the copyright industry and the mainstream media, and make art for the sake of art, not as an exercise in moneymaking.
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Post by: biccat
English Assassin wrote:Point me to a band/artist established in the last decade who have achieved even moderate commercial success (let's say - setting the bar very low - charting an album in the top forty on either side of the Atlantic and headlining an arena tour) without having been signed to a label, and your argument might have something to stand on.
Charting an album in the top 40 and headlining an arena tour is "moderate commercial success"?
I don't think either of those are possible without a record label simply to handle distribution and coordination. That's like asking for a list of non-corporate entities who are members of the Dow Jones. Virtually impossible simply based on administrative grounds.
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Post by: Kovnik Obama
poda_t wrote:Kovnik Obama wrote:poda_t wrote:Kovnik Obama wrote: marriage and gay rights, etc.
By your account KKK are social right protectors because they had an opinion on the social right movement.
uh, no. Go back and re read what's posted there, and read the context into it. I don't know where you got that interpretation from.
Admittedly, a non-sentence is a hard point to start with. The question was ''Which civil rights protection, apart from gun control, has the conservative been preoccupied with? You answered 'Marriage and Gay rights'. One of which they only defend a very strict and narrow definition of, which isn't civil at all, while in the second case they oppose them. This is not civil right defense, it's right's denial. And before anyone ask the stupid question, no, you do not have a civil right to the biblical or traditional definition of marriage.
Okay, now please be so kind as to articulate what series of conclusions entitle you to make the accusation that I am making an argument supporting the bigotrous statements contained in a flawed ancient document that was mutated with every retelling and likely the product of an overactive schizophrenic imagination centering on the notion of the metaphorical existence of some bi-polar schizoid cosmic all-knowing boogeyman with magic powers? I grant that your dictionary definition of liberty is correct, but it is not a reasonable poll of its working definition. TLDR: We collectively agree on what is or is not liberty, and try to run with it because we have to live together. Otherwise we'd live in an anarchy. I think what you are forgetting your lessons from Rousseau. You insist that certain definitions are predicated on absolute facts and exist in a vacuum. This is not the case. Bear with me, I need to build up the argument and there's much that's obvious, so don't take it as snide remarks. The fabric of our society is built on a social contract, and what's at issue is what does or does not constitute an element in the social contract. Gun control, gay marriage, (and god forbid, the gak Satan Helper--whoops, sorry, i had a slip, I meant Stephen Harper-- is pushing through: e-monitoring, and permitting FBI agents free reign in Canada) are examples of issues on which people disagree about. Competing notions of morality orm the basis of opinion, and whatever philosophy informs that morality decides what that individual will or will not consider as morally correct. You can go on about how inhumane it is to restrict the rights of the GLBBT community, but you will have advocates from every corner arguing how wrong it is, either for religious perspective, biological wrongness (which, again, is also mis-informed because that kind of stuff is fairly common in nature), or the dumbest argument pertaining to progeny (we're at 7 billion people with a capacity to feed, what, twice that amount, and have trouble feeding 5 billion?). All of this is given, but given that the social contract is in a continuous state of re-forging, you have to accept competing notions of what is right and wrong are vying to establish themselves as the "correct" definition. If you dismiss another's viewpoint out of hand, simply because it doesn't conform to your own conception of reality, that doesn't make you correct, it merely makes you ignorant. I'm not on about tolerance, but finding resolutions through dialogue. You could argue this from a Hegelian perspective or from Mill's perspective, about how we need to reach the next higher order through increasing our awareness, but in the end, practicality demands you have to run by the mores of the majority. I understand why it's called "tyranny of the majority", but you can't establish a method of governance centered exclusively around appeal to minorities and interest groups. If you start pandering to every minority or interest group, you won't have a single body of rules, just a large body of exceptions. This is fine in an anarchical system, but given that as common men we do not live in an anarchical system, we need common ground to hold us together, not just politically, but socially. Since social interaction is a relevant component in all political interactions, and that social behavior insists on being bizarre and founded on irrational beliefs, politics will be impacted by that senseless irrationality--like Satan Helper--oops, did it again, Steven Harper--'s need to openly permit foreign agents into Canada. It's sufficient that how you establish change is by forcing dialogue and an evaluation of the arguments presented, and making more information available for individuals to make their own decisions. Now as I understand it, while gay rights are not universally recognized across the united states, more liberal states do recognize GLBBT rights, while certain other states don't. The way to establish a greater respect for a liberal viewpoint is by enabling people to make their own decisions for them. You can shove down their throats GLBBT, gun control and Satan Helper's agenda all you want, if you offer no option, the human natural inclination to resist kicks in. You can argue with me that "Liberal" or "Liberty" is a clear and absolute singular definition out of the dictionary, but I guarantee you that the only working definitions are the ones that favor the most popularity and share the greatest consensus. There is after all a reason we do not exist in an anarchical society.
