62 people own same wealth as poorest half of the world

[egb_hibs]

http://www.theguardian.com/business...naires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined

How dispiriting and messed up, and while also more complicated than gut reaction allows, nevertheless just as wrong as gut reaction says.

Complicated because a lot of them are self made and done it fair and square, or at least within the law - but so so wrong; globalisation, technology, and finance are delivering so much wealth to a) original ideas wo/men with whom I have a smidgeon of sympathy - because there is no (in the case of software) or outsourced manufacture in the way of spreading the returns around, and b) the already super rich - who I have less sympathy with - as money returns unto itself (and in a globalised world does not give back to its host societies)

There seems to be no good answer to this, given globalisation. The trend for - noticeably tech - midases to give a lot away is laudable, but the same people are, not with ill intention, automating away many peoples ability to generate wealth for themselves. But despite the headlines these are still small numbers of people. Without a moral compulsion against hoarding of wealth (I would literally be tormented if I was one of those 62 as I suspect many of us here would be, but that's one reason I never will be in that number) you're arguably left with the - undesirable in itself - alternative of state authoritarianism. But in any case this route seems screwed by globalisation, so it's hard to see how things change - peacefully anyway. Nor do traditional mainstream politics seem to offer a way out - whatever happened with reagonomics, it was under the Clinton democrats that the us ceo salary versus average worker headed for the moon - and when America sneezes...

I suspect it wasn't their fault per se, but rather tech and tech enabled offshoring taking off; Ie globalisation. But it does imply that neither centre left or right will or can do anything about it.

One thing is for sure, it can't go on. Whatever the rights or wrongs, people won't stand for it forever. It's obscene and along with many other things it's unsustainable.

 

[Stanton Spence]

Unbelievable stats that
I heard another astonishing stat on the news tonight
It was a story about the steal workers all loosing their jobs
Basically down to the Chinese selling it at a small loss and a fraction of what it costs to make here
Here's the stat a ton of Chinese cabbages are worth more than a ton of Chinese steal?? Was on the itv national news tonight

 

[gun ainm]

I take it you weren't convinced by post capitalism's exploration of the rise of the 'open source' economy? if we accept that by and large we have an information based economy, I think its apparent that we will either see the further concentration of power in great global monopolies (protected by the state - think apple, google etc) or the market will fail as knowledge becomes freely available (witness the death spiral of the traditional media etc enabled by the internet - a wikipediaisation if you like) .

good (brief) summary here for anyone interested

 

[egb_hibs]

I take it you weren't convinced by post capitalism's exploration of the rise of the 'open source' economy? if we accept that by and large we have an information based economy, I think its apparent that we will either see the further concentration of power in great global monopolies (protected by the state - think apple, google etc) or the market will fail as knowledge becomes freely available (witness the death spiral of the traditional media etc enabled by the internet - a wikipediaisation if you like) .

good (brief) summary here for anyone interested

I've been involved in the open source crusade since the world was young R. It has been a crucial contributor to avoiding centralisation of power and is an all round Good Thing TM. It's also both an example of a kind of functioning socialism but simulteanously an example of free market self correcting theory in action. It is, however, a mistake to view it as silver bullet - in fact it is an engine of the tech giants.

There's a repeating dynamic where someone dominates a market - eg Microsoft with Windows - and all the other tech companies organise around the open source alternative, including funding it massively and in some cases then surrounding it with propreitary stuff. iOS and android is probably the best contemporary example - though android was created in the corporate world (Google) and made open - see also sun and Java. This is another variation on the theme.

All in all it has a crucial role to play in curtailing centralisation of power and perhaps arresting the most grandiose loot making schemes - had Microsoft managed to get a monopoly on web browsers they had formative plans to 'tax' every internet sale. But I don't see how it has a significant role to play on creating jobs for the masses or arresting polarisation of wealth. In fact open source is actually likely to reduce even IT jobs as it powers cloud and offshoring which enable automation or displacement of jobs. In the jobs market generally it provides opportunities to your serious techies - not your typical 'IT guys' - and along with software generally, empowers entrepreneurs and creatives. But these are not the stuff of mass employment - I made the point in the OP that tech based products see all the spoils go the original ideas man rather than a manufacturing and distribution chain full of jobs. And that's best case - it hasn't worked out like that for musicians and authors. Which brings us to another problem - open source is great for under the bonnet stuff, but not so hot in delivering polished consumer products - which is why an open source iTunes is a harder sell than an open source web server. And iTunes is only the front end of a designed, closed system - a kind of planned economy actually - which is a whooole other massive subject in its ramifications.

