It seems to have worked pretty well for him. There are lots of good ideas in this thread. And maybe, just maybe, one or two other young younglings are in his shoes?
And you are a MORON.
Once again, the tools of a mature mind have failed you, so you revert to the methods of a 5 year old. Congratulations on that.
And on that note, our discussion ends. I warned you that I would not continue the discussion if you could not refrain from insults. You claim to have the greater intellect, but you repeatedly demonstrate that you are governed by anger, not logic. Your stated aim ("my job here") was to convince me that you are correct. You did not employ the methods which could have accomplished your stated aim. You have DEMONSTRATED to me that as poorly as you understand basic economics, your understanding of human nature is far worse.
I suggest that you examine your reasons for engaging in discussions like this. I don't think it has a damn thing to do with free markets. It's about attempting to bolster your pathetically low self-esteem by convincing yourself that you are better than other people, because you have such a fabulous intellect. But great intellects don't communicate their ideas in such an irrational and insulting manner. Ask anyone!
Feel free to reply to this message if you like, but I won't communicate with you again. You are not worth my time.
You've DEMONSTRATED nothing. Your example consists of a single trade. Obviously, the US economy is made up of millions of trades. So, to use your model, suppose that person 1 buys all kinds of things from person 2, but person 2 purchases far less from person 1. Person 1 ends up sending a giant chunk of his income to person 2 each year. Soon, person 1 has to borrow money to keep up his rate of consumption - a lot of money. Person 1 goes broke and ends up living under a bridge.
That's what a trade deficit is, since you seem to have a poor understanding of the concept. You mentioned the idea of unions before, and how a college degree was like a type of union card. I agree with that. I belong to a much larger union called The United States of America. I pay my dues all the time, in the form of taxes. I also might be called upon to lay down my life in defense of this union. I have other duties as a member in good standing as well.
In return for this, I expect the union bosses (the government) to look out for my interests whenever possible. That might take lots of forms, including the limitation of trade. We both agree that ordinary folks don't get to own nuclear weapons. Like it or not, call it what you will, that is a restriction of the free market. That is a far far cry from me advocating all forms of protectionism, or even most. All I have been saying all along is that protectionism is sometimes a good idea. And you agree with me on that point, as you DEMONSTRATED with your stance on private nuclear weapons.
So I say to you again, your free market principles are far less absolute than you paint them to be.
I've yet to hear you repent your original error of your false claims of "job loss" and "trade deficits" caused from trade.
I don't think it was an error. You've done nothing yet to explain what you meant by that. Feel free, I'm listening. You've mentioned that you thing that a trade deficit is not a real thing, several times. Please tell me why that is your opinion. And maybe you could avoid using the term "fairyland". If you're trying to convince me or anyone else of the righteousness of your views, that is most certainly the wrong way to do it. Facts convince me, not insults.
Well, call it what you will, but you've contradicted yourself. You've admitted that you are in favor of government regulation of commerce, under certain circumstances, which is all I was every saying. So good, you agree with me. The only thing we disagree about is which specific cases should be regulated. That's a matter of, as you say "personal subjective valuation". It's the valuation of most Americans that cocaine should continue to be illegal. You disagree with that, as is your right, but since you are in the minority, that law is unlikely to change any time soon.
If you scroll up to the top of this discussion and read everything I've written in this thread, you'll see that I specifically said that the government should not step in to attempt to regulate the price of CDs. Further, I never said that the government should have stepped in to stop those Rubbermaid jobs from going overseas. All I said was that for costing the US those jobs, Walmart was "not the hero" of that particular story. I did consider them to be a sort of "good guy" in the CD matter, because they were trying to drive prices down. Our actual area of disagreement is rather small.
That said, neither would I be in favor, at this time, of everybody having free trade access to nuclear weapons in their backyards.
So there is an exception after all. Apology accepted.
There's a lot of good material in this post, and I don't know if I have time today to address it all. But, let me give you a very specific example of where I believe that your absolutism falls apart. I want to emphasize that we agree on at least 95% of cases. I think that free markets are -almost- always the way to go, but probably not always. Here's a quote from your most recent post:
But the minute you take away people's choices through government interference, you are attacking the freedom of others and causing poverty, WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
I agree with the whole thing, and have since long before we started this discussion (let's not call it an argument, shall we?), right up until those two words in caps at the end. I believe that there are always exceptions.
