Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#151

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 12, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

e4325f wrote: post #118

Karellen wrote: post #33

> There is another definition of freedom which simply says, “In whose service is perfect freedom.” By giving yourself up to the Lord, you free yourself of the narrow cage of your own desires and your own selfishness. ...and that's where they lost me.

It doesn't have to be "the Lord", that's just an example, albeit a poor one. Replace that with running and it reflects a quote from the greatest marathon runner of all time Eliud Kipchoge - "Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions."

[deleted]

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#152

Post by habitue » Sun, May 12, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #148

antonvs wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As written on that wiki page it’s completely impractical: > Others are able to purchase the property from the owner at the taxed price at any time, forcing a sale. The idea is apparently supposed to “improve societal welfare”, but the reality is it would favor the wealthiest who could afford to have and hold property, while everyone else would be at the mercy of those richer than them.

This is almost certainly never going to actually exist, so this is all idle speculation, but if it was real I don't think it would necessarily play out as you describe. The wealthy would be paying way more in tax than they are now (they have to, or their own assets would be sold as well), which would result in a much more generous system of income redistribution. They'd also need to generate constant cash flow to pre…

> more generous welfare state

That's the bull case. The bear case is "money is distributed to government contractors through overpaying for things"

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#153

Post by rfrey » Sun, May 12, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #146

rfrey wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In music, there are a wide variety of genres with a wide variety of sophistication. And for the most part, there are serious artists doing serious work in all genres, including pop, c&w, hiphop, etc. The most esoteric Jazz musician will have pop artists she admires. The art world seems to be divided into impenetrable pieces that you need 10 years of education before you can understand how they "engage with the conver…

There is plenty of music which is entirely incomprehensible to the uneducated listener. This isn’t a good example.

The point is it isn't exclusively that. Nor is that kind of gatekeeping an essential part of music, in fact it is not admired in any way.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#154

Post by dingusdew » Sun, May 12, 2024, 5:19 PM UTC

lordfrito wrote: post #138

keiferski wrote: post #12

I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc. There are of course artists focused on political causes, but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal. While this situation is freeing for the individual…

I think the best art is done within constraints -- namely because it forces the artists to be creative within those constraints. Their creativity is what is inspiring. When anything goes, you get splatters of paint on a canvas, which is much less interesting as it's much less creative. That, and the market forces as you said -- it's not creative, it's just signaling and marketing. It's not high art, but what I admire…

[dead]

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#155

Post by rnd0 » Sun, May 12, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

kingkawn wrote: post #103

glitchc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The modern art world is predominantly a tax evasion and racketeering scheme, designed to transfer assets outside the influence of national and international law.

How reductionist and incurious about what art can be

>How reductionist and incurious

And yet, not incorrect.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#156

Post by rexpop » Sun, May 12, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

zoogeny wrote: post #99

I want to disagree with him and I want to agree with him in almost equal measure, I think that is ambivalence. My cynicism says that people like him, people who create psychologically dense pieces for the BBC, are actually on the side of conformity. I've felt since I was young that we are being sold our revolutions. They've firmly commoditized the opposition. I'm tired of the politicization of everything. Even in thi…

Yes, yes, and it was Marx himself who said the following in his 1852 "Eighteenth Brumaire":

> Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

I think it's an inarguable fact that our values are majorly, if not entirely, influenced by "regional" culture and ideology. I'm not sure there is any space "inside myself" that hasn't been reached and adulterated by both the lies and earnest claims of others. All my direct empirical observations are shelved on a (somewhat) common ontology.

Zizek gives me the creeps, but I think you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology. The early Christians were not radical individualists, they were a collective of idolotrous dianysian Judean.

> They've firmly commoditized the opposition.

Yes, this is called "recuperation", per Wikipedia:

> In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#157

Post by keiferski » Sun, May 12, 2024, 5:50 PM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #153

keiferski wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of music which is entirely incomprehensible to the uneducated listener. This isn’t a good example.

The point is it isn't exclusively that. Nor is that kind of gatekeeping an essential part of music, in fact it is not admired in any way.

But I wouldn’t describe it as gatekeeping at all. It’s just complexity that isn’t immediately obvious to the layman.

