True enough. Democracy, albeit very slowly, reaches bureaucracies in a half-hearted manner.

“Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one. ”

Wrong. Bureaucracies do not reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Actually, they consume humongous quantities of resources and then demand some more. They can be wasteful and unresponsive, and produce little good. Who is going to tie their allowance of resources to their efficient use? Choice of the users? That’s why they need exclusivity. They actually need to stamp out choice. You cannot demand ever more money and time from persons who are free to choose somebody else that will solve their problems without wasting their time and money.

The problem, then, is how NOT to make bureaucracy the exclusive way of access to a solution. Just the things that bureaucracies and elites hate.

Had bureaucracies to float or sink under the efficiency constraints that limit private business and individuals, they would not be bureaucracies. Those that insisted on their there-are-no-limits behaviors would be dead, and good riddance too.

Examples: This is why TV has so many reality shows (cheaper to make). It’s why news organizations are firing journalists (saves money). It’s why we can buy individual songs for 99 cents (cheep enough to persuade people to “simply buy” rather than “simply copy.”)

Conclusion: The essayist is setting up a straw man to rehash yesterday’s “information must be free” style of argument and engage in yet another lazy round of “they just don’t get it-ism.”

I do like that there’s a place for blockbusters, just as there’s now a place for indies. I like that they can all make money. That’s one of the reasons I’m fundamentally pro-Apple, even though I have reservations about their unclear acceptance policy. They’ve had a great history (ipod, ipod video, iphone) of creating new ecosystems where people can make product and make money. That’s a great driver for innovation – sometimes a greater driver than openness. Fortunately, we don’t have to choose one or the other, because the whole gamut is open (excuse the pun) to us.

In short, I’m a game developer. I’ve made games for free, and I’ve made them for profit. I’ve made them for PC’s, consoles, and iPhones. I’m more likely to create when there’s a reasonable ecosystem that will allow me to profit. If that’s a walled garden – well, I’m actually pretty okay with that.

Honestly, I’m much less concerned about the theoretical moral position of a company (open, closed, whatever) than the actual results of their decisions. Apples decisions have resulted in many of my friends being able to quit their day jobs and live the indy life making the games they want. I support that, as a real and concrete result.

Shirkey’s talking about huge cuts (in the neighborhood of 90% of current labor costs) and slaughtering sacred cows (like the agreement with the writer’s union that prevented the makers of In the Motherhood from using user-submitted content), and building back up from there. I think there are a lot of people, in management and labor, who aren’t willing to do that.

However, cheaper is only sometimes equivalent to the originally more expensive product. People still buy German luxury cars, Italian suits, and gourmet food. It’s just that not as many people do, so there are fewer workers in those industries and their client base has become more specialized. But the vast majority of the public has adapted to factory farming food, smaller cars, and nearly disposable clothing and seem to prefer the idea of having “more” to “better.”

In the case of publishing, we have seen a shift in the equation, whereby machinery and equipment used to cost considerably more than manpower. Now it is labor that represents the bulk of the cost of producing media. And not brute force labor, but the type of high paying creative jobs that can’t be successfully automated, like research, writing and editing.

As a small publisher, I’m amazed at how little it costs to manufacture a book, yet baffled as to why it costs so much to get an ebook to market (30-70% of the retail price going to the distribution/retail channel). The real savings come from distribution, as it is vastly more efficient to push around electrons than it is to push atoms. In my opinion, the new distribution channels are the ones who are greedy (not the producers, who are the ONLY ones financially responsible for successes and failures in the marketplace).

The attitude of the consumer is that electronic media must cost less, and it is in the interests of the Amazons and Apples to foster this belief.

And I’m pretty sure that people love complex content too. I love the occassional $200m movie and I’m willing to pay for the complex special effects. What do people love more “Star Wars” or “Blair WItch Project”? You can love both and still admit that you love the overly complex “Star Wars” more.

It is extremely immature to expect that someone will give you something for nothing.

And yet giving us something for nothing is exactly what you just did.

Also, I am in fact extremely immature.

And, media companies are indeed cutting costs — well, TV companies are cutting costs by doing more reality shows. Movies still routinely have nine-digit budgets, and actors still routinely make eight figures for being in them, and movie credits still routinely have a gigantic wall of names for people who did the CGI.

