Clayton: You're making the same mistake that IRyan and ls have made... I'm not saying that market size is an objective measure of a product's quality or value (certainly not value as value is purely subjective).
You're making the same mistake that IRyan and ls have made... I'm not saying that market size is an objective measure of a product's quality or value (certainly not value as value is purely subjective).
Wait, where did I make that mistake?
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Rather, what I'm saying is that State subsidies in the arts "crowd out" artists that the market would have selected otherwise in that market. It's like if the government started giving away Ford Pintos for free. Even though they're total crap cars, you'd start seeing lots of Pintos on the road because you can't beat free. This would put a squeeze on car manufacturers, especially in the low end, whose markets are being saturated with a product with which they cannot compete at the subsidized price-point.
Okay, that clears things up. There is an important distinction between the market for "elite art" and the market for art in general. To extend the analogy, the government is giving away Ford Pintos for free, and convincing everyone they are just as good as Ferraris. As a result, Ferrari manufacturers are squeezed out of the market and people forget what a high-quality car really is. While this "car nihilism" or "car relativism" isn't pursued, the same principle is applied when it comes to the arts. The government subsidizes "elite" art which is really shit, like John Cage, and crowds out the truly great artist who cannot compete. And they do this to discourage the aesthetic and moral tastes that lead to a reduction in state power.
What role do you think the ideas of Herbert Marcuse, the Frankfurt School, and "cultural Marxism" play in this attack on the elite arts?
Also, this raises the question: When I return to college, should I start a club to promote libertarianism, or one to promote classical music?
Can you explain how the promotion of good morals and good taste during the Renaissance led to the philosophy of classical liberalism?
I recommend you read a book or take a course on Western civilization that covers the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods to see the links. Basically, historians argue that the revived interest in Greek culture during that time gave rise to a revolution in the arts where realism, perspective and representationalism came to the fore over stylization and traditional form. There is a spirit of "nothing can't be done" (in the words of the Beatles, "There's nothing you can do that can't be done. There's nothing you can sing that can't be sung.") in the beautiful statues of Michelangelo or the paintings of Jan Vermeer. These shifting artistic ideas had an impact on philosophical ideas, as well. At the time, philosophy was extremely conservative because most philosophy was actually done by church scholars who could lose their appointments or, even worse, be tried for heresy if they stepped too far out of bounds, just look at what happened to Galileo for pointing out that there are moons that go around the planet Jupiter (hence, geocentrism cannot be the case since not all heavenly bodies rotate about the Earth).
It is tempting to view the Lady Gaga phenomenon simply as the result of the demand of the masses, like televisions, washing machines and cars.
Lady Gaga is perhaps not the best example because she is, ultimately, a folk musician. However, I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist and I don't believe that the stars in music rise and fall solely as a result of market forces. I think it has a lot more to do with who you know and how well you happen to fit the latest ideas of the studio execs. And remember that statist intellectual property laws act as a kind of regulatory subsidy of the media industries.
After all, people freely spend enormous amounts of money on all sorts of inferior products: cheap pornography, fast food, dime novels, plastic toys, etc.
No, I'm comparing like with like, within the same market. John Cage versus Sergei Rachmaninoff. Within the market for cheap products, consumers still choose the best for their money.
Do public subsidies really have that much power to pervert our aesthetic sense?
Well, I think it's ultimately futile, I mean, the National Endowment for the Arts can't rewire the human brain. But they can stifle or slow further progress in elite arts and I think that's precisely what has happened. I think this is perfectly consistent with the agenda of the religious and secular authorities of times past who strictly regulated what sorts of art were permitted to be produced. But back then, they didn't have to use subsidies, they just cut your head off and were done with it. Since people generally frown on decapitating artists nowadays, the power interests who seek to influence what gets produced have chosen a different tack... flood the market in elite art with garbage (by subsidizing garbage art) so there's basically no real art being produced in the open market. This forces original artists who are not "plugged in" to the system and might upset the status quo with their art to starve or choose a different line of work.
