Keith, Handlo is a terrific site. I'm sure that it is the music publishing of the future. I would recommend anyone on the list that wishes to see the future in publishing to visit this site. It also will do away with almost all but the most cursory jobs in publishing. I have no doubt that it will put thousands of people out of work. Lean and Mean. But that is not Keith's fault. He just saw the mountain and decided to climb it. Congratulations. As for his analysis. Right on the mark. I rarely agree completely with you Keith but your thoughts on this are consonant with my experience. Including the old people walking off into the sunset while the tribe moves on as a result. It reminds me of a movie where Graham Green the American Indian Actor played a role as an Inuit where they were busy convincing his dad that it was time for him to take his place on the floating ice since he had lived his life and would take away from the young if he continued living. It was all done as parody but it sounds about right, except England and America (lower 48 states) are lands of plenty not lands of pain, like the ice and snow of the arctic. So as the European thoughts, ala Mateo Falcone, arise on punishing children as adults in the court so do we have a rise in irresponsibility for the elders. It matters not that they made a contract to give up their talent and life potential for simple cash and family order. That was the contract that they made with the society. And society got a placid, pastoral sleeplike population doing their jobs in exchange for security. They could have gotten Beethoven or Lord Byron or Mozart. Three brains that would have made Timothy Leary look absolutely tame and without the debilitating drugs. Can you see Beethoven or Wagner refusing to let the Bush inaugural parade continue or like Picasso paint a master work and refuse to return to America until the usurper is removed. Instead what we get is the politics of the pasture, the placidity of cattle or the eat until you die of sheep. Something that should be considered in all of this. The banal will always be sliding back and forth between the quiet and the evil. Like the wonderful Kenneth Branaugh playing the Nazi General who worked out the logistics on the ovens or Senator Edward Dawes who planned the same but more subtly at Lake Mohunk in the 1880s with Indian people. The wonder is that evil is not great but small. Not monstrous in view (like the movies) but banal. Talent on the other hand is capable of chaos. The bigger it is, the less quiet it is and ultimately the more moral. Talent is a mirror and mirrors tell you when you look foolish. On my earlier post about the Renaissance, it was not the White House but the Economic House that I referred to. I would also point out that a great many of your economic minds like Greenspan, Baumol and others are artists or as in Greenspan's case, failed musicians. (Baumol is a good painter and like Rousseau it has helped his quality as a scientist as well.) Samuel Lipmann, the Neo-Liberal theorist and brains behind the New Criterion Neo-Liberal Intellectual Mag here in the US, was my Bach coach, a critic for the London Times and a concert pianist who needed money. Lipman was wonderful in music but in life was a hostile, angry man. He was a good example of the creator of chaos by the talented when there are no jobs. Any cursory reading of Stanislavski will let you know that he could have done the same if he wasn't given work by the Communists. The only answer is ignorance. Complexity increases in music when all you have are amateurs who do not have the time to keep up the craft. Lipman sold out, Greenspan failed as did Condi Rice Bush's foreign policy expert who couldn't cut it as a concert pianist. A Renaissance man who resembles the past would be someone like Leonard Garment the Lawyer who is a good jazz Clarinetist. Music has made him wiser and more generous. The others it made them more rigid and angry at the failure of their talent. Does that sound like any German politicians of the 1930s that you might know? Keith you said below: "As a consequence, the whole idea intrigued me so much that I decided to start such a business (Handlo Music Limited) even though I already had a business which gave me a modest, but sufficient, income." Would you have started Handlo if you hadn't been intrigued? Would you have been intrigued enough to do it for nothing? Would you have been intrigued enough to do it at a loss if you could still survive? Artists are intrigued enough to do it at a loss even if they don't survive. It's this damn talent thing and society refuses to feed it at its own peril. I still like the Star Trek version with its "we have progressed to the level where the searching out of the personal vision of one's life is the crowning achievement of human government" not the simple working at humdrum tasks for the earning of cash. i.e. Cash