Except the meaning of words is all but a conventional affair in the democratic sense of the term. They do not get created by vote, or consensus, but on one side on the differentiation of meaning, and at a second time by popularization. There is no social contract behind language, it's an act of discovery and of formalization of the world. The difference on which the definition of liberty his based has become widely known since Stuart Mill, but was present in the Nicomenian Ethics. This recognition of an undefined term couldn't have appeared at all in many minds at the same time, or else it would have already been defined as such. Terms might evolve by social forces, but in this case there will always be an expertise based on safekeeping the previous meaning. And it isn't the fact that we have clear, conventional terms to use that makes us a civil society, because we don't. No conversations happens in perfect semantic parallelism, and most of the time they require quite a lot of effort to regulate and make sure you avoid incoherence. The reason why we are a civil society is because we accept that Big Brother doesn't want us to reach for the guns every time we don't understand each other, and that he's got more guns than us. Your argument is reliant on an undistinguished notion of freedom, called freedom of choice, while Frazzled, for example, used the notion of freedom of license. None of those is 'Liberty', and none of those can represent correctly 'Liberalism', since this is what we try to relate it too. The distinction was made 2300 years ago ; use it, it'll make you avoid stupid positions like ''well, from a point of view the Soviets were libs''.
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Post by: Ahtman
dæl wrote:If you count being on your own label as self publishing then there is ¡Forward, Russia!, and Bright Eyes, and Foreign Beggars, and µ-Ziq (don't know if he's charted but has a cult following, and glitchy idm rarely charts)
Jack White seems to be doing fine with Third Man Records, his own label and LP production company. His solo album reached #1 on Billboard and is doing quite well.
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Post by: dæl
Ahtman wrote:dæl wrote:If you count being on your own label as self publishing then there is ¡Forward, Russia!, and Bright Eyes, and Foreign Beggars, and µ-Ziq (don't know if he's charted but has a cult following, and glitchy idm rarely charts)
Jack White seems to be doing fine with Third Man Records, his own label and LP production company. His solo album reached #1 on Billboard and is doing quite well.
Didn't want to include people who were famous before they started their label, but he has done alright for himself.
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Post by: Melissia
"This is the thing that keeps scaredy pants like me awake at night: What if we get to a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR ANYTHING EVERY AGAIN."
Wouldn't that means the writer wouldn't have to pay for anything ever again, and can thus write books to their heart's content and publish them for free? Just saying, his nightmare scenario needs more elucidation, because he's really saying "What if we get in a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR MY BOOKS EVER AGAIN." rather than "anything".
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Post by: Kovnik Obama
"This is the thing that keeps scaredy pants like me awake at night: What if we get to a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR ANYTHING EVERY AGAIN."
Hookers would become my new best friends (and bartender)
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Post by: sirlynchmob
Kovnik Obama wrote:"This is the thing that keeps scaredy pants like me awake at night: What if we get to a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR ANYTHING EVERY AGAIN."