I could go on forever on this but I don't want to send you to sleep.

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Ps there is an analogy made with tech and industrialisation which I think nails what I think are the problems with Paul masons thesis. I'm going to
lose its pithiness by not remembering it probably, but you'll get the point whether you agree or (not).

I think horses are the subject , if not it's something similar; people like mason view automation as akin to industrialisation redirecting the labour force into other roles as existing ones disappear. But a truer comparison is not Victorian labour but the Victorian horse population. It was much bigger than today as horses were maintained in large number to pull carriages, carts and ploughs, power machinery, tow barges etc. They didn't find new jobs - they in relative terms became redundant and stayed redundant - and their population crashed as a result. The latter won't happen with humans hopefully but permanent redundancy may well do; heavy industry replaced the brute force that horses brought to the table, tech will replace much of what humans bring.

 

[gun ainm]

...

I think horses are the subject , if not it's something similar; people like mason view automation as akin to industrialisation redirecting the labour force into other roles as existing ones disappear. But a truer comparison is not Victorian labour but the Victorian horse population. It was much bigger than today as horses were maintained in large number to pull carriages, carts and ploughs, power machinery, tow barges etc. They didn't find new jobs - they in relative terms became redundant and stayed redundant - and their population crashed as a result. The latter won't happen with humans hopefully but permanent redundancy may well do; heavy industry replaced the brute force that horses brought to the table, tech will replace much of what humans bring.

notoriously its hard to predict the future and so i'm unsure your analogy will come to pass, but I get your point - you're actually arguing as an old school marxist would which is novel for me ;)

Like it not we will see a reduction in the need for work, without a catastrophic event that affects the entire world. Its true there's a challenge for society to re-imagine what it is to be human and what 'value' there is in life (if it is not to labour). Thats why we need to have the type of conversation that Mason has brought in his book, we cant simply go on pretending that global capitalism in its current form is sustainable or desirable. That it (global capitalism) is holed beneath the water line is a given, now we have to work out what's going to replace it and whether we allow an elite, represented by your 62, to use the state and hierarchy to preserve privilege? Hopefully we can imagine a better way and the informed networked individuals like you and me and the rest of the cowshedders are the ones who could make it happen?

 

[egb_hibs]

notoriously its hard to predict the future and so i'm unsure your analogy will come to pass, but I get your point - you're actually arguing as an old school marxist would which is novel for me ;)

quite happy to sound like an old Marxist if I do though I'm not sure I do. I've always said I think his diagnosis of then problems was not without merit - it was the proposed solutions that were / are the problem - and this will finally deliver the headshot to that zombie but utterly destroying the labour theory of surplus value.

Moreover I'm not even sure diagnosis of problems has any echoes of Marx. I'm in more danger of echoing the Luddites! But you can take your pick - I'm maybe also echoing Adam smith - moral sentiment has been lost through many things and without it capitalism is he beast he forecast.

I'm not sure if what may come to pass can usefully draw on any of them though . If masons vision comes to pass it's less post capitalism than post economics. I don't think it will though and if it does it will be short lived for a number of reasons , most obviously if energy technology does not keep up which it hasn't for the whole high tech era.

Like it not we will see a reduction in the need for work, without a catastrophic event that affects the entire world. Its true there's a challenge for society to re-imagine what it is to be human and what 'value' there is in life (if it is not to labour). Thats why we need to have the type of conversation that Mason has brought in his book, we cant simply go on pretending that global capitalism in its current form is sustainable or desirable. That it (global capitalism) is holed beneath the water line is a given, now we have to work out what's going to replace it and whether we allow an elite, represented by your 62, to use the state and hierarchy to preserve privilege? Hopefully we can imagine a better way and the informed networked individuals like you and me and the rest of the cowshedders are the ones who could make it happen?

as above I don't think it would last. But that's where we will aim so you are right that it needs grappled with. But there will be a long period of more of what we have now first. It's an era of unprecedented opportunity and unprecedented threat that awaits us. I don't believe all this stuff about AIs taking over but good old humans have plenty of pitfalls to avoid and the various scientists / technologists talking about science and tech being our biggest threat are probably right even without scifi scenarios - or biggest man made threat anyway.

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Ps capitalism is only going away if economics are rendered redundant; or to be more precise, market economics ain't going away. Shareholder capitalism as it currently exists might take a knock and at the risk of echoing the fascists as well as everybody else, finance capitalism deserves to. But market principles will endure because it's the state of nature; that or violence.