is not the meaning of life or even how life exists. On this we profoundly disagree. REH Ray ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 12:29 PM Subject: "Free Agent Nation" by Daniel H. Pink > The idea of more people opting for self-employment and working from home > via the Net intrigued me enormously in the first three or four years of > FW's existence and gave rise to much discussion. As a consequence, the > whole idea intrigued me so much that I decided to start such a business > (Handlo Music Limited) even though I already had a business which gaves me > a modest, but sufficient, income. Handlo Music (www.handlo.com) now has a > team of eight or nine people working from home in six countries, and sells > sheet music to choirs in over 50 countries (the most recent customer-choir > being from Latvia -- now on the Net, I'm pleased to see). > > I am, in fact, quite surprised that more businesses are not on the Net. So > I was most interested to read a review of Daniel H. Pink's book, "Free > Agent Nation" in the Financial Times today, which suggests that my slightly > pessimistic view was unfounded. (The "Free Agent Nation" means the US, of > course.) So here's a paraphrase of the review (by David Honigman) which may > be of interest to FWers: > > <<<< > FREE AGENT NATION (Daniel H. Pink, Warner Books, 2001) > > Former speech-write for Al Gore examines self-employment from many > different angles. It grew out of an article in Fast Company magazine. > Despite the demise of the "New Economy" which turned out to be much the > same as the old, Daniel Pink identifies several factors which are driving > the rise of self-employment or free agency. He defines a "free agent" as > (a) a project-based freelance soloist worker; (b) a temporary worker, or > (c) someone with a microbusiness. He thinks that one in four workers in the > US are such (and one in eight in the UK). > > [KH -- This last ratio surprised me, but a recent British Telecom research > report estimates that about 1.5 million people in the UK work from home. > Not all of these will be self-employed, of course, but the figure seems to > suggest that Pink's estimate is probably not far wrong for the UK.] > > The cluster of causes of a rise in for much more self-employment are the > shorter lifetimes of commercial strategies and the firms themselves, > particularly big firms, the consequent crumbling of the social contract of > work whereby employers reward loyalty with life-long jobs and, more > recently, the potentialities of the Internet and of the low cost of the > necessary equipment such as the personal computer and mobile phone. > > When academics discuss self-employment they have one of two mental models > in mind. One is that self-employment has been forced on someone and > consists of dispirited, atomised victims who would really like to re-enter > employment by traditional firms. He bemoans the fate of temp slaves, with > badly-paid demoralising work, and those perma-temps, stuck in > administrative limbo and tantalised with the prospect of permanent jobs > that never quite materialise. > > The other is that the self-employed consist of highly liberated > self-dependent individuals. Either of these may be true for some. For many, > Pinks avers, the reality is closer to Tarzan swinging through the jungle, > leaping from project to project in a mixture of hope and desperation. In > addition, free agents face the problems of lack of health benefits, > arbitrary zoning laws that prevent some sorts of work being done at home, > and the difficulties of impenetrable tax codes. However, the rising number > of free agents (now about 33 million in the US) is now becoming a powerful > pressure group. > > [KH: in the UK recently, an association of independent software consultants > have been appealing against the ruling of the government income tax > authorities that, if they work for any length of time for a firm, they > should be regarded as being employed, and taxed as such. The courts found > in favour of the authorities, but have forced them to re-write their > definition of employment. It seems probable therefore that there'll be more > scope for the self-employed to so arrange their status and contracts with > firms temporarily employing them in order to be considered self-employed > and, thus, to offset many expenses against earnings.] > > For some, there are the considerable psychological drawbacks of > self-employment of loneliness and insecurity. For loneliness, Pink > advocates networks of contacts and temporary alliances of collaboration. > For insecurity, it remains to be seen just how much sub-contracting will > continue if and when firms face economic downsides. > >>>> > > 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; > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > ________________________________________________________________________