Hookers would become my new best friends (and bartender)
but without the need for money you'd be hard pressed to find a hooker. what exactly would she be selling herself for?
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Post by: Kovnik Obama
Force of habit 
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Post by: Ahtman
sirlynchmob wrote:Kovnik Obama wrote:"This is the thing that keeps scaredy pants like me awake at night: What if we get to a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR ANYTHING EVERY AGAIN."
Hookers would become my new best friends (and bartender)
but without the need for money you'd be hard pressed to find a hooker. what exactly would she be selling herself for?
I've heard that on occasion sex can be fun, and even life affirming. Some people even do it without getting paid.
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Post by: sirlynchmob
Ahtman wrote:sirlynchmob wrote:Kovnik Obama wrote:"This is the thing that keeps scaredy pants like me awake at night: What if we get to a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR ANYTHING EVERY AGAIN."
Hookers would become my new best friends (and bartender)
but without the need for money you'd be hard pressed to find a hooker. what exactly would she be selling herself for?
I've heard that on occasion sex can be fun, and even life affirming. Some people even do it without getting paid.
ya I've heard that to. but you see hookers do it for the $$$, XXXXXXXXX do it for fun self edited
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Post by: Ahtman
sirlynchmob wrote:ya I've heard that to. but you see hookers do it for the $$$, XXXXXXXXX do it for fun self edited
If money isn't an issue there would no longer be hookers. If we are going to imagine as radical a change as a society without the need for money, we can also imagine that there are always massive orgies going on and one night stands for everyone.
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Post by: Kovnik Obama
Clearly, imagination land is awesome.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
Yeah, well, I didn't pay for the first album I dubbed to compact cassette in 1979.
I started to buy music once I could afford it.
The problem will be if young people these days do not start to pay for things once they can afford them.
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Post by: English Assassin
dæl wrote:If you count being on your own label as self publishing then there is ¡Forward, Russia!, and Bright Eyes, and Foreign Beggars, and µ-Ziq (don't know if he's charted but has a cult following, and glitchy idm rarely charts)
Of which the first two are respectively signed to Mute and distributed by EMI, and on their own label and distributed by Sony, and the last two are obscure example of niche genres (and in both cases don't play instruments).
Ahtman wrote:Jack White seems to be doing fine with Third Man Records, his own label and LP production company. His solo album reached #1 on Billboard and is doing quite well.
Third Man is a vanity label, his solo album was distributed by Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Moreover, Jack White is hardly some unknown bluesman; he already had the fanbase and accumulated capital of six multi-platinum White Stripes albums (all but the first of which he released while signed to V2, a subsidiary of Universal Records).
dæl wrote:As I said, you don't need a studio, just your rehearsal space, a laptop and Logic Pro. Production is hard to learn, but again you don't need to pay massive wages, I have a number of friends who have incredible abilities in production. Artwork can again be done by friends. Touring shouldn't be a case of heres an album, lets hire Wembley, it should be organic and evolve from smaller venues. This is whats wrong with the modern music scene, you have bands like the Arctic Monkeys, who were thrust into the spotlight without the necessary experience.
I'm far from convinced that obliging artists to rely upon the charity of their friends would be an improvement on the present situation. Whether or not you really need a studio, you still need to pay for a producer, recording engineer, mixing engineer and mastering engineer to produce a professional-sounding recording. As for touring, who mentioned Wembley? Taking an unknown band to prominence requires touring nationally, which means playing thirty or forty dates in horrible clubs in provincial towns, which will very seldom turn a profit; that comes when your band are established and can charge thirty quid a ticket and another twenty for a t-shirt.
dæl wrote:What I'm trying to say is just because something is happening in a certain way now, doesn't mean that's how it should. Which dovetails quite nicely with the whole point of this thread, we need to progress into a new way of thinking about art, remove the monopolies of the copyright industry and the mainstream media, and make art for the sake of art, not as an exercise in moneymaking.