Can you recommend any reading on the "attack on the arts" that would support your thesis?
Where's the Apocalypse Now of Iraq? Instead, we got Stop Loss and Hurt Locker. Ooh rah! Read this for more information on how the Pentagon has invaded every aspect of our daily lives with its messaging:
http://www.amazon.com/Complex-Military-Invades-Everyday-American/dp/0805078967
Also, watch this lecture by Steven Pinker (I recommend the whole thing but the part touching on the arts starts about 14:00):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQHSKLXu2c
Also, check out this Mises blog entry:
http://blog.mises.org/15667/why-do-we-hate-modern-classical-music/?replytocom=758147
All the major American industrialists of the late 19th and early 20th century were big patrons of the arts and today those families have a great deal of sway in the arts endowments, museums, concert halls - much of the money for these comes from the public treasury. Do not underestimate the power of public funds to wipe out an entire market.
Clayton -
To go back to an earlier post.
Clayton: I. Ryan: Clayton: I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image). Why don't you find that "morally acceptable"? I don't know, it's just not.
I. Ryan: Clayton: I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image). Why don't you find that "morally acceptable"?
Clayton: I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image).
I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image).
Why don't you find that "morally acceptable"?
I don't know, it's just not.
It was because of the above response (that you don't know why you think that it's "morally unacceptable" to steal a car) that I brought up the purpose of morality. In the OP, you argued that our morality is "an expression of an aesthetic taste regarding the actions of humans". Now, maybe you meant something different, but most people use the phrase "aesthetic taste" to refer to something that we couldn't give a conscious explanation of or whatever. Why do I like this music? I don't know; it's just an aesthetic preference. But I contend that the purpose of morality is much deeper than that. It might come off as some sort of aesthetic taste or something, but it has a pretty important function.
To break through the semantic static, first it's necessary to make a distinction between our moral thoughts and our moral feelings. I have moral thoughts. They're usually from my understanding of Austrian economics or something similar. I think that we should have a certain law because of some reason or something. I think that it would be beneficial for everybody to interact in a certain way, but not in another way. To have a stable society, we must have secure property rights and stuff. I can't think of any good examples, but hopefully you know what I'm talking about. But that's not it. I also have moral feelings. I find it painful to watch somebody get hurt. If I see somebody get hit in the face, I feel literally feel their pain in my head. I find certain kinds of wounds absolutely disgusting. And so on. One process is conscious, and the other process is subconscious, but they're about the same thing. In both cases, I come to a bunch of conclusions about how to interact with people.
Now, it's not as sharp of a distinction as I'm making it sound. If somebody punched you in the face, I might feel your pain, but in itself that's not a moral conclusion or something. So what would be a moral conclusion? Well, something like saying that I think that it would be bad to punch you in the face. But the point is that I might derive that conclusion perfectly from the fact that I would feel physical pain in my face if I actually did that. It would be a bad idea if only because I would feel your pain. So I might decide not to do it based solely on that idea. And I would call that a moral feelings. It runs directly from my idea that I would feel pain from doing it to my idea that I shouldn't do it. But I could also come up with an elaborate economic argument for why we shouldn't condone it. Property rights and whatever. And I could also consider that I would probably get in trouble if I did it, so that's something. And so on. It's always some sort of mixture of the two.
I mean, I suspect that you already understand this to some extent. For example, in your OP, you said that some recent research suggests that our moral sense (our moral feelings, I assume) was highly rational and stuff back in our primitive days, but that it's a wreck in the modern world. And of course that would imply that there's a standard to use to criticize our moral feelings. Maybe that standard is our moral thoughts? Of course. Our moral feelings could be more or less reliable or useful. At this point, they seem like a total wreck. Without a lot of conscious intervention (economics and so on), you would probably end up being another moron who helps prop of all of the bullshit. So it's clear that you understand that there's a standard to use to criticize your moral feelings. They can be more or less accurate. It could be a more or less reliable system. And because our cultural evolution has outpaced our biological evolution, it's probable that it's not very reliable.
