Hi Ray,
At 10:58 12/04/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Gee Keith,
>
>I wrote a post about economics and business and you wrote one about
>aesthetics.
>That is alright but you didn't answer a single thing that I said. Why not?
>Were you making a parallel? I even gave references in the economic
>literature. You are giving me opinion.
Wow! You charge me with changing the subject of your message of 12 April
from economics to aesthetics and yet you did this yourself in your original
first paragraph!
Consider it again:
<<<<
(REH)
Welcome to the world of "neo-liberal" economics. Economist William
Baumol first documented the productivity lag issue in 1966. It even has
a name in economic circles. It is called Baumol's disease and it is much
worse than mad cow or hoof and mouth. There is no cure and the whole
culture dies.
>>>>
Yes, you mention an economist. But then you write "and the whole culture
dies." So you're bringing aesthetics straight away by making an assumption
as to what "culture" is!
My definition is a democratic one (that is, culture is what the people
want); yours is an elitist one (that is, culture is what the people ought
to want).
Culture is, of course, impossible to define, but whatever it is, Stephen
Spengler was surely right when he wrote "[Culture] . . . suddenly hardens,
it mortifies, its blood congeals, its force breaks down . . ." ("Decline of
the West").
Your "culture" is a congealed one; my "culture" is a living one -- that is,
it's the culture that's all around us. I don't like it any more than you
do and, in time, it too will congeal, but for the time being I don't feel
that I should judge the masses by my own predilections.
So let me move on and discuss one or two further points from your longer
piece:
<<<<
(REH)
Unless there is an answer outside the private enterprise zone. For example
we could return to Aristocracy where only the landed folks vote and they pay
for the performances as in times past.
>>>>
But you haven't met my point that all "high" art arose exactly from the
patronage of the rich.This can be traced right up until, say, a hundred
years ago. It was only when the bourgeousie wanted to become the new
aristocracy, or the artist wanted to be an entrepreneur, that whole process
started clotting. There's been a conspiracy ever since when they've fooled
everybody (everybody except the broad masses, of course).
Francois Gilot (in "life with Picasso") let the cat out of the bag when she
reported Picasso's pillow talk -- that he thought the whole of
post-Impressionist art (including his own) to be a laugh at the expense of
the stupid collectors.
-----> cut to
<<<<
(REH)
Your observations certainly seems to bear out the Communist claim since the
demise of the Soviets has removed any reason for serious arts funding by the
intelligence community.
>>>>
Actually, the situation in Moscow currently favours your argument, not
mine. My friends in Moscow tell me that since '92 there has been a
flowering of the arts there -- over 250 theatres, for example, with music,
poetry and art bursting out all over (an exhibition of skinned human body
parts, for example). I happen to think this is a temporary phenomenon as
they attempt to catch up with Western cultural norms (that is, the current
madness of the intelligentsia), but no matter.
<<<<
(REH)
So military socialism defeated communist
socialism in European Art but the free market is incapable of solving the
Baumol disease dilemma. Baumol has also traced it into the other public
sectors like health, education, religion etc. In other words, anything
with an intellectual capital public goods side to it is trapped in
Capitalism and dies a slow death as the public abandons it due to its costs.
>>>>
But, Ray, although the public have enjoyed the arts of the past, most of
them have been too poor to pay for it. It's always been the rich. It so
happens that the rich of today broadly patronise projects such as malaria
research or education rather than the arts.
>>>>
(REH)
Taylorist "science" made the "dumb worker" the ideal . . .
>>>>
He certainly didn't! The workers he studied could have been dumb, or could
have been intelligent -- who knows? -- but what Taylorism studied was
efficiency. At the end of the day, Taylorism led to automation and a vast
decrease in the number of "dumb workers" required.