Let's examine a product that is currently restricted by the government: cocaine. Does the government's prohibition of cocaine imports attack the freedom of others? It most certainly does. But freedom is NEVER perfect. As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. There's also the classic "yelling fire in a crowded theater" example. So freedom can never be limitless. It can only be maximized.
In a perfectly free society, we'd be free to get coked to the gills if we wanted to. You may be an advocate of that type of freedom. I'm not certain either way. To be certain, to me, is arrogant. Since no one has ever tried drug legalization on a massive scale (decriminalization, perhaps, but not the type of unrestricted commerce that you advocate), it's impossible to know what the effects would be. But the thought of cheap and legal cocaine is horrific to me.
I'm wise enough to know that cocaine is a tremendously bad idea. I'm old enough to understand that seemingly small actions can have massive and tragic consequences down the road. But many others in our society have demonstrated that they are not as wise in this area. Clearly, the current war on drugs doesn't work. At best, it's far from perfect, and many believe that it just makes things worse. Prohibition creates brutal criminal organizations, that much is certain. I'd certainly rather have RJ Reynolds selling drugs than the Bloods and Crips.
That said, if we compare cocaine to a currently legal drug like sweet sweet booze, some troubling differences are apparent. Booze is massively more socially acceptable than cocaine. Every teenager tries booze, but not every one tries coke. Alcohol is responsible for vastly more deaths each year than cocaine. And perhaps most troubling of all, alcohol is aggressively marketed towards kids.
So, my question to you at this point is, are you sure you want to stick with that "WITHOUT EXCEPTION"?
Ok, this is a reasonable post, so I do appreciate that much, but I already said that I get the concept of overhead, and don't require the Biz 101 explanation. So I appreciate all the effort you put into the first part of the post(sorta, not really), but it was for naught.
I further went on to talk about the Stan Lee case. When a content company crows about massive profits on a film, but then goes on to say that there were no profits according to the terms of the contract with the creator of the character, something is amiss.
So, you've accused me of making a poor argument, but you've also failed to address my argument. Is it right to use this type of creative accounting to ensure that Sony execs get their money, but the actual creators of the content don't get paid? That's what you seem to be saying. It is ok, as long as you call some of the profits "overhead". In other words, artists have to pay for the cost of finding and promoting the other artists on the label. Shouldn't it be the label that takes the risk on an artist, rather than the other artists on the label?
And if you're no fan of the big 4, then why are you defending them?
Awesome! More name-calling! How you can claim to be rational is totally beyond me. For you to claim that you have not engaged in an ad hominem attack is laughable. It doesn't matter whether I a moron in the literal sense or not (which I obviously am not). The very fact that you used that emotionally charged word to attack ME personally rather than my argument is the very definition of an ad hominem and therefore fallacious argument. Look it up! Such attacks have no place in reasoned discourse, and if you are unable to refrain from them, then I will withdraw form this discourse and leave you to spout your drivel to someone else.
Here, again, is the part where your whole ridiculous construction falls apart:
Every voluntary action, every voluntary exchange is a free market exchange.
I agree! BUT - the slave labor that makes the goods in China is not voluntary. That's what a slave is, for the love of Mike. Even if you disagree with the word slave, then fact remains that the Chinese are not producing their goods under the same rules that we are, and that gives them an inherent advantage. Of course they can make goods more cheaply! They have no concern for the health, safety, human rights, or general well being of their workers. That makes it easy to crank out plastic garbage cans at a cheaper rate. To buy those goods is to support that enslavement - period.
As I said to another person in this thread, I figured that the exclamation point was enough of a hint that the word was being used semi-ironically. Next time, I'll include a winking smilie.;)
I was just trying to say that it's good for firms, including record companies, to attempt to maximize profit. It's up to consumers to reject prices which they feel are too high. For the government to meddle in that basic dynamic would not be communist in the literal definition, but it would be a move in that direction.