 

[Davy]

In some ways more of us than like to think are as guilty as anyone. How many people for example had to enter the euro lotto in order for someone to win £160m? No one wants inequality...unless it's ourselves who have the riches

 

[egb_hibs]

In some ways more of us than like to think are as guilty as anyone. How many people for example had to enter the euro lotto in order for someone to win £160m? No one wants inequality...unless it's ourselves who have the riches

I'm not sure that's a good comparison. I don't think those who earn a fortune are guilty of anything anyway, if they've done it fairly and justly (eg in treatment of employees). What they then do with the money is another matter, as with lottery winners. If I won 160m I'd give most of it away and I'm sure most on this board would also.

 

[Beagle]

I'm not sure that's a good comparison. I don't think those who earn a fortune are guilty of anything anyway, if they've done it fairly and justly (eg in treatment of employees). What they then do with the money is another matter, as with lottery winners. If I won 160m I'd give most of it away and I'm sure most on this board would also.

Give most of it away? I widnae. I true modern society fashion I'd have a good try at spunking the lot and the rest of the world can happily go an fuck itself

 

[egb_hibs]

[MENTION=325]gun ainm[/MENTION]; maybe Keynesian economics are another thing fatally holed after all this time and decades of destruction;

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/...ple-think-they-know-about-economics-is-wrong/

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Give most of it away? I widnae. I true modern society fashion I'd have a good try at spunking the lot and the rest of the world can happily go an $#@! itself

And that's why socialism will never work [MENTION=325]gun ainm[/MENTION].

I have to say beagle old boy that I have faith in you. No one needs 160 million and I'm fairly sure you'd end up giving away a fair dollop.

 

[Davy]

I'm not sure that's a good comparison. I don't think those who earn a fortune are guilty of anything anyway, if they've done it fairly and justly (eg in treatment of employees). What they then do with the money is another matter, as with lottery winners. If I won 160m I'd give most of it away and I'm sure most on this board would also.

I'm not so cure...certainly most would give something away...but greed is an awful thing and we are all capable of finding ourselves on the wrong side. Anyway I would imagine we would keep the majority hidden away in investments bringing a steady stream of cash to fund our every day extravagencies.
I did not mean anyone is guilty of having money....but that when we gain wealth we soon have a fondness for aquiring more and thinking we need more and more to live on. The tv gets bigger, the car gets fancier the house becomes two with a time share, the rowing boat becomes a yaught etc etc. Suddenly it is not a small aoocation to leisure...but that "we need this extra money to cover all our expenditures". Remember George Michael who spent around £100 on a black t-shirt all the time from some designer or other...it was black and it was a t-shirt! He could have bought fruit of the loom for a fiver.

Ok here is a little test for everyone who wants to try it.

Of all you earn...how much percent do you give to charity after usual household bills? Chances are you will give the same percentage no matter your wealth

 

[Beagle]

[MENTION=325]gun ainm[/MENTION]; maybe Keynesian economics are another thing fatally holed after all this time and decades of destruction;

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/...ple-think-they-know-about-economics-is-wrong/

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And that's why socialism will never work [MENTION=325]gun ainm[/MENTION].

I have to say beagle old boy that I have faith in you. No one needs 160 million and I'm fairly sure you'd end up giving away a fair dollop.

Aye you're right Eegie. I'd give it away to hoteliers, sports car manufacturers, barmen, lap dancers, Hibs season ticket, even better - buy the Huns and put them oot of business. I'd have several gaffs around the world but I'd base myself in the Swiss Alps, probably Zermatt, with my own helicopter on standby.
It's easy for anyone to say they'd give a lot away, until you're in the position where you actually have it. Then we'd all resort to that most human of failings - greed.

 

[aggie]

Aye you're right Eegie. I'd give it away to hoteliers, sports car manufacturers, barmen, lap dancers, Hibs season ticket, even better - buy the Huns and put them oot of business. I'd have several gaffs around the world but I'd base myself in the Swiss Alps, probably Zermatt, with my own helicopter on standby.
It's easy for anyone to say they'd give a lot away, until you're in the position where you actually have it. Then we'd all resort to that most human of failings - greed.

Wouldnae sort your family out with lifetime financial security? Buy your pals hooses? Holidays with all of them? At the very least?