>>>>
(REH)
. . . while small ensembles
playing basic harmonies over and over with complicated texts that are cheap
to hire and that technology makes it run for the simple cost of the
electricity are the ideal productivity for commercial music. These are
the issues as I have said ad infinitum on this list and others. That it
costs as much today to pay an orchestra as it did in 1900. Everyone
else's wages have gone down and the product has limited seating and the
orchestra still costs 4 to 8 dollars a second. A rock band is five
musicians and kills your ears so you don't care. The loudest noise in 19th
century Europe was distant cannons. There is some hope in that the
electronic media's cost, like TV and the movies, has gone up faster then the
live music recently but that is probably a fluke. I would suggest that
you take another look at state support for public goods industries that have
values outside of simple profit and loss. Read Justin Lewis Art Culture &
Enterprise (in the UK) Routledge. The day of big government and big
private enterprise will return and the little guy will not be tied to
private enterprise. Democratic government supported by an informed
population is the only answer.
>>>>
The public goods industry that I am most acquainted with at present is the
National Health Service in the UK. It took five months to establish that I
had prostate cancer because I had to attend a series of tests which the
hospital could only arrange at five or six week intervals. They could all
have been done in one day quite easily. I had a flow test last week. It
took a minute. Then I had to drink a gallon of lime cordial in the waiting
room and an hour later took another one. There was another chap there also
doing flow tests. But he had to wait while I finished. So a highly-paid
specialist nurse sat around in her own office all morning doing, at the
most, 5 minutes' work. I'm not blaming her -- that's the system. That's
what happens when you have publicly-funded organisations. Protective
practices of all sorts have a field day. The typical budget for an opera at
the publicly-funded Royal Opera House costs tens of millions of pounds,
when it could be done for a tenth of the cost.
<<<<<
(REH)
The process of art is
Perception>Virtuosity>Intuition = Art. Its complexity is relative to the
sophistication of the composer and his audience. So just like IBM, Art
must have consumers with a willingness to learn its abstractions. People
who participate in the artistic process carry that "built" intuitive process
creatively into other professions. That is why the best Doctor is called
an "artist" at healing and often plays a musical instrument.
How long did the followers of Ptolemy tinker before they just gave up the
system? They did eventually give it up not because it failed but because
it took too much to make it work and then it didn't make common sense.
Modern neo-liberal economics has eliminated so many of the reasons that we
consider life to have meaning that it is amazing that it is still here.
People like Friedman and Weber are praised for their genius but the world
they inhabit is barren. Why would a genius want to live in such a world?
Either he's emotionally ill or he is not a genius, just clever like a
savant.
And welcome to the world that Harry Pollard and I have been arguing about
for several years except he is wrong. Like the internet music freaks,
he thinks its just choice. The only way it gets out to the public is if
the musicians are amateur or have another job and pay for it themselves.
We call that Vanity Press in the real world. So where is the Future of
Work folks? What are those 40% with no jobs going to be doing? Lying
around at home, making babies and demanding "their fair share." How about
paying them to grow and make art? Develop the quality of life for the
WHOLE society.
>>>>
I agree with the sentiment in broad outline. But what is the "art" that
they are supposed to make. I suspect it is the "art" that you define, not
what they define.
You ask: "What are those 40% with no jobs going to be doing?" But surely,
ever since this FW list has been in existence, and despite this constant
refrain from thos who believe in the "lump of labour" theory, new jobs have
been created as fast as old jobs have been destroyed. It's true that all
sorts of imbalances have been created in the process, but this is because
the schools and universities are, in the main, many years behind in
supplying the appropriate skills. (This is why there has been a massive
growth in company universities -- over 5,000 of them in the USA alone, I
believe.)
Yes, indeed,"Develop the quality of life for the WHOLE society." I couldn't
agree more. And that means decent schools and appropriate training of
skills for everyone. Then they can more easily get a job in changing times
(and get paid a decent going rate). Then they've got some money in their
pockets and some care-free spare time. Then they'll (voluntarily) decided
on what culture they want. But it won't necessarily be what you might think
is best for them.
Keith Hudson
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
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