Dude, I put hero in quotes! I'm not trying to say that Walmart is Spiderman. I have never gotten so much action on a/. comment in my life! Next, I'm going to say that Richard Stallman is a "douchenozzle"... and then watch my inbox fill up!
Thanks for calling me a moron. That's a logical fallacy called the ad hominem argument. You learn in college not to do that on day one. I guess you missed that day. Name calling is just childish, and convinces no one of the correctness of your argument. Also, putting every other phrase in quotes sure doesn't make you appear to be a sober and rational being.
You're so blustery and breathless that I'm pretty sure any debate with you is going to be about as useful and fun as eating broken glass, but you're so wrong headed that I just have to set you straight.
First off, you can't have free markets without free people. Given that almost everything at Walmart is made in China, your entire free market argument falls apart before it even gets off the ground. By definition, in order for a market to be free, all parties must not be coerced. Guess what? The Chinese government has some pretty intense ways of coercing people. The typical free market response is to say that the Chinese worker is better off than they were. Maybe so, but a better off slave is still a slave.
And that's the whole problem with your "free market no matter what" philosophy. There is always an externality, and all of the players in the game did not start at the same place, so these free markets that you're raving about exist only in your mind. A person who is hungry is very easily coerced, and a person whose family is rich doesn't have to go get shot in Vietnam if they don't want to.
To try to drag all this back on to topic, if you had read my earlier posts, you'd have seen that I specifically said that government intervention was not the right way to bring down CD prices. I'm no commie. I said that it was up to the consumers to reject the high prices of CDs. I do believe in free markets - just not every single time, as you seem to. You might be willing to leave the preservation of our national parks up to private entities. I am not. You might be untroubled by the fact that every article of clothing on your back was made by someone who had very few choices in life, and enjoyed very little freedom. That fact does trouble me, sir.
Lol! Yes, it's hard for the kids these days (getoffmylawn) to realize how painful it was to not have instant access to all the music that you ever wanted. We paid big bucks for that crap! And then if your disk got ruined, or the machine ate your tape, you were shafted! I bought some albums three times! Sorry for all the !'s.
In fairness to me, I did say that Walmart was the hero of this story. I agree that they're pretty evil in many other regards.
I loved going to Tower too. I used to go with my dad and my brother when I was a teenager. We would talk my dad into spending obscene amounts on stacks of new CDs. A trip to Tower was one of the best things that could happen to 16 year old me.
But we're a lot better off now. Tower offered thousands of CDs - the Internet offers millions. No brick and mortar could possibly offer what Bit Torrent does. Yes, we do need to find better ways to compensate artists. That is happening, albeit too slowly. iTunes has helped, and Radiohead's recent success has been great.
When I was 16, I had a couple hundred albums to listen to. I was lucky to have them. Kids from poor families had to make do with a lot less. But now, almost any kid can have a collection that would have blown my mind in 1987. Humanity is far richer for it.
No, it's quite real. In one famous case, Stan Lee sued Marvel Comic because he got no money from the film Spiderman. Can you imagine? The creator of Spidey got no money for the film featuring his character.
From the above article:
The 79-year-old - who worked for Marvel for more than 60 years - said he had an agreement with the publisher to get 10% of their profits from films and TV shows based on his creations.
Marvel has reported millions of dollars in earnings from the Spider-Man film - but no profits as defined by their contract.
Those b-tards ripped off Stan The Man! A dastardly deed worthy of the Green Goblin himself!
In another case, the author of the book Forrest Gump got no money for the film of the same name. He refuses to sell the film rights to the sequel for this reason.
So yeah, Hollywood Accounting is quite real, and similar schemes are used to deprive musicians of money.
Agreed. That's especially an issue with music, given that so much of it is purchased by teens. People just don't stay part of that demographic very long.
All good points. It's interesting how the major labels have been losing their monopoly because of two separate music distribution revolutions: the p2p revolution, and the walmart/box big retailer revolution. The latter turned out to be not really a big deal. TFA is from 2004, and CD prices have not dropped, not like Walmart was perhaps hoping. But the p2p thing - that's been a real bitch for them. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
If anything, I wonder if the big box retailers haven't helped the 4 majors survive the p2p thing. Few want to make a special trip to Tower or the like just to buy CDs, unless they have eclectic tastes. And certainly no one wants to pay the even higher prices the mom and pops used to charge.