Shame to sit in your wonderful gaffs on your Jack Jones, like.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[egb_hibs]

I'm not so cure...certainly most would give something away...but greed is an awful thing and we are all capable of finding ourselves on the wrong side. Anyway I would imagine we would keep the majority hidden away in investments bringing a steady stream of cash to fund our every day extravagencies.
I did not mean anyone is guilty of having money....but that when we gain wealth we soon have a fondness for aquiring more and thinking we need more and more to live on. The tv gets bigger, the car gets fancier the house becomes two with a time share, the rowing boat becomes a yaught etc etc. Suddenly it is not a small aoocation to leisure...but that "we need this extra money to cover all our expenditures". Remember George Michael who spent around £100 on a black t-shirt all the time from some designer or other...it was black and it was a t-shirt! He could have bought fruit of the loom for a fiver.

Ok here is a little test for everyone who wants to try it.

Of all you earn...how much percent do you give to charity after usual household bills? Chances are you will give the same percentage no matter your wealth

I disagree Davy - your last point may be true for most normal folk but once you get into silly money I think (or at least hope it will be different). For the normal range of incomes even up to quite high it likely gets soaked up by a bigger mortgage, a slightly nicer annual holiday etc

But 160 million ffs - give away 100 and you've still got 60 feckin million, more than you could spend in many lifetimes. It's a whole different thing.

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Aye you're right Eegie. I'd give it away to hoteliers, sports car manufacturers, barmen, lap dancers, Hibs season ticket, even better - buy the Huns and put them oot of business. I'd have several gaffs around the world but I'd base myself in the Swiss Alps, probably Zermatt, with my own helicopter on standby.
It's easy for anyone to say they'd give a lot away, until you're in the position where you actually have it. Then we'd all resort to that most human of failings - greed.

I'm no saint and and I didn't say give it all away - but if I bought everything I could imagine wanting I don't think I could burn through more than 2/3
Million and probably a lot less - if have a bigger house, a holiday house and maybe a nice car. I can't really think what else apart from freedom to travel, that I would spend much on. Seriously, for me, that amount of money would make me unhappy - I know it would. Not judging those who feel otherwise but it's not for me.

 

[Beagle]

Wouldnae sort your family out with lifetime financial security? Buy your pals hooses? Holidays with all of them? At the very least?

Shame to sit in your wonderful gaffs on your Jack Jones, like.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I am kidding like. Feck knows what any of us would do with 160 million quid. I'd knock a few things off my bucket list though.

I should just like to say though that;
a - I don't have any family, parents deid and I've nae brothers or sisters
b - I'd sort out my mates financially for the rest of their lives
c - I'm 53 and past holidaying with my mates, I'd die of alcoholic poisoning after a fortnight.

I suppose I could clear off my credit card bill that the wife runs up

 

[gun ainm]

as above I don't think it would last. But that's where we will aim so you are right that it needs grappled with. But there will be a long period of more of what we have now first. It's an era of unprecedented opportunity and unprecedented threat that awaits us. I don't believe all this stuff about AIs taking over but good old humans have plenty of pitfalls to avoid and the various scientists / technologists talking about science and tech being our biggest threat are probably right even without scifi scenarios - or biggest man made threat anyway.

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Ps capitalism is only going away if economics are rendered redundant; or to be more precise, market economics ain't going away. Shareholder capitalism as it currently exists might take a knock and at the risk of echoing the fascists as well as everybody else, finance capitalism deserves to. But market principles will endure because it's the state of nature; that or violence.

hmm not sure i'd accept that market capitalism is our natural state but anyway even if it is what happens when supply of goods (in our knowledge economy) is limitless and costs trend towards zero? how can the market economy survive without monopolies keeping prices artificially high? propping up that economy becomes an exercise in fighting against the 'natural' flow. Supply/demand economics goes pop in that circumstance surely?

 

[egb_hibs]

hmm not sure i'd accept that market capitalism is our natural state but

i mean that the natural state of all animal life is that we chose to share, or exchange or take. Underneath lots of levels of abstraction that is what the market economy is. I don't mean plcs are part of nature.

anyway even if it is what happens when supply of goods (in our knowledge economy) is limitless and costs trend towards zero? how can the market economy survive without monopolies keeping prices artificially high? propping up that economy becomes an exercise in fighting against the 'natural' flow. Supply/demand economics goes pop in that circumstance surely?

only is you subscribe to the Marxist fallacy that price is related to production cost - it is actually independent. You may have noticed that the cost of a digital movie download is not cheaper than a dvd despite reduced production and distribution costs. (Although that's apple vs Amazon - Amazon do undercut bricks and mortar retailers but run at a huge loss seemingly permanently while apple swim in money)

