Captain Beefheart, John Sundman, and Richard Prince

/ Adam / 2 Comments

John Sundman writes ripping fictional yarns free of the help and hindrance of the established publishing industry. He has an eye for the technoparanoid flavoured with notes from Christian mythos.  Others have raved about his thriller Acts of the Apostles which is indeed a fun book; personally I like the experimental loops and hilarity of Cheap Complex Devices. It also helps that the tech sounds right, and no doubt his background as a tech writer (as well as fireman and peace corps volunteer) enriches the work.

Like most writers who are not also eccentric industrialists or aristocrats, and especially those without a current advance, Sundman is looking at ways to get paid to write, and his latest project got enough backers at kickstarter to get the go-ahead.

Which brings us to Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet. Captain Beefheart created a series of critically acclaimed and cultishly adored art-rock-wtf records in the sixties and seventies. If you need a more recent reference point – I did – he is Matt Groening’s favourite musician. I have a copy of Trout Mask Replica only because of a review written by Groening. It is a corker of a record but it sounds like a blues band being mugged by schizoaffective rabbits on the first listen.

Don, unfortunately but perhaps not surprisingly, could not make a living out of being a brilliant avant-garde rock musician, but he does make a living as an avant-garde painter. How does this work economically? The number of people buying fine art is if anything far smaller than that buying music, even avant-garde rock music. I suspect it is because Beefheart was in a no-mans land of niche popularity in a mass medium. An LP, CD or MP3 is cheap, with high production costs and low marginal costs. Each copy is also effectively identical, so supply is pretty expandable on demand. The result is low unit costs but also the need either move a lot of units, or make money another way (like gigs).

So Captain Beefheart took a similar career trajectory to Richard Prince – he moved from easily reproducible art to painting, which is the complete opposite of the cost scale. In the fine art world each piece is unique or in a strictly limited set (eg prints). The marginal cost of producing another self-portrait by Rembrandt is effectively infinite. The fine art world is therefore dominated by firstly a certain amount of zero-sum status pissing contest, and secondly and most relevantly a culture of collecting and patronage. It was more financially viable to find a few wealthy patrons than tens of thousands of casual followers.

If you look at Creation Science on kickstarter, it’s an attempt to tap both types of market. Contributions can range from a busker tip to full blown patronage, and according to Sundman the patron-style packages were not just wishful thinking. Personally I stumped up for the paperback, and here’s a toast to the success of Captain Johnny and his Magic Price Point.

Would You Like Subsidiarity With That?

/ Adam / Leave a comment

As it happens, the question of whether politics is a service industry once came up at the family dinner table, a number of years ago. I remember it because, on airing, my wife immediately quipped “Isn’t it a disservice industry?” and there the topic rested.

Tempting as it is to leave it there once more, given the time invested in the discussion leading to this question, let’s continue. John is after all brave and intelligent man, who like many economists struggles every day with Compulsive Quantification Disorder. He suggests here that Members of Parliament are best viewed as a kind of outsourced policy unit, a way to deal with our busy, everyday lives.

In a closing example it is asked Why do we hold an MP, who has power over our lives, to a higher ethical standard than say, a heart surgeon, who also has power over our lives?

Well, the question itself is wrong – we do hold heart surgeons to an extraordinary ethical standard, where we expect them to use their professional skills to their upmost to save their patients’ lives. And this is because saving lives and fixing dodgy hearts is at the focus of their professional role. If a heart surgeon fiddles with expenses, we are irritated because we paid more than necessary, and we feel certain general levels of professionalism have been breached, but it doesn’t compromise our mended heart. It’s also worth noting that a heart surgeon mostly has responsibilities to single patients; for our purposes she is mostly a hub, with spoke relationships emanating out to her patients.

What does an MP do? One of the roles they play is as a low tech vote proxy service for their constituents on particular votes before the Commons (or parliament of choice). John’s example is probably closer to say a mutual fund manager, making investment decisions on our behalf according to broad published guidelines, in this case a party manifesto, plus any individual pledges. On top of that, if they are in the cabinet, they also execute policy. Due to the way the Westminster system works, where the government can change without an election, this also goes for the shadow cabinet. That would be the part of government that can declare war, put you in prison for not paying your taxes, and so on. Any of these roles require good judgement and good character, and allowing people to be corrupt as a backbencher, but then reform as a minister seems an implausible reading of human nature.

Even this characterization is inadequate, however. Each and every member of parliament is responsible for the maintenance of the rule of law, to their constituents and to the common weal, whether society chooses them or not. To do that job requires respecting the law in the spirit and in the letter, its conventions and moral basis. It’s as fundamental as a heart surgeon being skilled at stitching up hearts. When you fail to respect the law – worse, the reason the law exists – then you prove yourself inadequate at an MP’s job.

Do people inevitably fall shy of this high moral standard, from time to time? Well, yes; and I’m actually pretty willing to overlook misdemeanors like claiming four pounds on dog food. I do find it indicative that one of the most centralising, box-ticking parliaments of recent times has fallen so broadly awry of exactly these sorts of pettifogging rules: it was lousy law and now we’re seeing why. Perhaps that has also fuelled some of the outrage and resentment behind this expenses scandal.

The state is larger than human at times, monstrous and casually cruel; this mortal God, Hobbes called it. To direct it, or mold this mortal god is yes, a sacred trust of sorts. It is sad when, from time to time, it chews politicians up and spits them out, the way lions, from time to time, chew up antelopes. It is sad but not unexpected.