| This is the discussion that should happen in Ari's meetings. You think it won't
work and I think it has worked for thousands of years. It works here at
Groklaw. It works for other websites I support. It works for Free/Libre and
Open Software. It is working now
at Kickstarter.
In fact, this is the
traditional way artists have been funded in the past through patronage. I see
the current system as an anomaly that was created by our materialistic
corporate-centric society.
You say:
Human nature goes against
you. Sure, people will pay
for awhile, but bit
by bit, more and more will
"cheat" - with the rational -
"I'll send a
payment later", only later never
comes. Why would it,
with no pressure,
no sence of urgency?
I'm
reminded of a character from Snow Crash who has the follow phrase
tattooed on his forehead:
Poor Impulse Control
We
are in agreement that certain types of films will die out if they only appeal to
people who have poor impulse control; who can't deal with delayed gratification;
and who are at an adolescent stage of moral development.
Our disagreement
is about what proportion of our population is morally immature and what
proportion is morally grown up. There is ample evidence that people general act
with adult morality. In fact, the cohesion and very existence of our society is
predicated on the majority of people acting morally mature most of the time.
Unfortunately, there is a small and significant segment that consistently acts
morally immature. You can read about their immature behavior in books like
ECONNED: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted
Capitalism.
As I said in my original post, what you claim is a bug, I
say is a feature. I believe most of the funding in Hollywood is for films that
appeal to emotionally and morally immature adolescents. The excuse the studios
give for this socially irresponsible behavior is that these are the films they
can sell. They sell them with massive and massively expensive ad campaigns that
appeal to the lowest common denominators: sex, violence, and potty humor.
Hollywood sells their films to the people in our society who are most
easily manipulated. These are the very last people we want deciding the course
of our culture yet due to our perverted system, they are now the ones in the
driver's seat. If Hollywood stopped making films like this I would say good
riddance to bad rubbish. On the other hand if people who really like these
films want to keep seeing them then they just have to chip in at a place like
kickstarter or simply pay for the last one in order to see the next one.
If
you only appeal to the lowest common denominator then you will only get the
lowest common denominator. If you do this long enough then you might end up
thinking this is all there is to human nature. That would be a terrible and
tragic mistake.
This whole thread is about adapting to new technology.
Not only has content distribution changed radically, payment methods have
changed radically too. One of the reasons it was important to charge people
before they entered a movie theater was the sheer logistical difficulties
involved in paying with physical objects. Back then it would have been insane
to ask people to pay from their seats as the movie was ending. People can pay
from their seats now with a click of a button. This makes a huge difference
because that is the perfect time to ask them for money. My goodness,
I've been in movie theaters where people applaud at the end of the film even
though there are no actors or creators there to receive the applause. Do you
honestly believe they are not going to also throw money if it's as easy as the
push of a button?
Of course, at a movie theater they would still need to
pay to get in but they would be paying for the ambiance and value added by the
theater, not because there was an artificial scarcity of content. They are only
paying for theater experience when going in because the theater owners get the
content for free. When it is time to applaud, the audience is paying the
content creators directly.
I am confident that under this new system, films
I want to see will still be created. If certain types of films stop getting
created because people aren't willing to pay for them after watching them, it
would be a boon to society regardless of my own personal view of those films.
---
Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
| 