But it's as if you didn't take that seriously at all. When you started talking about what morality actually is, you didn't even show an inkling of that understanding. You just started talking about how it's some sort of aesthetic taste, and how it's like whether you like some sort of music or not. And that there are "pathological cases" for both. But doesn't the word "pathological" include a negative value judgement? Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that you meant it that way too. So what's so "pathological" about finding it pleasurable to go on a shooting spree or something? What if their ultimate goals really did suggest doing something like that? It wouldn't be wrong from their point of view, so what's the deal? Well, the deal is that you wouldn't to be a part of it. You don't want to die or anything, and you find having a safe environment and a bunch of people in your division of labor helpful. Or at least that's probably the case. So it's "pathological" in the sense that it would conflict with your interests. It would be different (one part of the definition of pathological), but it would also be undesirable (the other part of its definition). And of course it's odd only because we wouldn't even be here as a society if it weren't. If more than a small percentage were violent pyschopaths, a stable society wouldn't be feasible.
So why don't you find it morally acceptable to steal a car? It's probably because you simply feel as if it would be bad. You imagine yourself stealing one, but then feel a bunch of dissatisfaction at the prospect. Well, that's fine. But it's possible to question that, and wonder whether you're being rational, right? Would it really be a bad idea? Well, that's not really a fair question anyway. Of course it would be a bad idea, if only because you would probably get caught and stuff. Whatever. But we're talking about something else anyway. Really it's just that for a society to be stable, it has to have secure property rights and stuff. That's why we call it a spontaneous order. All that you have is the choice between stealing it and maybe getting in trouble or something, and not stealing it and not getting in trouble or anything. You don't really have any choices that have to do with anything ultimate or whatever. It's the emergent order which controls those things, if you know what I mean. Nobody plans it (or could plan it); it just happens. The fact that you have these moral feelings and stuff is just a part of the system. If everybody has those feelings, the society will be more stable and stuff. And if there are certain laws (like against stealing cars), the same. It really has nothing to do with your choices alone. It's a spontaneous order. All that you get to choose is how high or low your time preference is and other stuff. If it's sufficiently low, you probably won't try to steal anything.
Okay, that clears things up. There is an important distinction between the market for "elite art" and the market for art in general. To extend the analogy, the government is giving away Ford Pintos for free, and convincing everyone they are just as good as Ferraris. As a result, Ferrari manufacturers are squeezed out of the market and people forget what a high-quality car really is. While this "car nihilism" or "car relativism" isn't pursued, the same principle is applied when it comes to the arts.
Let me modify your analogy just a bit. In the elite arts, it's more like the government has subsidized high-end car manufacturers based on how those cars promote "democracy" "equality" or whatever is the PC buzzwords of the day. So, high-end car manufacturers abandon wind-tunnel testing and instead design cars that can drive equally front-wise, back-wise, side-wise etc. since all directions are equal and should be treated equally, there's nothing special about the forward direction and the emphasis on forward-moving cars is just a reflection of our captitalist greed and sexism. You get the idea.
Thanks for answering my questions, Clayton. I'll check out the links.
Just a side issue:
However, I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist and I don't believe that the stars in music rise and fall solely as a result of market forces. I think it has a lot more to do with who you know and how well you happen to fit the latest ideas of the studio execs. - Clayton
I think this still falls under 'market forces,' but in a broad sense, not just talking about accounting books or merely monetary terms.
It reflects an exchange of, say, sexual favors, for pop music career success, between the record executive (however he managed to attain such influence) and the pop artist. Of which we only see the more obvious 'market' manifestation of the pop artist selling millions of records. But my point is, the music industry is still reflective of a mutual exchange between people, not just the exchange between listeners and record companies and not just involving official sales.
