Louis CK

Louis CK decided to self produce, release and distribute his latest video for $5/copy. He released the video last Sunday, December 10, and has thus far sold 110 000 copies. So far he has earned less than he would have if he just had some big company produce the video, and, obviously he has put far more effort into it than he would have had he just had a big company produce it, but, the advantage is that he was able to sell the video for a lot less money, users would have had to purchase an "encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use". He made decent money, and he still owns the rights to the material. 

This should be the value add of the internet, i.e., elimination of the middleman in terms of distribution. And CK's experience should be encouraging for all artists. When you don't treat your customer as an adversary and offer quality things to them at a reasonable price, people will pay real money for digital content on the internet even if those things would be cheaper/free via bittorrent or by grabbing a copy from a friend. 


Update: Write up in the Globe and Mail

Oh, Fox

I stumbled across this little Fox News gem this morning: "Team Obama's Immigration Hypocrisy". The article contends that there's a contradiction between the Justice Department opposing state laws requiring police to demand proof of legal presence and the State Department encouraging police to ensure that foreign nationals be granted consular access upon being arrested. The author contends that Justice Department objections to things like the Arizona immigration law imply that the State Department must abandon efforts at Vienna convention compliance when it comes to the arrest and detainment of foreign nationals. "If it [the Obama administration] ... truly believes... that authorities should not be checking the citizenship status of local lawbreakers, than the State Department should withdraw its 'Consular Notification and Access' manual, and stop telling local police officers to comply with the Vienna Convention by checking the citizenship status of criminals".

But this objection completely paves over the differences between legal and illegal presence and citizenship. The majority of non-US citizens in the US are here legally; as such there's all the difference in the world between inquiring into citizenship status and requesting proof of legal residence. I'm regularly asked about my citizenship status and I never interpret this as a question about whether or not I'm in the country legally. The objection also incorrectly conflates what is being asked of the police in these two instances. In the first case it's a requirement to insist on proof of legal presence, whereas in the second it's an attempt to ensure that persons be given the means to avail themselves of their rights under international law. The State Department isn't requiring police to demand proof of citizenship. Conflating the state immigration laws with the State Department efforts is like arguing that offering a guest a snack or a meal is no different from tying him down and force feeding him. The State Department is trying to ensure that non-citizens have an opportunity to contact their embassy, i.e., upholding fundamental legal rights. State immigration laws in practice and intent are something quite quite different.

Silberman on the health reform law

Earlier this month a federal judge, Laurence Silberman, ruled in favour of the Obama health reform law. Notable here, though, was that one of the judges, in a 2-1 decision, was a Republican (Reagan) appointee and a fairly well known as a staunch conservative. He makes the point that health care is somewhat unique in terms of things bought and sold in the marketplace:

It suffices for this case to recognize, as noted earlier, that the health insurance market is a rather unique one, both because virtually everyone will enter or affect it, and because the uninsured inflict a disproportionate harm on the rest of the market as a result of their later consumption of health care services.

It's an important point, a point that's consistent with the evidence that the US spends far more on health care and receives far less. It's not in our interests to simply let the markets have their say when it comes to health care, because those decisions affect society quite profoundly. It's a lesson most of the world learned some time ago, it's just sensible to divorce health care from the rest of the market. That's why staunch conservatives in Canada or Europe have no problem also supporting universal health care.

David Brooks on Penn State

David Brooks wrote an article this week accusing those of us who condemned Joe Paterno et al at PSU of a hypocrisy of sorts. Brooks points out that people often fail to meet their moral obligations, fail to help people who need help and ignore situations in which someone is clearly being victimized. He makes a couple of interesting claim. The first is an argument that our indignation is based on a belief that we'd do better:

First came the atrocity, then came the vanity. The atrocity is what Jerry Sandusky has been accused of doing at Penn State. The vanity is the outraged reaction of a zillion commentators over the past week, whose indignation is based on the assumption that if they had been in Joe Paterno’s shoes, or assistant coach Mike McQueary’s shoes, they would have behaved better. They would have taken action and stopped any sexual assaults.

But this is an odd claim, isn't it? Why must our indignation be based on a belief or assumption that we'd have done better? Moral indignation isn't based on the assumption that we would have behaved better, it is based on an observation that someone failed to meet a clear moral obligation and didn't when the repercussions for doing so were very high. It's possible to separate out the moral indignation from claims that we'd have done much better, those are different things. It's odd, in my mind, to suggest that we have no right to be troubled by significant moral failings unless we can establish conclusively that we'd have done better were we in the same position. Moral indignation should be a function of what we believe the moral obligations to be, not data about the extent to which those obligations are met.

Brooks makes a second claim that this reaction is because of a failure to have a sense of our own sinfulness and shortcomings:

In centuries past, people built moral systems that acknowledged this weakness. These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves. Life was seen as an inner struggle against the selfish forces inside. These vocabularies made people aware of how their weaknesses manifested themselves and how to exercise discipline over them. These systems gave people categories with which to process savagery and scripts to follow when they confronted it. They helped people make moral judgments and hold people responsible amidst our frailties.

But we’re not Puritans anymore. We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness. So when something atrocious happens, people look for some artificial, outside force that must have caused it — like the culture of college football, or some other favorite bogey.

This allegation of failure to recognize personal evil and shortcomings isn't consistent, though, with the facts that we've observed in this case. In fact, people did hold these people responsible. Rather than seeking reasons to be gracious and forgiving, people put the blame squarely on the participants and those who failed to report him. I'm not sure why those facts call for bemoaning the loss of the good old days when people knew everyone was rotten. There's been no attempt at all to deny human rottenness here, on the contrary. No need to pine for the days when we were all self-loathing Calvinists.