Where I agree with your general thrust is what I tried to capture above; production costs approach zero because - among other things - lots of jobs disappear from the supply chain. That leaves all the loot for the content creator or controller of distribution. So your collapsing cost leads to more centralised profit and polarisation of wealth. In the end what where it becomes unsustainable is, I think, because you end up with no consumers with the wealth to buy products produced with employing people (and so creating consumers)

 

[gun ainm]

i mean that the natural state of all animal life is that we chose to share, or exchange or take. Underneath lots of levels of abstraction that is what the market economy is. I don't mean plcs are part of nature. only is you subscribe to the Marxist fallacy that price is related to production cost - it is actually independent. You may have noticed that the cost of a digital movie download is not cheaper than a dvd despite reduced production and distribution costs. (Although that's apple vs Amazon - Amazon do undercut bricks and mortar retailers but run at a huge loss seemingly permanently while apple swim in money)

Where I agree with your general thrust is what I tried to capture above; production costs approach zero because - among other things - lots of jobs disappear from the supply chain. That leaves all the loot for the content creator or controller of distribution. So your collapsing cost leads to more centralised profit and polarisation of wealth. In the end what where it becomes unsustainable is, I think, because you end up with no consumers with the wealth to buy products produced with employing people (and so creating consumers)

the labour theory of value as an economic theory is at least capable of modelling a post scarcity economy, orthodox supply/demand implodes if supply is (theoretically) infinite.

your example of the movie download is apt. Apple for example are attempting to establish a monopoly by appealing to the film makers and offering protection of copyright, others are also trying to establish this relationship but logically if we are to go down that route one company would win out in the end - we'd all be VHS or betamax. Apple (or alt) can then set the price and clearly are currently modelling their approach on what we were used to paying for a dvd/lp/cd whatever - its a radical change but it doesnt feel like one to the consumer as they still see the film. Apple's costs however other than the recovery of the development of anti-piracy software are pretty much zero (after they have paid for the rights to distribute) - get their model right and they'll be sole distributors for all major filmakers and be in a powerful position. Meanwhile costs for film production are in freefall as technology evolves so that now almost anyone with a phone/drone and some friends can make a movie (not quite but you catch my drift) - the rest of the 'value' of the film including the wages of the 'stars' relies on what price we as consumers are willing to pay. If apple doesnt get its way and create a monopoly (or amazon or whoever replaces them) then cost will tend to zero - anyone can copy it and distribute it for 'virtually' free. same as the cgi software etc. Moreover consumers realise they are being ripped off so find ways to circumvent the monopoly and thus far those folk have been more adept than those who would ensure a restricted distribution based on paying for each use. its an interesting tension but i think the monopoly will lose and thus we will have unrestricted access to any film ever made anywhere. I basically have that already really but it'll be much more apparent as the whole shebang evolves.

 

[Braehead Cabbage]

I am kidding like. Feck knows what any of us would do with 160 million quid. I'd knock a few things off my bucket list though.

I should just like to say though that;
a - I don't have any family, parents deid and I've nae brothers or sisters
b - I'd sort out my mates financially for the rest of their lives
c - I'm 53 and past holidaying with my mates, I'd die of alcoholic poisoning after a fortnight.

I suppose I could clear off my credit card bill that the wife runs up

Would you not even employ a burd to polish your boys trumpet?

 

[Beagle]

Would you not even employ a burd to polish your boys trumpet?

To quote the line from the film Brassed Off, "It's a bloody euphonium!"

5 grands worth of silverplated torture depending on good his practice is although I'm hoping that by Saturday afternoon he'll be the East of Scotland solo champion at 16 and under level.

And as regards burdz, they swarm around him like flies

 

[HenryLB]

Apple for example are attempting to establish a monopoly by appealing to the film makers and offering protection of copyright, others are also trying to establish this relationship but logically if we are to go down that route one company would win out in the end - we'd all be VHS or betamax.

Why would one company win, though? Not saying you're necessarily wrong, but it seems to me that at the moment you can buy an Apple TV, subscribe to a streaming service, buy a DVD, go to the cinema. The films are not physical items in any meaningful sense so their makers can sell them to anybody. All you need to distribute is a way of protecting the integrity of the file, so I don't really see how anybody could ever erect the necessary barriers to create a monopoly.