You took that sentence out of context. I was talking about my teenage years, and specifically mentioned new Nirvana CDs. Kurt blew his brains out in 1994, years before the MP3/P2P revolution. But your snarky tone is appreciated! Thanks for making the world a brighter place!
>>What do you mean what is overhead? What kind of question is that?
It was of the rhetorical variety.
>>The answer is that the money goes to marketing
No, it does not. It seems that you might not have read TFA. They break down where the money goes, and marketing is it's own huge chunk, as is distribution.
So to restate my question in a way that might be a bit more pleasing to you, given that we've already accounted for profit, marketing, distribution, and manufacturing, why is the label overhead so gosh darned high? The answer is that it's the funny math that record labels use to deprive artists of income. When the movie studios do it, it's called Hollywood Accounting. Feel free to read all about it:
I don't think that piracy is exactly a courageous stand against high prices. True, people would not be so nonchalant about piracy if they didn't feel ripped off by the record companies. But a more valid form of protest, to me, would have been to simply do without most or all major label records, in protest to the high prices.
Gah! I thought that the exclamation mark was enough of a hint that I was using the word communism in a silly way. Next time, I'll add a winking smilie, just for you!;)
I was simply saying that I don't believe that it's the government's job to protect us from high CD prices, despite the fact that congress has held hearings on same. It's up the consumer to say, gosh, as much as I love Metallica, I'm not paying 20 bucks for the new album.
In saying that, my intent was to say that government involvement in the form of price controls or some such (that's the communism part) is not the answer. In most markets, I think that free (as in speech) is the way to go. Government involvement is practically always a bad thing for the consumer. It's up to us, the record buyers, to vote against high prices with our dollars, by buying only from bands and labels (Radiohead) that deliver the product at a lower price.
When 4 major labels account for the lion's share of the music sold, that's a sort of de facto communism anyhow. For reasons I outlined in other posts, the music market is very resistant to free market forces.
Walmart is the hero in this story because they are trying to drive down prices. Now, when they used the same strong-arm tactics on the Rubbermaid corporation, it resulted in American jobs going to China. That makes them not the hero in that one, to me. The US economy was made weaker by the job loss, and the increase in the already staggering national trade deficit.
The music industry is different. Our pop music is not going to be made more cheaply in China any time soon (I hope). And while market forces would normally drive the price of a good down, with music, all CDs are not interchangeable. If someone makes a cheaper light bulb that's just as good as other bulbs, I switch to the cheaper ones. CDs don't work that way, mostly due to the amazing triumph of propaganda.
Because of this tremendous brand loyalty (people get tattoos of their favorite rockbands... anyone ever get a tattoo of their favorite soap?), the price is pretty high. Competitive market forces have not driven the price down, despite the fact that the cost to produce the product has gone down. Milton Freidman is spinning in his grave!
Further, I just don't agree with your statement that it's impossible to force record companies to take a smaller chunk of the pie without also shafting artists. The artists have been getting shafted all along, unless they're at the very top. The price breakdown in TFA shows the artist getting $1.60 in royalties (80 cents more if they wrote the song too). That's misleading. All artists do not get the same share of the royalties. Plus, the money that artists do get, they often have to give right back to pay for the cost of recording the album. Here's an article from 2000 where Courtney Love talks about how artists get shafted by record companies. In know, she's a train wreck, but she does have experience dealing with record companies.
And besides, TFA says that the record company gets $1.70 Label profit, and $2.91 Label overhead - over and above the cost of marketing, producing and distributing. What is label overhead? And why is it way more than the artist gets, even in a best case scenario?
I agree that Walmart is the "hero" of this particular story, but to me, the real villain is the record buying public. We can't ask firms to not try to make a profit... that's communism! We needed to stand up to the major labels a long time ago by simply not buying their over-priced crap. But sadly, most of us are just too dumb to know better.
That includes me, back in my teenage years, when I would spend darn near every cent that I had on "content", either as movies or CDs. Music meant so much to me back then, I would have paid 40 bucks a CD to get the latest Nirvana album if I had to. Thank the Lords of Cobol that today's teens have much better access to the true alternatives.