Canada gets nastier

Yesterday, someone pointed me to a recent G & M article observing that Canada is becoming, well, in the words of the article, a lot less like Ken Dryden and a lot more like Don Cherry. I found this interesting because I'd read/viewed a couple of things in the last few days that had me thinking along the same lines.

1) The first item was a blog post by Tasha Kheiriddin argues that much of the blame for the "present crisis" lies with "the 99%". She argues that "when people think it’s perfectly OK to take out mortgages they can’t afford, ... , you reap what you sow."  And there follows the obligatory tale of how she pulled herself up by her bootstraps so screw all those greedy lazy people who could make it work if only they'd try. Ultimately, according to her, everyone is equally responsible for our present crisis. The criticism is flawed for a few reasons, let me note a couple.  For one thing, it misrepresents the mortgage crisis. Yes, by definition almost, many people took on bad mortgages, but to present this as a reflection of pure greed or indolence or stupidity completely ignores the context. As a matter of fact, it was the actions of the banks that created a huge price bubble, a bubble that was downplayed by many experts including Greenspan and every mortgage broker in the country. People were regularly being reminded that housing prices were historically incredibly sound. It was the price bubble, not simple greed or stupidity that caused people to take on bad loans. People were led to believe that housing was becoming increasingly unaffordable and were willing to grasp at straws because of concern that they'd lose the opportunity forever as house prices continued to appreciate and that they were likely to be able to soon refinance on better terms. This is exactly the BS that mortgage brokers and realtors throughout the country were pushing, backed up by a plethora of financial experts. This isn't to deny personal responsibility; but to present this as simple greed or thoughtlessness is to completely ignore what was going on. Secondly, the crisis in which we find ourselves isn't just a simple matter of greed by everyone. In fact, the point that these people are making is that wealth has dangerously accumulated at the top and that this doesn't bode well for economic recovery or deficit reduction unless we implement fundamental changes. Truisms about everyone being greedy completely miss the point. If "the 99%" stopped being greedy it would do nothing to fix anything, it might actually hurt things insofar as it would result in less economic activity.

2) The second item that left me concerned about the tone of debate was a CBC "interview" of an OWS participant, Chris Hedges, by CBC's Kevin O'Leary. In it O'Leary says to, the very articulate and coherent, Hedges, "Listen, don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound like a left-wing nutbar." and then later quibbling with Hedges over whether he'd said 'nutcase' or 'nutbar'.  To be fair, Hedges denounced "corporations" in general when he apparently actually meant investment banks, so there was some confusion but nonetheless, is this really what journalism on the CBC has come to? 

(Parenthetically, I observe that Hedges gives credit to Canada for maintaining regulations on the banks, a point frequently made. Canada also regularly gets credit for the Herculean deficit elimination effort they mounted in the 90s. Both those things happened under Liberal governments, it's too bad they've been reduced to a tiny shadow of their former selves.)

Carlin and the American Dream

George Carlin's 2005 classic on the American Dream ("you have to be asleep to believe it") has been making the rounds again recently. In it he rails against the fact that the country and the politicians are bought and sold by the big corporations. It's a (very depressing) comedy routine so his case is overstated, or at the very least I'd like to conclude something other than his complete despair, but it's also easy to find ample evidence of the way the moneyed are able to exert influence that significantly undermines real democracy and reform. Here are two recent examples:

1) The Montgomery County Council recently considered a resolution asking Council to spend less on wars and more on social programs. This is hardly a controversial position. Polls show, for example, that a majority of Americans believe the US should not be involved in Afghanistan. The Council was prepared to support the motion 5-4. But for some mysterious reason, after LockMart, as we affectionately refer to them in these parts, began talking with county officials, the resolution was withdrawn for "lack of support".

2) Another example involves my home and native land. It seems Trans-Canada has been using lobbyists to get close to State Department officials who have been cheerleading their efforts to get approval for a pipeline from the tar sands deep into the US, possibly circumventing environmental regulation scrutiny,  and helping them find loopholes to avoid public scrutiny over attempts to make the line exceed usual pressure constraints.  In the end, their money and lobbyists have given them far more access to the public officials who make the decisions than the pipelines opponents have had.

A more glaring example, of course, was the health care legislation that this administration pushed through. The efforts to appease the medical insurance and pharmaceutical lobby first ensured a result that was far less effective than it might have been had we simply found a workable compromise between intelligent liberals and conservatives unimpeded by corporate interests. 

(note also his prescience wrt Social Security)

Hitler comparison?

I'm not inclined to shed any tears for Hank Williams, Jr. losing his ESPN gig, but it irks me a little that most news reports are claiming that he compared Obama to Hitler or even that he was saying Obama was like Hitler.  If one watches the interview (link), (which will also confirm that Williams, Jr. is a bit weird and creepy and not very articulate), what he says is that Obama golfing with Boehner is like Hitler golfing with Netanyahu.  That's not a great comparison, but it in no interesting way says that Obama is comparable to Hitler or like Hitler. If I were to say that hot is to cold as black is to white, or as sweet is to salty it would be odd for anyone to infer that I was claiming heat is like sweetness or comparable to sweetness except insofar as both have opposites.  What Williams, Jr. did was completely different than the sort of actual Hitler comparisons that we've observed at Tea Party rallies in which Obama was portrayed with a Hitler moustache or some such.