3 things. Between any two artists there is an important moment you promise to have e other's backs saying Everything has an economic component. In part meaning for each other to say yes to unexpected proposals. #2. What do we mean by acknwldgng it is obvious that contracts donot run the economy? I feel it at times but is it nepotism? Like the family motto in Sometimes a Great Notion : Maintain our fair advantage? Thirdly let's switch out the drabness of the chorus in staging a scene from tragedies, and make them wealthy. That will make them less strange, understandable as talking amongst themselves about how to live untouched for 72 years, unscarred and unchanged.
Thirdly, I meant to just raise up Whitney Webb's name. She draws throughlines between the tenth of one percent trying their hands at vertical integration and the likelihood that their wildest fantasies be put into practice based on socalled social credit. Her portraits of hedge fund managers are exaggerated in a way that you can parse for yourself in real time...she laughs at her own tarry brush.
As I wrote recently, the 2020s look a lot like the 1920s. Only there was a collective will to organize and break up the monopolies then. There is no such will now.
As for footnote #3, I wrote a lengthy Note on the subject recently and then deleted it because I recognized its pointlessness. The reason the traditional model for newspapers worked was because the profit motive was firewalled from reporting. No reporter went to work thinking about making money for the paper or even for themself -- no editor brought that sensibility either. That was the business of admins and owners who recognized that their reputation depended largely on the integrity of their editors and reporters.
Is it really better to have a bunch of individuals whose reporting is directly tied to their own profit motives? What Bezos did -- hedge his bets with a particular power broker in mind -- is precisely what people on Substack do with the founders in mind. Critiques of the platform and its internal culture are discouraged or tolerated or simply ignored. I cannot be persuaded that journalism is more truthful in such an environment, and were I still teaching undergraduates information literacy I would have a very hard time explaining to them why/how any Substack newsletter is a reliable source. Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker is very different from the all-caps Hersh I see here who is presumably flying without fact checkers or credibility checks of any kind. Jack Kelley and Jayson Blair would soar on Substack if they hadn't been disgraced. Who blows the whistle here on fraudulent reporting? Christopher Rufo has over 97K subscribers. Shaun King has over 330K. What pays dominates the conversation. Hard to see any escape from that.
so maybe it's not money that's the problem but greed / that would introduce a much more interesting problem / why are people greedy ?? we're greedy because we're not grateful is what occurs to me / so why are we not grateful ?? because we don't know what we already have it seems to me / life liberty and the pursuit of happiness those inalienable rights endowed by our creator as it goes in our long forgotten declaration of independence / endowed means we already have them but we don't seem to know that and so maybe the project should be not so much the reformation of our economic system but simply remembering
3 things. Between any two artists there is an important moment you promise to have e other's backs saying Everything has an economic component. In part meaning for each other to say yes to unexpected proposals. #2. What do we mean by acknwldgng it is obvious that contracts donot run the economy? I feel it at times but is it nepotism? Like the family motto in Sometimes a Great Notion : Maintain our fair advantage? Thirdly let's switch out the drabness of the chorus in staging a scene from tragedies, and make them wealthy. That will make them less strange, understandable as talking amongst themselves about how to live untouched for 72 years, unscarred and unchanged.
Thirdly, I meant to just raise up Whitney Webb's name. She draws throughlines between the tenth of one percent trying their hands at vertical integration and the likelihood that their wildest fantasies be put into practice based on socalled social credit. Her portraits of hedge fund managers are exaggerated in a way that you can parse for yourself in real time...she laughs at her own tarry brush.
Interesting post! I’ll adopt your manifesto, but also add to my own:
When given the choice between my values and money, I’ll strive to choose my values. (Difficult!)
I will always give some money to people or organizations in need, no matter how broke I am.
I will recognize my very human tendency to feel fear around financial security and strive to not let that fear control me.
Understanding that there is never enough money, I will not treat my desire for more money (beyond what I need to live) with more money.
As I wrote recently, the 2020s look a lot like the 1920s. Only there was a collective will to organize and break up the monopolies then. There is no such will now.
As for footnote #3, I wrote a lengthy Note on the subject recently and then deleted it because I recognized its pointlessness. The reason the traditional model for newspapers worked was because the profit motive was firewalled from reporting. No reporter went to work thinking about making money for the paper or even for themself -- no editor brought that sensibility either. That was the business of admins and owners who recognized that their reputation depended largely on the integrity of their editors and reporters.
Is it really better to have a bunch of individuals whose reporting is directly tied to their own profit motives? What Bezos did -- hedge his bets with a particular power broker in mind -- is precisely what people on Substack do with the founders in mind. Critiques of the platform and its internal culture are discouraged or tolerated or simply ignored. I cannot be persuaded that journalism is more truthful in such an environment, and were I still teaching undergraduates information literacy I would have a very hard time explaining to them why/how any Substack newsletter is a reliable source. Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker is very different from the all-caps Hersh I see here who is presumably flying without fact checkers or credibility checks of any kind. Jack Kelley and Jayson Blair would soar on Substack if they hadn't been disgraced. Who blows the whistle here on fraudulent reporting? Christopher Rufo has over 97K subscribers. Shaun King has over 330K. What pays dominates the conversation. Hard to see any escape from that.
so maybe it's not money that's the problem but greed / that would introduce a much more interesting problem / why are people greedy ?? we're greedy because we're not grateful is what occurs to me / so why are we not grateful ?? because we don't know what we already have it seems to me / life liberty and the pursuit of happiness those inalienable rights endowed by our creator as it goes in our long forgotten declaration of independence / endowed means we already have them but we don't seem to know that and so maybe the project should be not so much the reformation of our economic system but simply remembering