Marketing (aka propaganda) is very powerful, especially on those who have weak or poorly developed egos (like teens). We need to do a better job as a culture of teaching young people how to spot it (not hard, it's ubiquitous), and how to spot the fallacious logic and appeals to insecurities. The vast majority of the time, marketing is trying to get you to do something that is not in your best interest... like pay 20 bucks for the new Nickleback CD! Ugh!
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to have worked pretty well for him. There are lots of good ideas in this thread. And maybe, just maybe, one or two other young younglings are in his shoes?
Once again, the tools of a mature mind have failed you, so you revert to the methods of a 5 year old. Congratulations on that.
And on that note, our discussion ends. I warned you that I would not continue the discussion if you could not refrain from insults. You claim to have the greater intellect, but you repeatedly demonstrate that you are governed by anger, not logic. Your stated aim ("my job here") was to convince me that you are correct. You did not employ the methods which could have accomplished your stated aim. You have DEMONSTRATED to me that as poorly as you understand basic economics, your understanding of human nature is far worse.
I suggest that you examine your reasons for engaging in discussions like this. I don't think it has a damn thing to do with free markets. It's about attempting to bolster your pathetically low self-esteem by convincing yourself that you are better than other people, because you have such a fabulous intellect. But great intellects don't communicate their ideas in such an irrational and insulting manner. Ask anyone!
Feel free to reply to this message if you like, but I won't communicate with you again. You are not worth my time.
You've DEMONSTRATED nothing. Your example consists of a single trade. Obviously, the US economy is made up of millions of trades. So, to use your model, suppose that person 1 buys all kinds of things from person 2, but person 2 purchases far less from person 1. Person 1 ends up sending a giant chunk of his income to person 2 each year. Soon, person 1 has to borrow money to keep up his rate of consumption - a lot of money. Person 1 goes broke and ends up living under a bridge.
That's what a trade deficit is, since you seem to have a poor understanding of the concept. You mentioned the idea of unions before, and how a college degree was like a type of union card. I agree with that. I belong to a much larger union called The United States of America. I pay my dues all the time, in the form of taxes. I also might be called upon to lay down my life in defense of this union. I have other duties as a member in good standing as well.
In return for this, I expect the union bosses (the government) to look out for my interests whenever possible. That might take lots of forms, including the limitation of trade. We both agree that ordinary folks don't get to own nuclear weapons. Like it or not, call it what you will, that is a restriction of the free market. That is a far far cry from me advocating all forms of protectionism, or even most. All I have been saying all along is that protectionism is sometimes a good idea. And you agree with me on that point, as you DEMONSTRATED with your stance on private nuclear weapons.
So I say to you again, your free market principles are far less absolute than you paint them to be.
I don't think it was an error. You've done nothing yet to explain what you meant by that. Feel free, I'm listening. You've mentioned that you thing that a trade deficit is not a real thing, several times. Please tell me why that is your opinion. And maybe you could avoid using the term "fairyland". If you're trying to convince me or anyone else of the righteousness of your views, that is most certainly the wrong way to do it. Facts convince me, not insults.
Well, call it what you will, but you've contradicted yourself. You've admitted that you are in favor of government regulation of commerce, under certain circumstances, which is all I was every saying. So good, you agree with me. The only thing we disagree about is which specific cases should be regulated. That's a matter of, as you say "personal subjective valuation". It's the valuation of most Americans that cocaine should continue to be illegal. You disagree with that, as is your right, but since you are in the minority, that law is unlikely to change any time soon.
If you scroll up to the top of this discussion and read everything I've written in this thread, you'll see that I specifically said that the government should not step in to attempt to regulate the price of CDs. Further, I never said that the government should have stepped in to stop those Rubbermaid jobs from going overseas. All I said was that for costing the US those jobs, Walmart was "not the hero" of that particular story. I did consider them to be a sort of "good guy" in the CD matter, because they were trying to drive prices down. Our actual area of disagreement is rather small.
So there is an exception after all. Apology accepted.