As an writer, I produce a thousand words a day, roughly. These can be esoteric technical content, or science fiction. Thing is, I like eating, I like having a middle class social status, which is currently tied to a certain income, and I like not having to beg support from my loved ones.

So what to do? Sell my work. If you want it free, you are not my friend. I’m happy to work out a social or commercial relationship with you, where we trade equitably to give each other what we want. That’s fine. It is extremely immature to expect that someone will give you something for nothing.

The problem with Shirkey’s argument is that you get what you pay for. If no one wants to pay for complex work, it will simply go away.

A plan that has worked for decades is hard to give up and there is very little imagination out there. Despite the big bucks CEOs graft from the bottom line, they aren’t very smart.

Much of what goes on is very derivative of the current business model. Should someone start with a clean sheet of paper and demonstrate success, the rest rush in with copies.

I really can’t explain the insane popularity of an AFV reject, but I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that it’s G-rated, 1 min long, has a stupid baby in it, easy to comprehend, free to watch. And Grandma Crazyforwards probably forwarded this to everyone 20 times.

But try to get someone to pay $15 a ticket to see it, or buy it.

The idea that over-complexity destroys empires is a worthy one, but to suggest, “Charlie” and its ilk are the successors of a failing empire, is really… dumb.

As I read this, I found myself thinking less and less about media and more and more about our present civilization as a whole. I mean, I mourn real journalism and I am deeply disturbed by the way its loss is escalating our current nosedive into the dark ages, but I can’t get too worked up about the fate of Disney or Time-Warner. Too much on my plate. I don’t fucking care.

As things get messier, and people fail to act in their own long term interest, I grind my teeth and ask WHY! WHY? But of course the elites do not want change, of course the mob drinks the propagandic not-so-coolade. Distracted by the high tech toys and refusing to think in ways that might make them uncomfortable, the mob protects the interests of the aristocracy, who in turn reap the benefits of corporations allowed to behave in ways that make college students on spring break at Daytona seem like nuns at a meditation retreat. And oh yeah, this is all gonna lead to a much simpler way of living, for such of us as who manage to survive the transition. Think like a population biology baby. It’s gonna be ugly. It’ll be back to the earth, only a degraded and less productive earth, a hard scrabble existence even for the lucky ones. There will be no fretting about choosing between watching Thirty Rock or Keyboard Cat. The work week will consist of trying to get enough food and protecting yourself. Entertainment will consist of reeling over the horror of your present circumstances and nostalgia for the good old days before the collapse, enlivened on special occasions by the occasional witch burning. Only this time around they’ll stoke the fires with evolutionary biologists, geologists and ecologists, before throwing on the homosexuals and witches.

You don’t have to look to the media to find a lone example of this. It is everywhere. The elite who profit from big energy do not want to see any change that discourages consumption, but as resources are running low, they will do anything to keep up production and profits. Wars? Sure! But closer to home, for some of us anyway, we have the proposed fracking in the Catskills. Fuck up the water supply for NYC? Who cares? The elite do not wish to be discomforted now.

Don’t fret, frack, WTF!

The mob does not wish to become uncomfortable.
The elite does not wish to become uncomfortable.

But guess what? We’re all going to fall down hard. Ouch.

it’s not “yesterday” yet and if you think the “old” business models are really tomorrow’s, think again. you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. once people get a taste for freedom, nothing else tastes quite like it ever again. Big TV did not start making reality TV shows as a reaction to piracy! They did it simply for their bottom line – they realized that they could get as many if not more viewers for a show with almost no budget. All the greedy bells rang very loudly and that’s why they did it, they are not doing it to be responsible! News orgs are NOT being responsible with their journalists – there was just an NPR story about how Katie Couric alone makes more than the entire annual budget for Boston’s NPR station, the whole station! any cuts being made are strictly reactionary because people aren’t happy with the “old” way anymore. Look at MP3′s and Napster. What did that do for creating music? Nothing. Record labels still spend millions on producing albums only for people to buy more indie stuff made at a fraction of the cost. People wised up once they were able to preview all music for free, they realized how much crap was being pushed out and that the majority of their sales were to suckers who didn’t know there were only 2 good songs on an album (which they got for “free” on the radio already). This is the “old” way and now that people have become educated, they aren’t going to fall for it anymore. Rupert and friends are mistaken if they think forcing people to pay for what they used to get for free will ever work – they first need to make people forget that it was ever free to begin with and that’s going to take a long time, if ever.