Much of contemporary art is the same way. Outsiders without any knowledge may think it’s a giant scam, but there are plenty of logical reasons, historical or ideological or otherwise, for artists making the things they do and collectors buying those things. You might not like those reasons and they might not be good ones, but I’m not seeing anyone even elucidate what they are in the first place.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#158

Post by whilenot-dev » Sun, May 12, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

lordfrito wrote: post #138

keiferski wrote: post #12

I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc. There are of course artists focused on political causes, but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal. While this situation is freeing for the individual…

I think the best art is done within constraints -- namely because it forces the artists to be creative within those constraints. Their creativity is what is inspiring. When anything goes, you get splatters of paint on a canvas, which is much less interesting as it's much less creative. That, and the market forces as you said -- it's not creative, it's just signaling and marketing. It's not high art, but what I admire…

Interesting take on Star Wars, because I think it should rather be used as a counterexample: Star Wars was made during the starting era of the "Blockbuster"-movie[0]. Just after movies like Jaws (1975) were a huge success at the box office two years earlier, studios were willing to throw money at directors to counteract any creative constraints.

Far better examples would have been The Blairwitch Project (1999) or Following (1998).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(entertainment)#Bl...

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#159

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, May 12, 2024, 6:40 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #144

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not clear how this is even supposed to be tax evasion. If you're not operating in a jurisdiction then you shouldn't owe them any taxes. Which jurisdiction is even alleged to be owed the money, and on what basis?

US citizens owe the US government taxes on their income regardless where it was earned, barring some specific exclusions. At any rate, where a company is registered or where an asset is held doesn't necessarily have much bearing on where work is done or what infrastructure is used and to what extent.

> US citizens owe the US government taxes on their income regardless where it was earned, barring some specific exclusions.

That seems like the flaw here, not the other thing. Why should the US government have any entitlement to tax activity that occurs entirely outside their jurisdiction?

> At any rate, where a company is registered or where an asset is held doesn't necessarily have much bearing on where work is done or what infrastructure is used and to what extent.

But that's the point. They're meant to tax in the places where this sort of thing happens. If you have a building somewhere, there is property tax. If you make sales somewhere, there is sales tax or VAT. If you have employees somewhere (or are an employee and perform work somewhere), there is payroll tax.

Storing art can be done most anywhere, so naturally it happens in the places that allow it under the most favorable terms, but what's the problem there? It's the same as companies putting their facilities in some other jurisdiction because it has lower taxes. It's the normal and expected thing and one of the rare incentives for governments to improve their cost efficiency through competition.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#160

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, May 12, 2024, 7:14 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #148

antonvs wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As written on that wiki page it’s completely impractical: > Others are able to purchase the property from the owner at the taxed price at any time, forcing a sale. The idea is apparently supposed to “improve societal welfare”, but the reality is it would favor the wealthiest who could afford to have and hold property, while everyone else would be at the mercy of those richer than them.

This is almost certainly never going to actually exist, so this is all idle speculation, but if it was real I don't think it would necessarily play out as you describe. The wealthy would be paying way more in tax than they are now (they have to, or their own assets would be sold as well), which would result in a much more generous system of income redistribution. They'd also need to generate constant cash flow to pre…

> The wealthy would be paying way more in tax than they are now (they have to, or their own assets would be sold as well)

That has nothing to do with the concept. The rate of the tax is separate from how it operates.

> I suspect the stable equilibrium would be a lot more renting rather than property ownership

Then the person doing the renting out would be paying the tax (and incurring the associated risks) and passing it on as higher rents. What does that help?

The problem here is assets that are hard to value. Not just in a subjective sense (what is a piece of art really worth?), but in a very practical sense. Take the things we have very good pricing information on -- stocks. If a share of Google is worth $100 and then six months later it's worth $110, but you put down $100 on the form -- objectively its market price at the time -- now someone can lift your shares off of you for a discount because the value changed and they raced to the filing office before you did. Now imagine the same thing but for something that doesn't have a high trading volume or an observable market price at any given time, but can still suddenly change in value over time.

Then it gets worse. Many types of property have a value to the owner which is different than their market value.

Suppose you operate a self-storage company. You have a piece of property which is objectively worth $500,000 where you operate your business. You declare that it's worth $500,000, because it is. Now a competitor can buy it off you for that amount just to grief you, because even though that's the value of the property, in order to move you have to contact all your customers and have them come and pick up their stuff, pay real estate commissions to find and purchase an otherwise identical property to move your business to, shut down your business while you hire contractors to move all your storage lockers to the new property etc.

Meanwhile the competitor just buys it from you for $500,000 and sells it to anyone but you for $500,000 (easy because that's it's true market value), causing you all this trouble and poaching half your customers in the process.

It's the kind of thing academics come up with which has enormous negative consequences in practice.