Thursday, March 10, 2005

(This will have little flair. It will sound like preaching, like some absurd theory. It is true. The head hurts, the chemicals that maintain consciousness are rarely indulged in so the caf has spun the cerebral-cords odd. I also lost some of the epiphany somewhere. If I can reconstruct it, I will. The whole affair needs to be restated properly. Elegantly. When interest comes back.
Here's a rough)
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In a consumer culture, the power of the individual is not to refuse to purchase, as much an option as it is, but in to direct the power of the purchase. Fighting a society of possession and capital leverage is not the most effective way of acheiving one's goals. We have only lost when we have lost the right to own, the right to do as we please with what we have purchased. As a people, we have not yet realized our own power. We have never come to that shining realization that every purchase is a vote, every company a lawmaker. The rich get richer because we make them that way. Politics is money, in a way which is absent of cynicism. We choose who will be rich, who will begin to turn the currents of policy in which direction. As CNN and poli-pundits spin the facts of the face of government, so do consumer reports and corporate investigation teach us the nature of other powers. Read Forbes. Read the Wallstreet Journal. Realize that the one hundred wealthiest men are one hundred pivots on which the world spins. The Fortune 500 are the members of the fourth branch and through them, we are members of the government. By exercising our power, we have elected ourselves into the seats of government. Direct self-rule is no longer viable, has never really been. Money is fluid. The wealthy sit at the top of a wave in a small boat, but we are the wave, we are the water. We can turn our enemies into dessicated mummies. We can bathe our lovers. We are not insects. We're just in a coma. Or mildy retarded. Whatever. Politics only work for the people when the people care, when they do more than respond. When you buy the product, you buy the producer.

Here's how it stands: Money is power. Purchases are votes. Knowledge is necessary. The internet is everywhere. If there are any laws which we must fight, they are those laws which reduce the rights of the owner. The producer shall have no rights over a product it has already sold. Encryption is the ultimate power. Profit is life and capitalism evolution. Like the Red Queen, only by going forward can you even stay in one place. Competition is motion. No device, no tactic, no product is dependable. There are no staples of profit. A product is profitable only until others can produce it. As much as you slow it down, it will eventually be everywhere. The time that passes is not insignificant. Few people have the time, resources, ability, and knowledge to reverse-engineer, break the technological encryption. The blueprint is not the means of production. That is the second half of the time barrier. Take the time to continue forward. Half-assed attempts will not work. Knowledge of necessities, the level of the need, the options available to fulfill it, is power. The will to resist luxuries offered by companies whose policy is distasteful is a noble, necessary strength. Just as consumers can be trained to want, those who produce can be trained to be what we want. Profit is based on desire. Purchases are the active force of desire. By shaping our desire, we can shape the world. Art is based on love, lust, and madness. If you produce art that is shared, the world will take it. If the world likes it and wants more, ransom yourself. Ransom all the things you can make, but have not yet. Make a little at a time, sell each chapter to the world. Learn the Street Performer Model, the Ransom Model, the Art Patron model. Eggs are good, birds are better. Give a fish, give a fishing rod. The difference is enormous. The arts that make you rich are not the arts of paint, music, shape. They never should be. Art is expression and a way to get laid. Making money is a happy side-effect. File-sharing is not wrong. The method of production must be changed. Those who can produce have more power and more right to the power than those who cannot. The producer cannot be extracted from the product. When you buy the product, you buy the producer.

It is the ability to produce from whence value comes, not the items produced.
Purchases are votes. Purchases feed the beasts.
Domestication is a workable abstract.
Capitalism is alchemy. Turn a day of calculator-work into a desk from IKEA.
Trade is balance. A closed-off system dies.
Production requires consumption. Producers are consumers. The circle must be realized, upheld, and bent.
Specialization of individual parts even as the whole remains unspecialized is the key. Maintain diversity without sacrificing ability.
Life is action. Do or do not.
Macrosystems only work if there is a personal investment on the part of the micro. If we want our future, if we love our children's children's children, we can change things.
Benevolent technology is only costly at first. Technology that reduces environmental damage, if that's your bag, is only a sag in profits if the consumer forgets that the company is part of the product.
A crowd is still a collection of individuals. We aren't alone, but we are not imprisoned by our connections.
When everybody is profiting, the maximum possible profit is increased. The higher the possible profit, the better things can be.
Money is just a unit measurement of the only thing which is both concrete and abstract : The creations of man.
Politics and purchase must a hobby for it to work.
The producer is part of the product.
If renting ever becomes prevalent, the consumer is totally fucked. Only when you own something have you any rights.
When you buy one, you buy the other. The trick is seeing the whole product, not just the coffee-maker. If this concept was deeper in the communal psyche, each product would advertise not just itself but the deeds of its maker.

Like anything, though, it only works if we care.
Those who understand, who act, and who care are the only ones with any right to choose how things go.
If you're not invested, you have no right to complain.
Learn to swim or quit bubbling.

This is the moral : Everything has a price. The only question is if it's worth it.

If the masses every wake up and realize they are both the masses and a collection of individuals, we can give them a message. Until then, we can only lead the blind retard along the path even as other people grab his jacket and try pull him somewhere else. Luckily, corporations are masses too. Whatever incarnation of human socioeconogovernment comes next is more in the hands of chance than any group or individual. Which way it goes is all a matter of optimism or pessimism. Either companies or governments will forge a new, stable exchange of labor, goods, and ideas or the "masses" will. Utopia is entirely subjective. People don't care because deep down, most folk either cannot or have not grasped a bigger picture. Deep down, most folk don't care what happens after they die. We only object to bad things because we don't want them happening near us. To us. This isn't evil. It's survival. Altruism is only good if it can come back to you eventually.

I totally forgot that I really have very little investment in either side winning. A super-corporate state? Sure, whatever. A society that operates on an "ethical and informed" nearly-free-market model? That's cool. I'd prefer it, but only because as an individual operator, my memory and ambition and sleep-requirements are not functional enough to grant me the access-freedom I want in the world of political megacorporations.

Regardless, how things turn out will teach us what it is we really wanted as species. It may not be what we wanted, it may not work, but it will come from our desires.

Also: Turntablism, remixing, etc are huge battlefields as far as Property Rights and Possession rights go. I can resell my TV. Why can't I resell my music?

Red Queen process.

The real issue, as far as I'm personally concerned, is to discover what seeds have to be planted to get things to grow into the shape I'd prefer.

Desire and ability.
Fuck yeah.

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