Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Going back to the funding of things through NZoA and MCH:
RNZ Ballet, NZSO/NZPO and others are, as much as anything, exercises in branding. They're a sponsorship opportunity for NZ Inc. It's no different from the NBR NZ Opera, or the Vodafone Warriors for that matter. That's not state protectionism, that's state sponsorship. People don't talk about Vodafone engaging in protectionist behaviour with the Warriors.It's really not. The government doesn't sponsor the ballet as a branding exercise for NZ Govt Inc. It's a cultural subsidy because the government has decided that having a professional ballet and orchestra is something that NZ should have, and the market doesn't support it. The MCH web site indicates that:
The Royal New Zealand Ballet has been directly funded by government since 1998 in recognition of its role as the national provider of a major performing art.
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I watched the game and thought it was an OK spectacle. I suspect it would have been a lot better if you'd been in the crowd, though because of the crowd not the game.
And I'll probably watch their world cup games and then not care about them at all. Just can't get into a game which has about 85 minutes of not much at all, with intermittent bits of excitement when the teams are actually attacking and its all on. Feels to me like the field is too big.
Obviously other people will view that differently, good on ya.
That being said, thoroughly enjoyable and accessible game to play, I could happily kick a soccer ball around with mates.
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If you adopt a rule that you'll restrain technology to protect special interests, you'll end up making a lot of weird decisions. Would you ban Blogger or WordPress because it wasn't fair to conventional web designers?
I didn't say anything about restraining technology. Just that you can't sit there and go "technology did it" and not necessarily give a shit about what it means.
If, and I emphasise the "if", we discovered that technology meant that writers were just not earning as much and therefore were being turned off writing, that would be a concern. Less writers, less books being written, culturally poorer. And NZ might look at more state money going into supporting authors to ensure that we still had that important cultural output. Writers in residence, grants to support up-and-coming writers, more prizes for successful publications etc.
There will always be changes from technology, and many of them will be good. That's no reason not to look at the negative impacts and consider "is this a consequence we want to mitigate in some way?" As copyright law did for many years.
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Matthew, you said:
In NZ's case, we're so far down the free market path that it's complete hypocrisy for politicians to seek to protect cultural producers when they've not protected manufacturers and workers from their operations being sent off China or Mexico.
NZ On Air clearly does that at present, in that it limits the market as it is a subsidy for NZ-based cultural outputs. A lot of NZ music only gets recorded or made into video because of their grants and subsidies. All good.
And I reserve my right to like my state intervening in cultural activities where appropriate. No matter how many times you throw ECON 101 theory into your posts.
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Surely its cover
Always the proof readers after the book goes to print!
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In NZ's case, we're so far down the free market path that it's complete hypocrisy for politicians to seek to protect cultural producers when they've not protected manufacturers and workers from their operations being sent off China or Mexico.
We already do that with numerous cultural activities - half the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, NZ on Air? Funding for ballet and orchestras and radio stations and TV stations.
Clearly there's some glass half full between the two extremes you painted.
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Are you saying that manufacturing jobs and people's work in general aren't important?
Ah, the two sentences originally had something else between them, but then I took it out. And they were the other way around. Like Witi, I probably need a good editor.
No, it should be the consumers who make those decisions. Or are you arguing that the state should legislate to create a market for things?
Christ, lets not leave it just up to consumers. Just because it's a business model, doesn't mean it's not about something more than business. That's my point about the 'adapt or die' line. I don't want my culture to live or die by the market.
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One of the first times I saw him live was in Wellington, at that venue that might have been called Paisley Park, c1991. Chris and Alec walk on stage, see that most of the crowd is sitting on the floor. Chris: "Get up! This isn't Dunedin."
He played at orientation during the middle of the day down here in the mid-90s. I have the clearest memory of him leaving the keyboard playing the music on repeat while he wandered through the crowd with the mic and then took off a young woman's shoe to suck on her toes.
I'm not sure if that's an argument for sitting down at his gigs or not!
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People are trying to have a say, but being drowned out by commercial interests.
I don't disagree with your arguments that follow, but your original question was about why people don't like the argument about the blacksmith and the coming of the car.
It's very similar to the argument that manufacturing should die in the Western World because things can be made for half the price in China or Mexico. People don't necessarily want technology to always be making the decisions about important things like music and literature.
There is drowning out coming from the "adapt or die" side as well as the "downloaders are killing music". Neither necessarily impress.
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Gio, why is the analogy so awful?
Because as you point out it's a right-wing free market argument for change. It's the first owners of cars turning up on the doorsteps of black smiths and going "haha you're fucked now matey, adapt or die."
The idea that technology should always rule the decisions that a community makes doesn't sit well with everyone. People want to have a say in how technology impacts upon our world, they're just tools after all.