A way of thinking which doesn't include paying for it, and justifying that with some vague finger-pointing at a nebulous but evil-sounding "copyright industry", yes?
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Post by: dæl
English Assassin wrote:dæl wrote:If you count being on your own label as self publishing then there is ¡Forward, Russia!, and Bright Eyes, and Foreign Beggars, and µ-Ziq (don't know if he's charted but has a cult following, and glitchy idm rarely charts)
Of which the first two are respectively signed to Mute and distributed by EMI, and on their own label and distributed by Sony, and the last two are obscure example of niche genres (and in both cases don't play instruments).
Forward Russia weren't signed to Mute when they released their first album, they were on their own label, Dance to the Radio.
Bright Eyes have been around for over a decade, all their earlier stuff was through Saddle Creek.
Foreign Beggars aren't really that niche, and are probably one of the most famous artists in the British Hip Hop scene.
There is no difference between making music on a laptop, to making it on a piano. To claim otherwise is elitism, and childish, and shows you've never tried to make music on a laptop.
English Assassin wrote:dæl wrote:As I said, you don't need a studio, just your rehearsal space, a laptop and Logic Pro. Production is hard to learn, but again you don't need to pay massive wages, I have a number of friends who have incredible abilities in production. Artwork can again be done by friends. Touring shouldn't be a case of heres an album, lets hire Wembley, it should be organic and evolve from smaller venues. This is whats wrong with the modern music scene, you have bands like the Arctic Monkeys, who were thrust into the spotlight without the necessary experience.
I'm far from convinced that obliging artists to rely upon the charity of their friends would be an improvement on the present situation. Whether or not you really need a studio, you still need to pay for a producer, recording engineer, mixing engineer and mastering engineer to produce a professional-sounding recording. As for touring, who mentioned Wembley? Taking an unknown band to prominence requires touring nationally, which means playing thirty or forty dates in horrible clubs in provincial towns, which will very seldom turn a profit; that comes when your band are established and can charge thirty quid a ticket and another twenty for a t-shirt.
Believe it or not you can pay your friends for work they do. Making a professional recording doesn't require seasoned professionals. Every one of my friends bands seem to get paid (albeit not much) for playing, they must be doing something wrong by not ending up out of pocket, I shall inform them posthaste.
English Assassin wrote:dæl wrote:What I'm trying to say is just because something is happening in a certain way now, doesn't mean that's how it should. Which dovetails quite nicely with the whole point of this thread, we need to progress into a new way of thinking about art, remove the monopolies of the copyright industry and the mainstream media, and make art for the sake of art, not as an exercise in moneymaking.
A way of thinking which doesn't include paying for it, and justifying that with some vague finger-pointing at a nebulous but evil-sounding "copyright industry", yes?
No, a way of thinking that pays those responsible for the art appropriately. Decentralising music and removing the monopoly that is currently held and is putting out so much tripe solely to make money, is the way forward. Or would you prefer to just be force fed the likes of justin beiber for eternity? Because that stuff certainly doesn't fall under the remit of ars gratia artis.
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Post by: Ahtman
English Assassin wrote:Ahtman wrote:Jack White seems to be doing fine with Third Man Records, his own label and LP production company. His solo album reached #1 on Billboard and is doing quite well.
Third Man is a vanity label, his solo album was distributed by Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. Moreover, Jack White is hardly some unknown bluesman; he already had the fanbase and accumulated capital of six multi-platinum White Stripes albums (all but the first of which he released while signed to V2, a subsidiary of Universal Records).
You should work on a football field, what with all the time you spend pushing back goal posts.
Find example of X.
Here is X.
No no. They have a well known distributor.
But it is still a separate entity, and a distributor is not a label.
Well it can't do small less known bands or others to really count, that is just vanity and doesn't count as a label.
Not everyone on that label is well known.