Just a side issue: However, I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist and I don't believe that the stars in music rise and fall solely as a result of market forces. I think it has a lot more to do with who you know and how well you happen to fit the latest ideas of the studio execs. - Clayton I think this still falls under 'market forces,' but in a broad sense, not just talking about accounting books or merely monetary terms. It reflects an exchange of, say, sexual favors, for pop music career success, between the record executive (however he managed to attain such influence) and the pop artist. Of which we only see the more obvious 'market' manifestation of the pop artist selling millions of records. But my point is, the music industry is still reflective of a mutual exchange between people, not just the exchange between listeners and record companies and not just involving official sales.
I disagree. I mentioned IP law for exactly this reason. I'm perfectly fine with the idea that the market doesn't have to conform to my preconceived notions regarding what is "truly free". Perhaps in certain markets, as you say, sexual favors are an integral part of the sale price. So be it. However, IP law is inherently aggressive, it subsidizes the big record labels and excludes competition. This distorts the market and I believe this is precisely why the record execs can afford such extravagant and capricious behavior as arbitrarily deciding who will rise and fall - certainly in the Top 40 market and probably in others to an extent, as well. Also, since the big record labels are a creature of the State (its IP laws), it is therefore the State's handmaiden and must do its bidding. Consider the mentally retarded song "Like a G6" which came out a year after the US government ended up as owner of the bankrupt General Motors corporation. Is it a coincidence that the song refers to a pretty pedestrian car (Pontiac G6) as if it were some kind of exotic car? Here's the lyrics:
Poppin bottles in the ice, like a blizzard, When we drink we do it right gettin slizzard, Sippin sizzurp in my ride, like Three 6 Now I’m feelin so fly like a G6 Like a G6, Like a G6 Now I’m feelin so fly like a G6
I don't think it's a coincidence.
Just wanted to say...
Thank you Clayton for starting an excellent thread.
Clayton,
If you notice my previous quoting of you, I stop at the point just before you mention IP. So my previous statement was meant to refer to the situation, apart from IP laws. I guess we're in agreement then, about considering some other aspects such as sexual favors.
But yeah, IP sucks. And much of state influence is subtle, as the Pontiac lyrics show.
LOL! I can't believe you wrote "sizzurp"!
Clayton, you said that promoting good morals is the right way and used classical music as an example. On the other message you said that Bach and others which you talked about are for elite and "folk music" for masses. So these two messages connected in my mind and rised question: Are you speaking of promoting "good morals" only within elites? Is this whole strategy for them? And what about the others, the "folk people"?
Interesting point. Never really thought about it. The Rothbardian/Hoppean strategy is to influence the "opinion-molding class" as they call it and I suppose you could look at this as an extension of that strategy from the academic realm to the other humanities. However, I'm pretty allergic to snobbery (what the hell is there to be so arrogant about?) so I don't think this should be the result of some kind of enforced classism but, rather, the simple result of the natural variation in tastes among the public. Some people will only eat fine cuisine and listen to foot-stompin' rock and roll. Others can only listen to Beethoven and Mozart while eating grease burgers off the barbeque. In other words "eliteness" in the Hoppean sense of natural elites is domain-specific. Think Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Only an artificial elite class can be "elite in everything" by virtue of manufactured privilege.
Anyone interested in this thread should check out Paul Cantor's 2006 lecture series at the Mises Institute entitled Commerce and Culture. Two of the lectures in particular deal with the way government subsidies destroy the arts by eliminating market feedback and replacing taste as a criteria with "equality" and other politically-correct nonsense. Here are the videos:
The Economic Basis of Culture
The Economics of Modernism
Clayton:However, I'm pretty allergic to snobbery (what the hell is there to be so arrogant about?)
Elitism isn't synonymous with snobbery or arrogance. I believe Ancaps (who actually understand economics) are generally superior to everyone else. If I didn't, I wouldn't be an Voluntarist.
liberty student: I believe Ancaps (who actually understand economics) are generally superior to everyone else. If I didn't, I wouldn't be an Voluntarist.
I believe Ancaps (who actually understand economics) are generally superior to everyone else. If I didn't, I wouldn't be an Voluntarist.
In general, or just in their political orientation?