But the minute you take away people's choices through government interference, you are attacking the freedom of others and causing poverty, WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
I agree with the whole thing, and have since long before we started this discussion (let's not call it an argument, shall we?), right up until those two words in caps at the end. I believe that there are always exceptions.
Let's examine a product that is currently restricted by the government: cocaine. Does the government's prohibition of cocaine imports attack the freedom of others? It most certainly does. But freedom is NEVER perfect. As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. There's also the classic "yelling fire in a crowded theater" example. So freedom can never be limitless. It can only be maximized.
In a perfectly free society, we'd be free to get coked to the gills if we wanted to. You may be an advocate of that type of freedom. I'm not certain either way. To be certain, to me, is arrogant. Since no one has ever tried drug legalization on a massive scale (decriminalization, perhaps, but not the type of unrestricted commerce that you advocate), it's impossible to know what the effects would be. But the thought of cheap and legal cocaine is horrific to me.
I'm wise enough to know that cocaine is a tremendously bad idea. I'm old enough to understand that seemingly small actions can have massive and tragic consequences down the road. But many others in our society have demonstrated that they are not as wise in this area. Clearly, the current war on drugs doesn't work. At best, it's far from perfect, and many believe that it just makes things worse. Prohibition creates brutal criminal organizations, that much is certain. I'd certainly rather have RJ Reynolds selling drugs than the Bloods and Crips.
That said, if we compare cocaine to a currently legal drug like sweet sweet booze, some troubling differences are apparent. Booze is massively more socially acceptable than cocaine. Every teenager tries booze, but not every one tries coke. Alcohol is responsible for vastly more deaths each year than cocaine. And perhaps most troubling of all, alcohol is aggressively marketed towards kids.
So, my question to you at this point is, are you sure you want to stick with that "WITHOUT EXCEPTION"?
Ok, this is a reasonable post, so I do appreciate that much, but I already said that I get the concept of overhead, and don't require the Biz 101 explanation. So I appreciate all the effort you put into the first part of the post(sorta, not really), but it was for naught.
I further went on to talk about the Stan Lee case. When a content company crows about massive profits on a film, but then goes on to say that there were no profits according to the terms of the contract with the creator of the character, something is amiss.
So, you've accused me of making a poor argument, but you've also failed to address my argument. Is it right to use this type of creative accounting to ensure that Sony execs get their money, but the actual creators of the content don't get paid? That's what you seem to be saying. It is ok, as long as you call some of the profits "overhead". In other words, artists have to pay for the cost of finding and promoting the other artists on the label. Shouldn't it be the label that takes the risk on an artist, rather than the other artists on the label?
And if you're no fan of the big 4, then why are you defending them?
Here, again, is the part where your whole ridiculous construction falls apart:
Every voluntary action, every voluntary exchange is a free market exchange.
I agree! BUT - the slave labor that makes the goods in China is not voluntary. That's what a slave is, for the love of Mike. Even if you disagree with the word slave, then fact remains that the Chinese are not producing their goods under the same rules that we are, and that gives them an inherent advantage. Of course they can make goods more cheaply! They have no concern for the health, safety, human rights, or general well being of their workers. That makes it easy to crank out plastic garbage cans at a cheaper rate. To buy those goods is to support that enslavement - period.
As I said to another person in this thread, I figured that the exclamation point was enough of a hint that the word was being used semi-ironically. Next time, I'll include a winking smilie. ;)
I was just trying to say that it's good for firms, including record companies, to attempt to maximize profit. It's up to consumers to reject prices which they feel are too high. For the government to meddle in that basic dynamic would not be communist in the literal definition, but it would be a move in that direction.
Dude, I put hero in quotes! I'm not trying to say that Walmart is Spiderman. I have never gotten so much action on a /. comment in my life! Next, I'm going to say that Richard Stallman is a "douchenozzle"... and then watch my inbox fill up!
Thanks for calling me a moron. That's a logical fallacy called the ad hominem argument. You learn in college not to do that on day one. I guess you missed that day. Name calling is just childish, and convinces no one of the correctness of your argument. Also, putting every other phrase in quotes sure doesn't make you appear to be a sober and rational being.
