Today's links
- Democrats can pass the reconciliation today (sorta): A bet on the 'endowment effect.'
- This day in history: 2001, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Resourcecent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 27 Sep 2021
Today's links
- Podcasting "Breaking In": Why you shouldn't take career advice from successful writers.
- Democrats, health care monopolies, and market failures: Market health care is a fatal disease.
- Shelter is a toxic asset: NIMBYism is a fatal disease.
- This day in history: 2001, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Take it back
Copyright reversion, bargaining power, and authors’ rights.
Few labor markets are as dysfunctional as the market for creative labor. Writers, musicians, graphic artists and other creative workers often produce because they feel they have to, driven by a need to express and discover themselves. Small wonder that creative workers are willing to produce art for lower wages than they’d accept for other types of work. This leads to a vast oversupply of creative work, giving publishers, labels, studios and other intermediaries a buyer’s market for creative labor.
For the most part, arts policy pretends this isn’t true. When economists and business-people talk about labor markets, they lean heavily on the neoliberal conception of “rational economic actors” who produce when it makes sense to do so, and move on to another form of work when it doesn’t. Homo economicus is a nonsense — behavioral economics has repeatedly demonstrated all the ways in which “economic actors” don’t behave the way economic models predict they will — but it’s especially absurd when applied to creative labor markets.
Pluralistic: 26 Sep 2021
Today's links
- The Scholars of Night: John M Ford was a goddamned WIZARD.
- This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 24 Sep 2021
Today's links
- Demonopolizing the internet with interoperability: My op-ed in the Communications of the ACM
- This day in history: 2001, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 23 Sep 2021
Today's links
- The Halloween Moon: A YA novel from Nightvale creator Joseph Fink.
- The music monopolists: Thinking outside the antitrust box.
- This day in history: 2011, 2016
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 22 Sep 2021
Today's links
- Gig workers around the globe: One disease, many pathologies.
- Mutual Aid and David Graeber: A new, illustrated edition of Kropotkin's masterpiece, with an introduction from the great, much-missed hero of Occupy.
- Facebook algorithm boosts pro-Facebook news: Orwell was an optimist.
- This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Pluralistic: 21 Sep 2021
Today's links
- The Actual Star: Monica Byrne's millennium-spanning tour-de-force climate novel.
- Ignore career advice from established writers: We don't know anything about breaking in today.
- The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've ever used: Sustainable, upgradeable, repairable and powerful.
- This day in history: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020
- Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Ignore Career Advice From Established Writers
We don’t know anything about breaking into today’s market
“Breaking In,” is my latest column for Locus Magazine; it’s both the story of how I broke into science fiction, and an explanation of why there’s so little to learn from that story.
When I was trying to sell my first stories, I obsessively sought career advice and memoirs from established writers. I sat in on countless science fiction convention panels in which bestselling writers explained how they’d butter up long-dead editors to sell to long-defunct publications.
Continue reading "Ignore Career Advice From Established Writers"
Everything is Always Broken, and That’s Okay
Beyond “competition,” “efficiency” and “innovation,” interop delivers self-determination.
I am recuperating from hip-replacement surgery and while that often means I can’t concentrate enough to work, it also means I have long, uninterrupted periods to carry on correspondence, such as the paragraphs below, from my overdue reply to a left-wing economist with whom I’ve been discussing the case for interoperability. In our previous round, my correspondent had suggested that interop wasn’t necessarily good, and that even profitable interop could be bad for all of us — do we really need 50 nearly identical inks on Amazon that can all work with our printer? How can anyone make a “good” choice in that environment? My response is below.
Continue reading "Everything is Always Broken, and That’s Okay"