petersoc

‘The system that wasn’t there’

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A detailed blog post on the philosophy of Ayn Rand at the Rotman Institute:

For many on the left, the sub-prime meltdown, financial crisis, and ongoing recession are proof positive that the laissez-faire, deregulatory approach is dead in the water. Rand’s followers have drawn the opposite conclusion: the crisis is the result of too much interference and the failure of governments to fully implement the measures they propose. Going half-way, the argue, simply will not work.

In this they may be right.

William Eggleston in the age of mechanical reproduction

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In his seminal ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936), Walter Benjamin writes:

To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense.

Or does it? The recent judgment of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York implies that some reproductions of William Eggleston‘s iconic photographs may now be categorized as original reproductions.

Will the ‘authentic’ reproductions now become more valuable? If so, they will have to exceed the price of the 36 new prints auctioned last month which approached a combined sale value of six million dollars, the most expensive lot selling for $578,500.

Hyperconsumption

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In 1899, Thorstein Veblen wrote ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions’, Chapter 7 of which was entitled ‘Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture’ and contained the following text:

…Our dress, therefore, in order to serve its purpose effectually, should not only be expensive, but it should also make plain to all observers that the wearer is not engaged in any kind of productive labour.

In 2011, the median annual income in the US was $26,588.

In 2013, in New York, it is possible to buy a T-shirt for $91,500.

 

The public and the private

Posted on by petersoc

Fran Lebowitz on the distinction between public and private from Index Magazine, 1996:

What could be a worse idea in the world than privatizing jails. What could make the whole idea of jail any worse than the idea of: Let’s introduce the profit motive. This is already a horrendous situation, and let’s let someone make money off of it! What could be a worse idea for health care than letting hospitals make money. This is a terrible idea. People don’t understand that when they say, “The Government,” they act like we live in … this isn’t fascist Italy. This is a democracy. We are the government. I don’t mean this in some sort of stupid Republican Boy Scout way, I mean, unfortunately, we are the government. I wish we weren’t. I wish there were a bunch of really smart people who were the government, and you weren’t the government. But, unfortunately, you are. So in the case of, say, health care, people who can’t afford to pay for their own health care have a public hospital, which is paid for by the taxpayers. Which means you have lots of levels of bureaucracy, lots of incompetent people, because who gets those kinds of jobs, and lots of wasting of taxpayers’ money. That’s bad. That isn’t nearly as bad as letting people earn that money.