You're so blustery and breathless that I'm pretty sure any debate with you is going to be about as useful and fun as eating broken glass, but you're so wrong headed that I just have to set you straight.
First off, you can't have free markets without free people. Given that almost everything at Walmart is made in China, your entire free market argument falls apart before it even gets off the ground. By definition, in order for a market to be free, all parties must not be coerced. Guess what? The Chinese government has some pretty intense ways of coercing people. The typical free market response is to say that the Chinese worker is better off than they were. Maybe so, but a better off slave is still a slave.
And that's the whole problem with your "free market no matter what" philosophy. There is always an externality, and all of the players in the game did not start at the same place, so these free markets that you're raving about exist only in your mind. A person who is hungry is very easily coerced, and a person whose family is rich doesn't have to go get shot in Vietnam if they don't want to.
To try to drag all this back on to topic, if you had read my earlier posts, you'd have seen that I specifically said that government intervention was not the right way to bring down CD prices. I'm no commie. I said that it was up to the consumers to reject the high prices of CDs. I do believe in free markets - just not every single time, as you seem to. You might be willing to leave the preservation of our national parks up to private entities. I am not. You might be untroubled by the fact that every article of clothing on your back was made by someone who had very few choices in life, and enjoyed very little freedom. That fact does trouble me, sir.
Lol! Yes, it's hard for the kids these days (getoffmylawn) to realize how painful it was to not have instant access to all the music that you ever wanted. We paid big bucks for that crap! And then if your disk got ruined, or the machine ate your tape, you were shafted! I bought some albums three times! Sorry for all the !'s.
In fairness to me, I did say that Walmart was the hero of this story. I agree that they're pretty evil in many other regards.
I loved going to Tower too. I used to go with my dad and my brother when I was a teenager. We would talk my dad into spending obscene amounts on stacks of new CDs. A trip to Tower was one of the best things that could happen to 16 year old me.
But we're a lot better off now. Tower offered thousands of CDs - the Internet offers millions. No brick and mortar could possibly offer what Bit Torrent does. Yes, we do need to find better ways to compensate artists. That is happening, albeit too slowly. iTunes has helped, and Radiohead's recent success has been great.
When I was 16, I had a couple hundred albums to listen to. I was lucky to have them. Kids from poor families had to make do with a lot less. But now, almost any kid can have a collection that would have blown my mind in 1987. Humanity is far richer for it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/2458083.stm
From the above article: The 79-year-old - who worked for Marvel for more than 60 years - said he had an agreement with the publisher to get 10% of their profits from films and TV shows based on his creations. Marvel has reported millions of dollars in earnings from the Spider-Man film - but no profits as defined by their contract.
Those b-tards ripped off Stan The Man! A dastardly deed worthy of the Green Goblin himself!
In another case, the author of the book Forrest Gump got no money for the film of the same name. He refuses to sell the film rights to the sequel for this reason.
So yeah, Hollywood Accounting is quite real, and similar schemes are used to deprive musicians of money.
Agreed. That's especially an issue with music, given that so much of it is purchased by teens. People just don't stay part of that demographic very long.
All good points. It's interesting how the major labels have been losing their monopoly because of two separate music distribution revolutions: the p2p revolution, and the walmart/box big retailer revolution. The latter turned out to be not really a big deal. TFA is from 2004, and CD prices have not dropped, not like Walmart was perhaps hoping. But the p2p thing - that's been a real bitch for them. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
If anything, I wonder if the big box retailers haven't helped the 4 majors survive the p2p thing. Few want to make a special trip to Tower or the like just to buy CDs, unless they have eclectic tastes. And certainly no one wants to pay the even higher prices the mom and pops used to charge.
You took that sentence out of context. I was talking about my teenage years, and specifically mentioned new Nirvana CDs. Kurt blew his brains out in 1994, years before the MP3/P2P revolution. But your snarky tone is appreciated! Thanks for making the world a brighter place!
>>What do you mean what is overhead? What kind of question is that?
It was of the rhetorical variety.
>>The answer is that the money goes to marketing
No, it does not. It seems that you might not have read TFA. They break down where the money goes, and marketing is it's own huge chunk, as is distribution.