Well the guy who owns it isn't an unknown.
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Post by: schadenfreude
If a person starts act like or talk like reality has a liberal bias then they have become so conservative that their perspective has become detached from reality.
Of course you can flip that around and say...
If a person starts act like or talk like reality has a conservative bias then they have become so liberal that their perspective has become detached from reality.
People believe what they want to believe, and they don't want to believe inconvenient facts. The last thing that a delusional person wants is a reality check.
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Post by: thunderingjove
LoneLictor wrote:Yesterday my somewhat crazy brother went on a rant about how history has a very liberal trend. He traced back from like the fething dark ages, talking about how things steadily get more and more liberal. He talked about how the more advanced a society is, the more welfare there is and that sort of thing. Even though I mostly agree with him (mostly, some of the stuff he said was still crazy and stupid) I kinda stopped listening at that point. Then he started going through American History, and how far we've gone from the US's quite libertarian-ish beginnings to the society we have now.
So, I figured this might as well start an intellectual conversation or at least an entertaining flame war. Does history have a liberal trend? If so, will it continue? And where will it stop?
Discuss.
There are no real trends in history, except that even this too shall pass.
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Post by: sebster
The interesting thing I've noticed about internet piracy is how many people will switch back and forth between purchasing and piracy. If a thing is easier to buy than to pirate and they have the money, that's how they do it. If the thing is easier to pirate, they'll do that instead. There seems to be an assumption that pirates simply do not pay for anything, ever, and that isn't what I've observed from my friends that pirate stuff.
The morality talk is all good and well, but I don't really think it impacts things as much as convenience.
The extent to which you cannot stop piracy is the extent to which you'll have to make sure your product is more desirable, and priced low enough, that people prefer it to taking a risk with a poor or infected pirated copy.
reds8n wrote: Note that most people who downloaded their first digital only album didn't pay for it
http://rb101182.hubpages.com/hub/From-Disc-to-Digital-Music-Industry-Business-Practices-in-the-21st-Century
In 2007, after Radiohead’s contract with EMI Records had expired, the band decided to self-release their new album In Rainbows as a digital download from their website, and allow users to select their own price for the album. The worldwide results showed that an average of 60% of users downloaded the album for free, while the other 40% paid for the album. The average price per paid download was $6.00 worldwide, and in the U.S. was $8.05 (Cabral, 2009).
It's worth pointing that, IIRC, the average paid voluntarily to the band was about twice what the band would have been distributed under the old recording model. Though as you point out, Radiohead then went about charging a fixed price for their next CD, the utterly sucky King of Limbs, which means that on at least some level the idea of people paying what they want doesn't really work.
I'm not sure I'd conclude that Radiohead are a poor example, because they had years of backing by a major before releasing their album as a download. The counter is that there is no reason to assume the old model has to be the model going forward. The up front production costs fronted by publishers are nowhere near as high as they used to be, exposure to the public no longer requires access to radio stations, and sales no longer need the up-front costs of printing CDs.
I'm not saying that's going to happen, but I'm not going to write it off entirely, either.
And for the record, when In Rainbows was available for download I kept putting off downloading it, week after week, and only bought it when I saw it on sale as a CD in a store, where I promptly paid the typically outrageous price we pay for CDs in Australia. I'm a creature of habit, I guess. Automatically Appended Next Post: English Assassin wrote:Point me to a band/artist established in the last decade who have achieved even moderate commercial success (let's say - setting the bar very low - charting an album in the top forty on either side of the Atlantic and headlining an arena tour) without having been signed to a label, and your argument might have something to stand on.
There's a big problem with stating that because something hasn't happened, it never will.
Ultimately though, the industry will eventually change to meet new market conditions, or ultimately those new market conditions will be unable to deliver what the present structure delivers. All the talk in the world, either by us or by artists or industry executives, will be unable to change the fact that economic systems (ie where the money is) determine the final result.
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