I'm currently reading Tyler Cowen's 1998 book "In Praise of Commercial Culture". Cowen is better known as an economist writing over at Marginal Revolution. I'm also re-reading his 2007 book "Discover Your Inner Economist" at the same time. Maybe it's just the different target audiences, but I suspect Tyler would be the first to admit that his book writing style has gotten a lot better in the intervening 9 years.
In the process of explaining the influence of capitalism and wealth on art, he mentions a lot of artists in passing. Most I knew about, but many I hadn't. In 1998 Cowen couldn't have anticipated the process I've been going through while reading these books. I've actually been able to look up and sample the work of artists, from painters to rock bands, on the internet and get a taste of their work immediately and for free. That process, aided by things like wikipedia, Amazon's mp3 store (with it's music previews), plus tons of full-length videos with audio on youtube, is an amazing example of what in the book is a cultural optimism that allows for modern and historical art catering to all sorts of niche markets to be so much more accessible now than it ever has been in the past.
One of the facts referenced in the book is that Charles Perrault wrote "Mother Goose" in a deliberate attempt to match Aesop's Fables. I anticipate that my wife, currently teaching classic fables to the kids, will find that interesting. There's tons of similar tidbits in it.
Cowen talks about how because it was a big budget movie and thus had to appeal to a larger audience, the studio forced a happy ending on Blade Runner, but that when the movie was reissued in a Director's cut the original ending could be restored. I know that now it sounds amazing, but in 1998 DVDs weren't in commercial use. Laser Disc was supposed to be the next big thing. Ten years later, we'd fully expect that if the Director preferred a different cut to his movie, we'd get both versions plus a couple of voice-over explanations all on the same DVD and they'd throw in the deleted scenes and alternate endings!
I'm also picking up music tips from the "Possess All the Great Art Ever Made" chapter of his more recent book. He talks about how music tastes changes as individual identities change from different time periods and geographical regions and suggests trying out the best artists of all sorts of different types.
Tonight I've found lots to like. I also just figured out that youtube has tons of music in the form of videos... I know, slow to catch on, that's me.
Sometimes the familiar can be new again when seen through a different style of music. Also search for gamelan on youtube for some cool south-east asian hits.
Those guys are entertainers! Of course, it stands to reason that with literally billions of people to choose from, there are going to be a lot of great musicians (and other professions) available in the area.
A little closer to home, sometimes you just need to shake your head and tap your toes.
How could anyone not like that, whoever they are, unless they'd never heard it?
I have a longer entry to discuss some of his ideas planned, but I couldn't resist sharing a quick preview from Mencius Moldbug's recent post on colonialism:
But fine. We'll start with the worst. Or after it, anyway. Our case study in colonialism: the Belgian Congo, aka Zaire. There is no defending the Congo Free State - but 1960 minus 1908 is quite some time. Observe the sinuosity with which this propagandist redacts an inconvenient half-century:
Government as a system of organized theft goes back to King Leopold II, who made a fortune [in the Congo] equal to well over $1.1 billion in today's money, chiefly in rubber and ivory. Then for fifty-two years this was a Belgian colony, run less rapaciously, but still mainly for the purpose—as with colonies almost everywhere—of extracting wealth for the mother country and its corporations. The grand tradition was continued by Mobutu Sese Seko...
In other words: skip from Leopold to Mobutu as fast as possible, noting only that the Congo under Belgian administration was... gasp... profitable. Sacre bleu! Another of those nitroglycerines, nurse - I think my heart just skipped a whole bar. Profitable government! Why, it's practically a second Holocaust.
Make no mistake™, the current push for "health care reform" is a push for the government to take over and create socialized medicine and a single-payer system. In Obama's own words:
"I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately."
"There's going to be potentially some transition process."
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."
Well, they took all that back and it's apparent that changing the health care system is a major priority for the Dems. The basic problem they realized is that the public doesn't support a single-payer system. That makes congressmen who have to face elections next year pretty nervous. In fact, even with a "public option" proposal, they wanted desperately to get it pushed through quickly so that enough time would elapse before the next elections in the hopes that people would forget. Instead, people are debating it and dwelling on it.
It's to the point where some Dems are now going to be willing to compromise and even drop the "public option" if they can get the federal control part of the plan passed.
They're calling it a federal health care exchange. What it exchanges is the current choices people in most states have for forcing everyone into federal insurance standards that are very similar to a few states. You know, the states traditionally controlled by the progressives, where health insurance rates can be double what they are in more conservative states.
It's bad enough that the states can be very restrictive in limiting health insurance offerings and choices, but now they'll use federal mandates to require certain insurance coverage nationally to drive up the price of health insurance. Then they'll use that as the next excuse to try again for a public option that drives out private insurers and leads to a single-payer system.
That's the new fallback position for when they can't get everything they want through the Senate. Don't let them have that either. It will invariably make the insurance market more expensive and worse for regular people, giving them the excuse they want to try this all again in four more years. Just like they'd like to use that plus government "insurance" to either drive the insurance companies out of business or else turn them into government controlled insurers.
So don't let your congressman or Senator agree to vote for a "compromise". It will lead to anything but!
