Bush administration Nixonism at its finest

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ah, the glamorous politics of 1972...

I'm not sure if this post belongs in the movie web log or the politics web log? Oh well--I'll put it in both. It's none of my work, either, just a charming stroll down memory lane with Carol Joynt, contributing to Harry Shearer's blog at that bastion of effete Hollywood liberalism, the Huffington Post. It's rather long, but it's worth it to read the whole thing. A sample:

Soon enough Jeb [Magruder, of Watergate fame] quit the White House to go to work for the infamous Committee to Re-Elect the President, where he was deputy director of the campaign. I quit UPI to move to New York to work for Time. We kept in touch. As far as I was concerned, he remained a good source. In the summer of 1972, Warren Beatty staged a lollapalooza fundraiser for democratic presidential nominee George McGovern at Madison Square Garden. I was assigned to cover it. After the event there was a celebrity-crammed party at the Four Seasons Restaurant. The party is memorable to me for many reasons. One was the once in a lifetime moment in which a flirtatious Jack Nicholson, coming face to face with me in a hallway between the Grill and the Pool room, said, "Are you looking for me?" to which I replied to Jack Nicholson, "No, I'm looking for Warren Beatty," and walked away. Oblivious to anything but my job, I wanted Beatty to tell me how much money had been raised. "Call me in the morning at the Carlyle," he said when I found him. "But not before noon."

Tear down Abu Ghraib?

It's hardly news that the Bush administration is not fulfilling its pledges in Iraq, but with calls from US Senators and others for the dismantling of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, I wonder what happened with Bush's pledge to tear down Abu Ghraib? This pledge was a significant part of the administration's reaction to the prisoner abuse scandal. More than a year later, and as far as I know the prison is still in use by US forces. Not only that, but it's become the target for raids by groups of insurgents, indicating that it is still a symbol of US occupation and mistreatment of Iraqis. It's breathtaking how easily the administration ignores its own promises once the attention of voters and reporters is turned the other way.

Economics of Culture

While writing the previous post, it occurred to me that the phrase 'economics of culture' was worth some elaboration. Here, then, is a rather meandering attempt to unpack the phrase... Culture is a famously vague term, meaning to some the total of everyday practices ('everything you don't have to think about when you wake up in the morning,' a former professor of mine defined it as). To others, culture designates a much narrower category of elite literary and artistic production, below which are various levels of popular culture, sub-cultures, or non-cultures. But in either case, the creation and dissemination of 'culture' in any society must be economically viable. In order to survive in the memory of a society, cultural products must have a large enough group of people who recognize a product as having a value worth propagating, preserving, and imitating.

Cultural products can be highly idiosyncratic--the product of unpredictable individual genius, greatly underdetermined by social or economic context. Or they can be produced by groups or individuals who carefully tailor the products to match a perceived demand. There is no predicting which type of cultural product will at any one time, in the present or future, be considered 'good' or 'bad,' which will be popular, which will be favored by elite groups (people with 'good taste'). And the status of a product can change dramatically over time, moving back and forth across from popular to elite, dwelling in both at time, shifting from popularity in one social group to another.

There is, then, a high degree of contingency in individual cultural products, but in general there must also be larger economic and social structures that help determine the overall content of a society's culture. There have been periods of history known for their efflorescence of certain types of cultural products. The new painting styles of the Renaissance, for example, or the development of literary realism in the 19th century. What were the economic and social structures that made such bursts of creativity possible? This question is not only of historical interest, but is at the heart of debates--or at least the moral rather than strictly legal aspects of the debate--over intellectual property rights, file sharing and the music industry.

The proponents of file sharing and digital distribution, such as myself, argue for fewer limits on such technology because it allows for a greater variety of music to reach consumers. If individual artists have fairly simple and inexpensive access to the means of music production and international distribution, they have a greater chance of enrolling a large enough group of fans around the world to support the continued production of their music. The music industry--and many very popular recording artists--argues that file sharing robs artists of their right to control and profit from their creations. In their view, without greater copyright protections (both legal and technological), artists will no longer be able to support themselves through sales of their recordings, and so creativity will be stiffled.

Although, as the 'Rockonomics' paper makes clear, very few recording artists make money through their recordings; most gain income by touring rather than record sales. The musicians losing money because of file sharing are, at most, an elite few at the very top of record sales lists.

Brazil, Gilberto, and Intellectual Property

Two recent items caught my interest in the economics of culture--especially the music business--and show how decentralized, digital music distribution is part of a larger global fight against overly aggressive intellectual property protection. The NPR program Marketplace recently featured a short piece on Brazil's multi-front defense of its national interest against international IP laws. (You can listen to the report through the Marketplace Archives.) In the 1990s Brazil threated to produce its own generic versions of anti-AIDS drugs if pharmaceutical companies didn't lower their prices. The drug makers caved in, and now Brazil has a much more extensive effort to develop alternatives to the intellectual property rights regime favored by such would-be international hegemons like the US and Microsoft.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has switched government computer systems from Microsoft Windows to license-free Linux operating systems and open-source software packages. Programs are also in places to help home computer users obtain open-source software, and to open free open-source computer centers available to the poor. The United Nations will soon consider a Brazilian proposal to limit international copyright laws that, Brazil says, work to funnel money from poorer, developing nations, to the developed world.

The Bush administration protested the UN decision, and in April gave Brazil an ultimatum to either crackdown on copyright infringement in the country or lose US most-favored-nation status, which makes exporting products to the US much easier. Spokesmen for trade groups representing corporations like Microsoft say Brazil's open-source policies will be more costly in the long run, because open-source software is harder to use and requires more customer support. (Oh, if only everything were as user-friendly as Windows!) What usually happens, they contend, is that computer users soon abandon open-source software for bootleg copies of proprietary programs. In their view Brazil's policies are mostly rhetoric, obscuring the fact that Brazil is one of the world's worst violators of international copyright laws.

But computer software and pharmaceuticals are not the only areas where Brazil is encouraging consumers to adopt the open-source model. The Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil--yes, the musician of 'Girl from Ipenema' fame--is promoting digital music downloading as a way for artists to reach directly to their fans, avoiding involvement with large music companies. Gilberto says that music downloading helps his music spread to new audiences, and he recoups money with his concert appearances. He and other artists are part of a international movement to promote 'Digital Culture.' (For more on Gilberto and Brazil's open-source policies, see this November 2004 feature in Wired, and this January item from Common Dreams.)

This brings me to a fascinating look at the economics of the music industry in a paper by Marie Connolly and Alan B. Krueger of the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper, titled 'Rockonomics,' is (appropriately) available for download from the NBER website. I first learned of it through a post on Barry Ritholtz's web log The Big Picture. Ritholtz is Chief Market Strategist for money management firm and he posts regularly on the music biz, in addition to other economics topics. I highly recommend his blog, and if you visit be sure to check out some of his less serious 'essays and effluvia' on rock music.

Whether or not the American music industry's current ails are due to file sharing, it's clear from the Rockonomics paper that bands that sign with major labels are pretty much screwed unless they sell millions of records and/or go on tour and sell a lot of t-shirts at their concerts. The paper does not address the advent of low-cost consumer electronics and software that allow for high-quality home recording and independent distribution, but it seems to me that the economics of large-label record production make any way around the established industry very attractive.