Apple (or alt) can then set the price and clearly are currently modelling their approach on what we were used to paying for a dvd/lp/cd whatever - its a radical change but it doesnt feel like one to the consumer as they still see the film. Apple's costs however other than the recovery of the development of anti-piracy software are pretty much zero (after they have paid for the rights to distribute) - get their model right and they'll be sole distributors for all major filmakers and be in a powerful position.

The payment of the rights to distribute is likely to be quite a significant fee, though, is it not? At least until they can get to this monopoly, which as I say I'm not clear on how they will.

Meanwhile costs for film production are in freefall as technology evolves so that now almost anyone with a phone/drone and some friends can make a movie (not quite but you catch my drift) - the rest of the 'value' of the film including the wages of the 'stars' relies on what price we as consumers are willing to pay.

Costs for much of the stuff relevant to this discussion are actually on the rise, in practice. You can make a low budget film for peanuts (1m used to be ultra low, now 100k is) but the material that actually sells millions of tickets and downloads (legit and pirated) costs more than it ever did.

If apple doesnt get its way and create a monopoly (or amazon or whoever replaces them) then cost will tend to zero - anyone can copy it and distribute it for 'virtually' free. same as the cgi software etc. Moreover consumers realise they are being ripped off so find ways to circumvent the monopoly and thus far those folk have been more adept than those who would ensure a restricted distribution based on paying for each use. its an interesting tension but i think the monopoly will lose and thus we will have unrestricted access to any film ever made anywhere. I basically have that already really but it'll be much more apparent as the whole shebang evolves.

Why does the monopoly automatically mean piracy would disappear? I mean by definition I guess it would, but what would stop a third party creating a player to show stolen content? Just another way a monopoly doesn't seem feasible to me.

Also in what sense are consumers being ripped off?

As far as I see it - and I totally admit I'm no expert - it feels like we've actually gone through the wild west that you suggest we are moving towards. Consumers are happy to pay a reasonable price to get a good quality, legal product in their homes, while cinema stays as a marquee event, and the industry is rebalancing on that basis. Slowly, and with lots of speed bumps!

 

[egb_hibs]

[MENTION=325]gun ainm[/MENTION]

the labour theory of value as an economic theory is at least capable of modelling a post scarcity economy, orthodox supply/demand implodes if supply is (theoretically) infinite.

it doesn't tend to zero though. What happens is the whole acquisition process becomes commodified - which is nothing new it's just more dramatic. But the 'value' is in the content and there remain limited numbers of musicians or authors etc whose work people want to acquire. To them will go the polarised rewards even if distribution monopolies are broken.

Labour surplus value is definitively bust when there is no labour. We have instead have a clarification of the truth about which Marx was confused. The value of industrially produced goods was never determined by labour input, as the replacement of industrially produced delivery mechanism for music, books, movies demonstrates.

your example of the movie download is apt. Apple for example are attempting to establish a monopoly by appealing to the film makers and offering protection of copyright, others are also trying to establish this relationship but logically if we are to go down that route one company would win out in the end - we'd all be VHS or betamax.

exactly what we have - see above re market maker (Betamax) and competition rallying around open source / standards (vhs).

Apple (or alt) can then set the price and clearly are currently modelling their approach on what we were used to paying for a dvd/lp/cd whatever - its a radical change but it doesnt feel like one to the consumer as they still see the film.

it's not that simple. There are IT pros and cons of closed versus open architectures which manifest themselves in the user experience. It would be very difficult for an open architecture to mimic apple's (which in the present incarnation of Apple started out based on one).

The tools are already there for creators to do it all themselves but few do, for a number of reasons including customer preference. However, viable open platforms will eventually arrive - and further polarise wealth in the hands of content creators - see above.

Apple's costs however other than the recovery of the development of anti-piracy software are pretty much zero (after they have paid for the rights to distribute)

theyre not you know - the cost of putting in place the infrastructure underpinning their stuff is colossal. However every additional movie added is basically zero additional cost (after acquiring the rights) , but the cost of entry is beyond the reach of almost every company including the IT ones.

