Record Industry crashes, dies

[Good Intentions]

Here's the short version:

The normative reason:
The problem of how to fairly distribute music as it stands now is very much a problem only for capitalist societies, one where, whether we like it or not, bourgeois norms are the ones that have the dominant role. Doing what is right is a shared activity: if there is some standard according to which you should live, then it should count for me as well, and vice versa. If there is a right way to do things, it applies to all of us. When we are in the business of trying to do the right thing, and trying to convince each other of some course of action or together having a go at working it out, then what we tell each other must be mutually understandable, or fail at its task. Because all of us have been raised in a capitalist society, we must at least take notice of the dominant forms and practices of such a society for fear of making what we are proposing unintelligible to others, simply becase a bourgeois environment is the one wherein all of us have done all our moral work thus far. Failling to do so undermines our attempt at collectively doing the right thing.

The closely-linked metaethical reason (metaethical theories aren't about what is the right thing to do, but rather are about ethics in the same way that genetics is about genes without being genes itself):
For any moral judgement to gain traction upon any moral agent, he must have some way to appreciate what it means. The bourgeois norms that predominate in our capitalist society makes 'try to make a fair trade' the dominant issue in the problem of distributing music, and by growing up in a capitalist environment any one moral agent has had ample opportunity to learn what that means and to appreciate its moral worth. To come to a non-bourgeois judgement in this problem, there are two options: one either needs to harnass this bourgeois ideal and make it pull the other way, bringing a tension into the bourgeois system of morals the person you're trying to convince might have, a tension from which a set of non-bourgeois morals might grow; or you must offer a different, competing ground on which your judgement might gain traction. Neither avenue admits much radicalism, since in both cases you are putting pressure on something which is already intimately known by the person you are trying to convince. Marx took the latter route: he appealed to the experience of exploitation to do the moral work in motivating someone to embrace communism rather than capitalism. If there is some radical moral tension which plays a part in the life of the person you're trying to convince, then you can press on that to encourage a radical change in position in your audience. It would be unfair to say that such radical tensions don't exist, but it's clear that they are not obviously as strong as they once were: the Critical Theorists worked from the basis that enough people don't feel exploited by the system as a whole to undermine Marxist attempts to encourage communism, and started looking for some other base from which to introduce communist values. In any event, any appropriate radical tension would be one which the audience is well aware off, and pressing upon it is most succesful the more commonsensical you make the appeal to be. The less you rock the boat, as it were.

There, I think I made good on all my allusions.

[andronicus]

Insofar as a Marxist would engage with this kind of thing on ethical grounds, he or she might see the potential in the concrete situation for introducing to the masses of people who aren't the RIAA a sense of group-interest as the measure of concern to replace the self-interest framework that predominates (and mystifies the reality of the possessors universalizing the morality of their own class interest).  I think you think I made a point that I really didn't; all I was saying with my last paragraph is that the economic framework upon which this whole ethical edifice is founded (and in turn replicates) is falling to pieces, which don't get me wrong, an ethical system can live long long after the economic system that it was based on has passed on, but eventually it will buy the plot, yes. 

Honestly I'm not terribly interested at gibbering to the masses about their imminent need to support the revolution in the music biz*  because honestly I don't care too much about it; it's mostly an interesting issue because the things that are happening here are going to be replicated elsewhere, perhaps even in my lifetime.  There they will be of extreme interest to me.

*My comments about making shit up etc. were actually probably more directed toward artists, who I think are the ones who really do have an opportunity to radically reshape their relations with their audiences here; everyone else's role is just so much M and C.

[alistarr*]

apparently robbie williams is witholding a new album for EMI after having been told by the company's new owners to work harder. i can't work out if counts as biting the hand that feeds, teaching an old dog, or both. or maybe just getting bored of pissing off customers and deciding to rile up the suppliers as well, y'know just for a change?

just some more news of crashing and burning to fuel the fire.

[Doctor Bob]

I'd rather remove three vertebrae and eat my own ass than advance an opinion on the trolley problem, for instance.

Well at the risk of crippling you and sating you with rectum...:

I read the Wiki link and I can't see what all the fuss is about.  From my reaction, I seem to be as much of a Utilitarian as I suspected I would be.  Which is to say, a Big Fat Utilitarian.  Perhaps that's the 'common good' town planner side of me talking.

I can't believe that a philosophical parlour game from 40 years ago is still so divisive, not to mention such a hot topic that our own GI would shy away from it.

[/bait]

As you were.

[diesel_powered]

There really should be an eyes-glazed-over, drooling emoticon for this.


Oh wait, there is.


 

[Good Intentions]

The trolley problem as presented in the article is just a philosophic problem, like so many others. But the literature around that problem is an endless array of improbably arranged trolley tracks and finnicky fiddling with vague intuitions of the value of an individual human life. When faced with the option of seriously evaluating the moral status of some counterfactual trolley plowing through some hypothetical people, in reference to common intuitions and complex theories of relative value, placed in the greater project of judging the plausibility of a theory I already feel is cockeyed for simpler reasons, I'd rather take another option, that of ripping out part of my spine, allowing my head to flop backwards and start munching on my gluteus maximus.

What utilitarianism gets right, in my opinion, is that the well-being of people is at work when you are trying to act ethically towards them. I hope it's possible to do justice to this fact without expecting everybody to be calculating busybodies.

In other news, I find the question of what morals are, what function they serve and where they come from to be immensely interesting. If this question pricks your interest, I can't give J.L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong a high enough recommendation.

[Doctor Bob]

In other news, I find the question of what morals are, what function they serve and where they come from to be immensely interesting. If this question pricks your interest, I can't give J.L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong a high enough recommendation.

It does prick my interest.  I thank you for the recommendation (and for the explanation of why you'd rather buckle and chow).

[Nick Ink]

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but Kristin Hersh has also been trying to get something off the ground over the last couple of years. Some of you might remember the 50 Foot Wave Free Music EP a while back? Anyway, she and Billy have now set up something called cashmusic. I don't fully understand how it works, but it seems to fit in with what a few people were discussing upthread about different business models in the music industry.

http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/