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Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

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Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#51

Post by bob1029 »

> Knowing that the game is rigged is liberating!

> how should you be expected to earn a living using their platforms unless you find a way to game the system? Do you have 20 smartphones lying around, per chance?

This is the message I'd take away. Once you learn that the whole capitalist hellscape operates in approximately the same way, you can start to explicitly target its mechanisms in order to improve your life.

Having moral flexibility helps so much. Being actively willing to "fuck over" arbitrary, faceless entities makes all the difference. If you start looking at the law in terms of "how much does it cost to do whatever I want", then you are now effectively playing by the same rules as those who seek to control your life.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#52

Post by eastbound »

JSavageOne wrote: post #39

Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence.

You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#53

Post by CPLX »

tel wrote: post #23
CPLX wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. A commodity would mean that people are indifferent to the music of Metallica vs Taylor Swift vs your brother in law's blues band. They aren't. So it's not a commodity. Because that's what commodity means. You could let your playlist run for years, but you don't and nobody else does either because repetition and familiarity and quality are things people care about musically. Playing music well in a way th…

With respect to your experience cited in your other comment, a lot of my music experience time is a continuous stream of random tracks on Apple's "Made for You" feature. I'm not particularly partial to what comes up. There's obviously a degree of quality that I'm expecting in order to keep the experience smooth and a set of genre and musical conventions I'm expecting. I wouldn't say that's exactly commodified, no, bu…

Sure.

Now, instead of using an algorithm of music selected by a mass market service that is playing you an endless stream of songs that are proven to have a large audience, try listening to the raw feed of uploaded music to major services.

Like the literal feed coming in that is just a firehose of every major label, all the indie releases uploaded via Distrokid or similar, and so on.

You'd find it instantly unlistenable. Nobody wants that because it sucks. Most music, even music people have taken very seriously, has almost no appeal to anyone at all.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#55

Post by saagarjha »

eastbound wrote: post #52
JSavageOne wrote: post #39

Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence. You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

Even within software there are a lot of excellent projects created by financially secure people. Clearly at least some people do enjoy doing hard work without being threatened for their livelihood.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#56

Post by dragonwriter »

eastbound wrote: post #52
JSavageOne wrote: post #39

Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence. You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy.

UBI enables meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it.

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#57

Post by Hermitian909 »

CPLX wrote: post #29
toast0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fruit is a commodity, but there's many types of fruit. And when you drill down, there's a tons of types of apples or whatever, but they're pretty much commodities. Some are more valuable or desirable than others, but if you want fruit and you can't get what you want, you substitute with something else. Music has a lot more variety than fruit, and some varieties are much more valuable, but still. If you're thinking ab…

You're not understanding what commodities are. An apple (or type of apple, to be specific) can be a commodity because I don't care or who which orchard made the apple, and I am completely indifferent to the apples of various orchards when I go to the supermarket. Recorded music isn't like that, at all. I care if the song is Fly Me To The Moon sung by Frank Sinatra or Stairway to Heaven sung by Frank Oz using the voic…

I think there's some talking past each other going here.

I think it's useful to bisect music into commodity/non-commidty categories.

Category 1 is things like Taylor swift's music which is not a commodity.

Category 2 is the music playing on lofi hip hop radio[0] is a commodity. 28,000 people are listening to the music on that channel as I type this and and approximately zero people know or care who made that music. The specific song basically doesn't matter so long as it fits the genre and meets a quality bar. They're analogous to handmade rugs - all slightly different but not in a way the consumer cares about.

So far as I can tell, most music that gets made is treated like it's in this second category: Generic Genre X song. Producing something that manages to break out of this commodity status is deeply unusual.

In anecdotal support of this, I often go to venues to listen to "bluegrass" (category 1) in much the same way I go out to buy an apple. I want the bluegrass to be good, just as I want good tasting apples, but the particular purveyor does not really matter unless it's someone special like the Punch Brothers (category 2).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#58

Post by saagarjha »

bruce511 wrote: post #4
wude935 wrote: post #2

I wonder if there is any artistic benefit by marrying the arts with a deeply capitalist system. Obviously as this article mentions its not great for the artists themselves, but perhaps the cutthroat nature of the industry makes it so that only the best of the best rise to the top, even if it means it comes from an independently wealthy musician.

Music is a commodity. There's already more music available to let my playlist run for years without repeats. Plus it's never been easier for folk to create, and publish, new music. With endless supply comes diminishing unit value. So, not to be brutal, but playing music is not an especially valuable thing, and so people really don't need to pay much for it. Ditto for writing books, making ceramics, pretty much anythi…

What about this does not apply to software, or any other highly paid profession?

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#59

Post by tonyedgecombe »

eastbound wrote: post #52
JSavageOne wrote: post #39

Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence. You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

>UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy.

Meritocracy is already dead (if it existed in the first place).

Re: Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

#60

Post by tomcam »

dragonwriter wrote: post #56
eastbound wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. The reason most people are successful is because they risk a lot if they weren’t. Surprise: Stress is a factor of excellence. You say it yourself: If UBI is introduced, then none of the hard jobs gets done.

> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy. UBI enables meritocracy, it doesn’t kill it.

What if most people paying taxes now opt for UBI instead?
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