- get their model right and they'll be sole distributors for all major filmakers and be in a powerful position. Meanwhile costs for film production are in freefall as technology evolves so that now almost anyone with a phone/drone

more jobs gone, more polarisation of wealth

and some friends can make a movie (not quite but you catch my drift)

and people will pay to watch a small percentage of the results - but yes, the creatives are massively empowered and should prove to be the ultimate winners

- the rest of the 'value' of the film including the wages of the 'stars' relies on what price we as consumers are willing to pay.

not their labour then? Interesting

If apple doesnt get its way and create a monopoly (or amazon or whoever replaces them) then cost will tend to zero - anyone can copy it and distribute it for 'virtually' free. same as the cgi software etc. Moreover consumers realise they are being ripped off so find ways to circumvent the monopoly and thus far those folk have been more adept than those who would ensure a restricted distribution based on paying for each use. its an interesting tension but i think the monopoly will lose and thus we will have unrestricted access to any film ever made anywhere. I basically have that already really but it'll be much more apparent as the whole shebang evolves.

i think you underestimate your fellows; many are not inclined to take things without paying. I think you simultaneously overestimate their willingness for hassle when Apple and Amazon make things so easy. Even if what you describe came to pass it means no more movies and a lot less music and books.

The distribution platforms will open up eventually but to reiterate that will only see further polarisation of wealth.

As I argued in previous posts and will now expand upon - industrialisation and now tech based automation is progressively taking out the human labour that can be replaced by machines. That exposes the labour surplus fallacy for what it is and clarifies the intrinsic worth of the product as being what people are willing to pay for it - which is generally based on the perceived desirability of the product.

This can be for any number of reasons - a rare misspressing of a record acquires a value detached from the intended content as well as the labour input. But as a general rule, the money will flow to the remainder whose role is not automatable - creatives being one major category. And it will flow away from everyone else; the recording studio engineers, catering staff, janitor, the staff in the pressing plant, the delivery van drivers, the wholesalers and the retailers, the people who printed and pasted up promotional posters, the security guards on the shop door...

 

[gun ainm]

Why would one company win, though? Not saying you're necessarily wrong, but it seems to me that at the moment you can buy an Apple TV, subscribe to a streaming service, buy a DVD, go to the cinema. The films are not physical items in any meaningful sense so their makers can sell them to anybody. All you need to distribute is a way of protecting the integrity of the file, so I don't really see how anybody could ever erect the necessary barriers to create a monopoly.

for the model to work imo one company (or very few) needs to win that's not to say it will happen but basically if costs are tending towards zero, they'll need to be kept artificially high in order to maintain viability.

The payment of the rights to distribute is likely to be quite a significant fee, though, is it not? At least until they can get to this monopoly, which as I say I'm not clear on how they will.

and companies will only pay it if its likely to be profitable - now its so easy to copy and redistribute thats likely to undermine that confidence.

Costs for much of the stuff relevant to this discussion are actually on the rise, in practice. You can make a low budget film for peanuts (1m used to be ultra low, now 100k is) but the material that actually sells millions of tickets and downloads (legit and pirated) costs more than it ever did.

not sure what you mean by that? costs of computer hardware (to produce) are plummeting surely. Theres possibly something in the delivery model that people will pay for the experience of going to the cinema for example but that's largely unrelated to the actual film, similar in they way people will pay 3 quid for a coffee or pint so they can experience the cafe or pub of their choice.

Why does the monopoly automatically mean piracy would disappear? I mean by definition I guess it would, but what would stop a third party creating a player to show stolen content? Just another way a monopoly doesn't seem feasible to me.

it doesnt it just makes it harder. the investment costs to lower the risk of piracy to a minimum which is enough to retain the business model are huge - i cant see how 100 differnt distributors can all have their own 'safe' system that will reassure the film industry.

Also in what sense are consumers being ripped off?

prices are being kept artificially high - there is no link to supply/demand or labour

As far as I see it - and I totally admit I'm no expert - it feels like we've actually gone through the wild west that you suggest we are moving towards. Consumers are happy to pay a reasonable price to get a good quality, legal product in their homes, while cinema stays as a marquee event, and the industry is rebalancing on that basis. Slowly, and with lots of speed bumps!

time will tell, its certainly possible that you're right....widening it to news and other journalism, education material and music for example, my own view is that as yet there is not an economic model that can cope with the communications revolution. For example about 10-15% of book sales goes to the author (typically), perhaps that is similar in film I'm not sure? a publisher/printer has an editing job but that's a one of cost and pretty small, the rest of their costs are in printing, distribution and marketing - all this can now be done basically for free (or very low cost) and they can distribute limitless of copies, there will never be a point where demand outstrips supply. An author should really pay an editor and distribute themselves from their website and use social media and peer review for marketing. sort of like what musicians are increasingly doing with their music, and they will (hopefully) make their money on experiential stuff - gigs, festivals etc.
where the role for penguin or amazon in this?