maybe the problem here is that we are dealing with things that have no real intrinsic distribution value because of their nature – i.e. a guy can read the newspaper I bought from over my shoulder; I can put on a for-pay outdoor music concert but I can’t stop the sound from reaching your ears in the parking lot or over the fence; my bottled water is evaporating into the air for everyone to use later on; my friends can watch my TV even though I paid for cable and they didn’t – Big TV would care about this if I were somehow able to invite the internet over my house to watch some TV. It’s always been about distribution only. They are starting to realize their products are uncontrollable in many ways and are fighting against this (real and true) realization by trying to force everything backwards. The sooner they realize who and what they are, the sooner they can get down to figuring out how to make money with it rather than playing the part of the police and victim simultaneously.

In my city the printed paper costs 25 cents, this .25 covers the actual paper it is printed on, the ink, and distribution that blankets the entire area. I am not sure of this, but I imagine this is at a loss. They seem to make the bulk of their money with in paper advertisements.

Why has the model changed? Other than they do not have to print or distribute the content, it is the same model. Ad’s are all over the digital newspaper … I might argue that there are more ad’s in my local digital version of the paper than in the printed version.

Get over yourselves, roll up your sleeves and get to work monetizing your content, nothing has changed except the medium of delivery.

really? do you pay a proofreader much? if so there’s a level of complexity you can get rid of as soon as you learn the simplicity of grammar.

do I want your work for free? only if you give it to me. if your work is on a website that does not have a paywall then the perception is that I got it for free even though the website/publication paid you and my experience has ads all over it. now take that same website and put up a paywall but leave the ads (they aren’t going to turn away revenue) and now I feel like I am paying for your work when you previously gave it to me for free. maybe I don’t want your stuff anymore because of that. maybe then they don’t pay you for you work, remember, I was never the one who paid you.

>> The problem with Shirkey’s argument is that you get what you pay for.

not true on the internet and why the internet is great. I can say ‘I have a great idea that will help lots of people’ and then make a program and put it on sourceforge. I use a ton of free programs that are better than their for-pay alternatives. “you get what you pay for” is part of the old way. guess what, not everyone is a greedy selfish bastard. I’m not saying that you are, but your statements imply that your stuff is so great, it must be paid for by actual people, not ads or other cost-diverting alternative.

It will be interesting to see what the ultimate outcome of the US govt’s “too big to fail” policy will be. It will be interesting to see what unintended circumstances arise from not allowing the big 3 automakers and a few more banks to fail.

But journalists / the media have to adapt as well, as has been pointed out. The old model isn’t going to work — and it’s not going to be solved by either advertising or paywalls alone.

Perhaps the “public trust” argument for allowing news organizations to change to non-profit status has some merit as well.

Something has to give, but it’s not going to be the end user: the end user WANTS as much content as possible, but a) there’s a whole lot of content out there; and b) there’s a whole lot of legally free content out there. Technically, there’s also a c) (some people will choose to illegally obtain content for any number of reasons), and it’s a big c), but a) and b) are more than enough to require distributors like Mr. Diller to change his tune or find a new line of work.

After having read the essay, I feel that Mr. Shirky generally seems to express a similar view, citing Mr. Diller’s IAC and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. as examples of complex, inflexible bureaucracies. However, I disagree with the idea that content creation as a whole is a complex society (it’s just a chunk of it) that is doomed to utter failure. More persistent storage media, combined with lower production costs for content will make labor the only serious expense for content creation. This may destroy large corporations, but ultimately, it just means that if society itself fails, archeologists’ chief challenge with deciphering our civilization will be sifting through all the ridiculously easy-to-find relics–except for any that are still under copyright at that late date. However, our content-generation media, despite their protestations to the contrary, only document our civilization. They aren’t the civilization itself.

Whew.

Tainter’s thesis, that the Romans were subject to the law of declining returns and hence failed once the steam ran out of their conquests has been thoroughly disproved and more nuanced explanations (Such as the interplay between, the collapse of their political leadership, the breakdown due to plague, and the general social immobility that characterized the Greco-Roman world) have been put forth. To then haul it out as some sort of justification for obloquy on pay for play, is the worst sort of inappropriate half truth.

Really, the only thing that should be argued against is media analysts using classical analogies to support poorly constructed arguments.