Consumption Is Holy

I'm first draft done with a book I'm writing about premium content and its ramifications for growth of all kinds--personal, economic, environmental and social.

Basically, we humans started off as tangible beings and burned intangible producers (thinkers and scientists) at the stake. During this tangible, Newtonian, period, from 1000 (AD) to 1900 or so, the world GDP grew about .022/year.

As soon as we got over ourselves and allowed the market to value intangibles such as reason alongside tangibles like wood and cloth, our world economic growth jumped to 3% a year (the average for the period from 1870 to 1998).

The thesis of my book is that we're on the cusp of a similar paradigm shift, in which we'll not only experience a similar economic jump--to average world rates of around 30%--but also clean up much of the intangible era's messes--radioactive waste, festering geo-political conflicts and things of that nature.

Right now we allow the market to value tangible and intangible goods (cars, wheat, management, consulting) but not untangible goods (creative content)--which all have fixed prices. We don't burn anyone at the stake anymore, but if you've ever tried to make a go of it as an author, musician or other serious mass-media creative, you know there's little practical difference--you can't make a living making creative books, songs or movies.

You may be able to piece together a below market rate existence by touring constantly, doing workshops and the like--but you'll just be doing twice the work. With your real value--the creative work--essentially being a loss leader (advertising) for more tangible, less enjoyable and less valuable work. You do twice as much work, get half the return, and the economy (and our culture) grows twice as slowly. An incredibly inefficient way to produce value.

Not even the most successful bands make money off their recorded songs. This has nothing to do with the demand for new, high quality material, which may be enormous and everything to do with the artificially low, unprofitable, rates, that artists and labels (and iTunes) charge for songs.

Even if every single fan would rather have a new album than a tour, the artist must go on tour. Why? Because we've decided that all songs are $.99 but allow ticket, beer, and t-shirt prices at concerts to float at market rates and return profits. The content is at a huge competitive disadvantage and eventually must experience a drop in quality relative to those offerings that return profits.

That's economic reality.

In the tangible, Newtonian age, we enforced our values by hitting each other on the head, now we enforce them by hitting ourselves over the head. An improvement to be sure, but nothing to get excited about. Once creative value returns market rates every job that requires creativity will not only pay more but also feel more rewarding.

And we'll have an economy and culture brimming with creative offerings of every shape, size, color, tone and viewpoint. Right now, only the most broadly appealing (read watered down) content had a snowball's chance in hell in getting nurtured, presented in the marketplace, and returning a profit.

This means $5 songs alongside $.99 songs and $45 books alongside $14 ones--whatever the market will bear. If an author, filmmaker or musician has a small audience or takes longer to create, they'll have the opportunity to communicate profitably with their audience if the audience so desires. It won't be a free ride any more than Mercedes, Starbucks and Hermes has a free ride. To get more, artists will have to deliver more.

If all cars had low fixed prices, we'd be driving Yugos exclusively. It's not essentially different with music, films, books, television programming or magazines. Low prices means low quality--fewer talented people with less time to spend on the task at hand. That's a reality for any product in any developed economy. They might get us a few decent bands, but there aren't enough trust funds in the world to get us a steady supply of decent films or almost any decent television--so we'll have to pay market rates.

We think we're keeping songs cheap, or just dealing with file-sharing realities, but fixed content prices have ramifications that go far beyond culture--for one, since no one can work profitably in the untangible realm, where their environmental footprints would be minimal, all economic activity is intangible or tangible. Thus bands have to tour; consume tires, fuel and energy; and sell t-shirts and beer in plastic cups to make money even though their primary produce is very low-impact.

Once we pay what these products cost to make--plus a profit--we'll see our cultural economy explode. In a very real sense the Internet is a pipeline and it will ship cultural gold all around the world. We built the Internet by valuing intangible reason, we'll build the supply of content by valuing creative content.

The book is based on recent scientific discoveries and historical analysis but written for the lay reader--much like The Tipping Point and popular business books like that.

I'd say Who Moved My Cheese, but I think I come in half a notch above the parable-type books. Although it should be as easy and fast to read if I'm doing my job right.