Clayton:However, I'm pretty allergic to snobbery (what the hell is there to be so arrogant about?) Elitism isn't synonymous with snobbery or arrogance. I believe Ancaps (who actually understand economics) are generally superior to everyone else. If I didn't, I wouldn't be an Voluntarist.
Well, an elitist in that sense is simply someone who does not deny the fact that some people are better at some things than other people. But a lot of times people are elitist because they believe they are somehow objectively more valuable than other people which is pretty silly when you think about it. It's childish.
I think it's quite clear that the work of Cage would have very little chances of being made in a stateless society. Cage wasn't a innovator by any means IMO. What is the challenge of breaking accepeted rules to create something nobody cares? Besides playing the hipster role and claim it was done "so ironically".
The real challenge would be to defy tonality and the usual chords in a way that music still remains musical, like using salt to make a great chocolate. And the freemarket actually managed to do that via Jazz! To this day mani classical pianists have a hard time grasping the structure of jazz songs, even when they don't require extreme techniques
I think it's quite clear that the work of Cage would have very little chances of being made in a stateless society. Cage wasn't a innovator by any means IMO. What is the challenge of breaking accepeted rules to create something nobody cares? Besides playing the hipster role and claim it was done "so ironically". The real challenge would be to defy tonality and the usual chords in a way that music still remains musical, like using salt to make a great chocolate. And the freemarket actually managed to do that via Jazz! To this day mani classical pianists have a hard time grasping the structure of jazz songs, even when they don't require extreme techniques
You have characterized the problem with Cage's music precisely (or Schoenberg or any of these other "dissonance for its own sake" types). I will note that the tonality of most jazz is quite a bit more conventional than many jazz musicians realize, though I'm not denying it has made genuinely novel contributions to the harmonic repertoire. I used to think jazz was completely unprecedented in classical music until I started play Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin and even Bach and realized that these guys were all over the place, harmonically speaking.
The point is that "originality" is not art nor do I think it is even the purpose or goal of art. For me, music is about one thing and one thing only... sheer auditory pleasure. This could be in combination with a motion picture (movie scores) a short-film (music videos... one of my absolute favorites is here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_QsCXm1vrk). Like the pleasure of reading a book, looking at a piece of art or watching a movie, there is no one right way to create auditory pleasure from music but not all ways of creating musical auditory pleasure are equal! This is true not only for an individual but for humans generally... in other words, there are certain, concretely identifiable attributes of music that make it pleasurable. This idea that all music is created equal and it's solely the subjective preference of the listener - unshackled from any reference to his or her humanity - that distinguishes between "good" or "bad" music is a lot of gobbledy-gook modernist propaganda. To illustrate my point, consider these two (short) piano pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCZfvwfG9cw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhN7SG-H-3k
Now, the stuffy musical academics at Juilliard would say the first piece has depth and is really musically sophisticated and original but the second piece is commercial and represents no original musical creation... just a simple i->VI->III->VII chord progression repeated over and over with a little ditty on top... you could probably find a hundred examples of this chord progression in Mozart's or Beethoven's corpus. Of course, there is a lot more going on in Yiruma's piece than meets the eye at first (harmonics and so on).
But just go back and listen. Listen over and over to these two pieces. Then tell me which one brings you the most auditory pleasure. I'm not saying all music should be like Yiruma's nor that no music should be like Schoenberg's... far be it from me to say such a thing... but I am saying that to scoff at "simple ditties" is to evince precisely the sort of prejudicial attitude that an artistically open mind is not supposed to have. And, as stated in the OP, I don't even have an open artistic mind... I'm an artistic fundamentalist! If Beethoven had been educated by today's music teachers, he would never have written Fur Elise - possibly the most famous single piece of music ever written and bearing a lot of structural similarities to Yiruma's also-famous piece. My view is that these very simple pieces touch a central nerve in the human brain that we just enjoy having touched. It's like the pleasure of just listening to an open E major chord on a high quality guitar in just tuning... it just feels good to listen to the sound ringing out of the guitar. There's very little harmonic complexity involved. Just an open chord ringing out.
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