 

[egb_hibs]

[MENTION=325]gun ainm[/MENTION]; a small addendum - I think you are underestimating what encryption can do. Even today the security services are unable to break the encryption used by various two bob messaging systems hence they are in the courts with the IT companies - basically demanding the right to get access cos they can't break in. If it ever becomes a make or break issue for media companies, formidable barriers are implementable even today.

Breaking a 126 bit encryption key within foreseeable compute power would talk a billion years and / or more data storage than presently exists on the planet. The newish standard is 256. For each increased but you can basically double the complexity. The stuff that's out there today will seldom be out there through encryption breaks, but through other techniques which become less viable as physical media decreases - good old theft of master tapes is often behind it. Encryption doesn't take that much power to generate - it takes exponentially more to break.

 

[HenryLB]

for the model to work imo one company (or very few) needs to win that's not to say it will happen but basically if costs are tending towards zero, they'll need to be kept artificially high in order to maintain viability.

Yes, if they are. But I'm not sure that's the case. What's your definition of costs though, I may be picking you up wrong.

and companies will only pay it if its likely to be profitable - now its so easy to copy and redistribute thats likely to undermine that confidence.

Absolutely. That's the key challenge they face, but it is one they are responding to, with varying degrees of success.

not sure what you mean by that? costs of computer hardware (to produce) are plummeting surely. Theres possibly something in the delivery model that people will pay for the experience of going to the cinema for example but that's largely unrelated to the actual film, similar in they way people will pay 3 quid for a coffee or pint so they can experience the cafe or pub of their choice.

Well, the cinema experience is not unrelated. It's one (huge) part of the delivery model and a vast source of revenue. Something like twice as many tickets were sold last year as were in 1983.

But here I'm simply referring to how much films actually cost to make. Hardware costs are going down, yes. But they are only one part of the equation. Blockbusters are more expensive than ever to make because people demand ever better CGI etc, which costs more in man hours and render times. I doubt the VFX spend was lower on Transformers 3 than it was on Return of the Jedi, for example. And the main expense in films is people's time, and crews are bigger than ever.

it doesnt it just makes it harder. the investment costs to lower the risk of piracy to a minimum which is enough to retain the business model are huge - i cant see how 100 differnt distributors can all have their own 'safe' system that will reassure the film industry.

That's a good point. But off the top of my head, perhaps a security feature made by a third party that they will buy? As you say the creator (seller) needs to be reassured, so they will not release their film to people who can't safeguard its integrity. I don't see why only a single entity would have the resources to do that.

In any case I think that part of the solution lies in charging people in different ways for a guaranteed quality product, bothh in the cinema and at home. If you can set the bar at the right place piracy becomes undesirable, at least for a good proportion of consumers.

prices are being kept artificially high - there is no link to supply/demand or labour

I can't see any evidence for that. ROI in Hollywood is down to about two per cent or something. Most of the movie studios are effectively extravagant vanity holdings, loss leaders and buzz generators for media conglomerates.

All through the supply chain businesses are squeezed by tight budgets. A stark example: the post studio that did Life of Pi won an Oscar and pretty much immediately went out of business. This is because the prices are the opposite of artificially high for their work - they are in fact murderously lean and competitive.

In budget or indie the story's even worse. Yes, you can shoot a movie on your iphone, but monetising it will be nearly impossible. For every Paranormal Activity there are literally hundreds of films scraped together on a bit of money, a lot of goodwill, and public funding.

time will tell, its certainly possible that you're right....widening it to news and other journalism, education material and music for example, my own view is that as yet there is not an economic model that can cope with the communications revolution. For example about 10-15% of book sales goes to the author (typically), perhaps that is similar in film I'm not sure? a publisher/printer has an editing job but that's a one of cost and pretty small, the rest of their costs are in printing, distribution and marketing - all this can now be done basically for free (or very low cost) and they can distribute limitless of copies, there will never be a point where demand outstrips supply. An author should really pay an editor and distribute themselves from their website and use social media and peer review for marketing. sort of like what musicians are increasingly doing with their music, and they will (hopefully) make their money on experiential stuff - gigs, festivals etc.
where the role for penguin or amazon in this?

Totally agree that it's certainly in flux. I'm not sure I share your pessimism though. If the system tryuly was broken then content makers would simply not be able to make content as they'd have gone bust by now - illegal downloads are not that new, after all. And yet there's better TV being made all the time. And some good (or at least expensive!) films. So the investment is there, which suggests the revenues are too.

On your wider point - absolutely. Which is why Amazon for one don't just sell books and indeed don't just distribute. They make stuff now, too.