So to restate my question in a way that might be a bit more pleasing to you, given that we've already accounted for profit, marketing, distribution, and manufacturing, why is the label overhead so gosh darned high? The answer is that it's the funny math that record labels use to deprive artists of income. When the movie studios do it, it's called Hollywood Accounting. Feel free to read all about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting/
I don't think that piracy is exactly a courageous stand against high prices. True, people would not be so nonchalant about piracy if they didn't feel ripped off by the record companies. But a more valid form of protest, to me, would have been to simply do without most or all major label records, in protest to the high prices.
Gah! I thought that the exclamation mark was enough of a hint that I was using the word communism in a silly way. Next time, I'll add a winking smilie, just for you! ;)
I was simply saying that I don't believe that it's the government's job to protect us from high CD prices, despite the fact that congress has held hearings on same. It's up the consumer to say, gosh, as much as I love Metallica, I'm not paying 20 bucks for the new album.
In saying that, my intent was to say that government involvement in the form of price controls or some such (that's the communism part) is not the answer. In most markets, I think that free (as in speech) is the way to go. Government involvement is practically always a bad thing for the consumer. It's up to us, the record buyers, to vote against high prices with our dollars, by buying only from bands and labels (Radiohead) that deliver the product at a lower price.
When 4 major labels account for the lion's share of the music sold, that's a sort of de facto communism anyhow. For reasons I outlined in other posts, the music market is very resistant to free market forces.
Walmart is the hero in this story because they are trying to drive down prices. Now, when they used the same strong-arm tactics on the Rubbermaid corporation, it resulted in American jobs going to China. That makes them not the hero in that one, to me. The US economy was made weaker by the job loss, and the increase in the already staggering national trade deficit.
The music industry is different. Our pop music is not going to be made more cheaply in China any time soon (I hope). And while market forces would normally drive the price of a good down, with music, all CDs are not interchangeable. If someone makes a cheaper light bulb that's just as good as other bulbs, I switch to the cheaper ones. CDs don't work that way, mostly due to the amazing triumph of propaganda.
Because of this tremendous brand loyalty (people get tattoos of their favorite rockbands... anyone ever get a tattoo of their favorite soap?), the price is pretty high. Competitive market forces have not driven the price down, despite the fact that the cost to produce the product has gone down. Milton Freidman is spinning in his grave!
Further, I just don't agree with your statement that it's impossible to force record companies to take a smaller chunk of the pie without also shafting artists. The artists have been getting shafted all along, unless they're at the very top. The price breakdown in TFA shows the artist getting $1.60 in royalties (80 cents more if they wrote the song too). That's misleading. All artists do not get the same share of the royalties. Plus, the money that artists do get, they often have to give right back to pay for the cost of recording the album. Here's an article from 2000 where Courtney Love talks about how artists get shafted by record companies. In know, she's a train wreck, but she does have experience dealing with record companies.
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html
And besides, TFA says that the record company gets $1.70 Label profit, and $2.91 Label overhead - over and above the cost of marketing, producing and distributing. What is label overhead? And why is it way more than the artist gets, even in a best case scenario?
I agree that Walmart is the "hero" of this particular story, but to me, the real villain is the record buying public. We can't ask firms to not try to make a profit... that's communism! We needed to stand up to the major labels a long time ago by simply not buying their over-priced crap. But sadly, most of us are just too dumb to know better.
That includes me, back in my teenage years, when I would spend darn near every cent that I had on "content", either as movies or CDs. Music meant so much to me back then, I would have paid 40 bucks a CD to get the latest Nirvana album if I had to. Thank the Lords of Cobol that today's teens have much better access to the true alternatives.
Marketing (aka propaganda) is very powerful, especially on those who have weak or poorly developed egos (like teens). We need to do a better job as a culture of teaching young people how to spot it (not hard, it's ubiquitous), and how to spot the fallacious logic and appeals to insecurities. The vast majority of the time, marketing is trying to get you to do something that is not in your best interest... like pay 20 bucks for the new Nickleback CD! Ugh!
Hmm, well how about getoffmysillylookingtrickedouthonda, getoffmycaseofcheapbeer, or getoffmyxbox?
Oooh, I know... getoffmymyspace!