fair enuff. sorry, i never really flamed this hard before. i really love everyone on BL. i stand by everything i said though. i may have gone a little overboard. it was wrong to group all music as corporate. that wasn't my intention. i realize there are alot of musicians out there who are trying there best and just barely getting by. trust me, i know. i live in a city with a large live music scene, and for the most part, nobodies getting rich. in fact i would say that almost half my friends are musicians. really. my best friend from high school who i just got back in touch w after 15 years...he's a musician and has like 3 bands and a bunch of recordings on small indie labels. he has to work to pay the bills. (he's got a sweet job at pandora though) and yes, i do produce a little electronic music from time to time. i think i said the right thing in the wrong way. i've been up for days and i got a little carried away.
the grateful dead tried to distribute their own records on thier own label in 1976. it failed. they were successful in marketing direct to there audience almost everything else after that. they also allowed their audience to freely trade live recording, which was, and still is a big no no in the industry for the very things that we've been discussing. i was part of the dead scene towards the end and had the oppurtunity to observe what things were like behind the stage. as they grew more successful, despite how cool and anti-establishment they thought themselves to be, they started suffering from the same problems as corporate rock. it became a money thing, and the organization was starting to be running like big busisnesses do. and they couldn't stop cause there were too many ppl (family) depending the scene to make a living. just a little history.
trent reznor took on tvt b/c of the restriction on his freedom of expression, he said. after a bitter battle he was successful at setting up his own label (nothing) with artist he wanted to foster. the nothing label has since been abandoned essentially.
i think there are more imporant issues that we can all work on though and maybe this debate will ignite some of those fires.
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The most descriptive label for those of this ideological persuasion is corporate libertarian, because whatever they call themselves, the "free" market, "free" trade policies they advocate do not free trade, markets, or people. Rather they free global corporations to plan and organize the world's economic affairs to the benefit of their bottom line, without regard to public consequences.
THE CORPORATE LIBERTARIAN ALLIANCE
Three major constituencies have joined in a powerful political alliance to advance the ideological agenda of corporate libertarianism with a dogmatic fervor normally associated with religious crusades.
Neoliberal Economists. Neoliberal economists embrace two first principles as fundamental articles of faith. One is that individuals are motivated solely by self-interest. The other is that individual choice based on the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest leads to socially optimal outcomes. [See The Betrayal of Adam Smith.] Neoliberal economists provide corporate libertarianism with a patina of intellectual legitimacy.
Property Rights Advocates. Ardent property rights advocates, sometimes called "market liberals," commonly present themselves as libertarians dedicated to the defense of individual rights and freedoms. While true libertarians seek to defend individual freedom against intrusion from coercive institutions of any kind, market liberals are mostly concerned with protecting the rights from property from public accountability. Those without property have no rights that the market liberal is bound to respect. Market liberals give corporate libertarianism its cast of moral legitimacy.
Corporations and Members of the Corporate Class. Corporations and members of the corporate class--such as corporate managers, lawyers, consultants, public-relations specialists, financial brokers, and wealthy investors--comprise the third pillar of the corporate libertarian alliance. Some are drawn to corporate libertarianism purely by financial self-interest or because they are paid to do so, others by moral conviction. Although few members of the corporate class have a serious interest in the fine points of academic theories or moral philosophy, they find a natural common cause with those who provide an intellectual and ethical case for freeing corporations from the restraining hand of government and absolving them of moral responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of their actions. Furthermore, they have the financial resources at their disposal to handsomely reward those who legitimate their power.
This combination of economic theory, moral philosophy, and elite political interest makes for a powerful alliance. Yet in many ways it has served even its own members poorly, as its corrupting influence has not been limited to the broader society. It has led neoliberal economists to seriously debase the integrity and social utility of economics by reducing it to a system of ideological indoctrination that violates its own theoretical foundations and is deeply at odds with reality. It has similarly engaged libertarians in a cause that violates their own commitment to individual freedom, as corporations infringe on the property rights of real people and use their growing power to suppress the individual freedoms of all but society's wealthiest members. The enormous political success of the alliance in shielding corporations from public accountability has create a monster that even the members of the corporate class no longer control and is creating a world that they would scarcely wish to bequeath to their children.
THE MORAL JUSTIFICATION OF INJUSTICE
The moral philosophers of market liberalism perpetrate a serious distortion by neglecting the distinction between the rights of property and the rights of people. Indeed, they equate the freedom and rights of individuals with market freedom and property rights. The freedom of the market is the freedom of those with money. When rights are a function of property rather than personhood, only those with property have rights.
It is a basic premise of democracy that each individual has equal rights before the law and an equal voice in political affairs--one person, one vote. We can rightfully look to the market as a democratic arbiter of rights and preferences only to the extent that money and property are equitably distributed. Although a market can allocate efficiently with less than complete equality, when 358 billionaires enjoy a combined net worth of $760 billion--equal to the net worth of the poorest 2.5 billion of the world's people--the market is neither just nor efficient and it loses all legitimacy as a democratic institution.
from
http://www.pcdf.org/
discuss....
but regardless - you need to read what i said earlier. are you suggesting that the only way a musician should ever make money is from live shows? in which case, how are all the rest of the people involved in recording music going to get paid?
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
