Is the Creative Class Engine Sputtering? 520
Geoffrey.landis writes "The 'creative class' was supposed to be the new engine of the United States economy, but according to Scott Timberg, writing in Salon, that engine is sputtering. While a very few technologists have become very wealthy, for most creative workers, the rise of amateurs and enthusiasts means that few are actually making a living. The new economy is good for the elite who own the servers, but, for most, 'the dream of a laptop-powered "knowledge class" is dead,' he says."
for the retarded... (Score:5, Insightful)
it's called "patent trolling," "eternal copyright," and "software patents."
terrible whiny article (Score:4, Insightful)
He is using strange definitions (Score:4, Insightful)
The author puts "book editors, journalists, video store clerks" into that creative class. It's hard to see why a video store clerk (what is a video store?) is a creative persona. He is merely shining the scanner on your purchases. He can be illiterate for all practical purposes.
Musicians? Well, those that are good are doing OK. The rest... perhaps they are in the wrong business. Same applies to "aspiring novelists" - there is always ten graphomaniacs for one semi-decent writer. Good writers are even more rare.
Computer programmers are also like that. Those who write simple, boring code - but lots of it - will lose to their Chinese and Indian competition. Those who write difficult code remain in business. I personally specialize in microcontrollers, hardware, FPGA, real-time and high speed stuff. There is plenty of work in this area.
To summarize, if you are truly creative in what is in demand then there will be always someone willing - and desperate - to pay you.
Exploiting creativity is what makes $ (Score:4, Insightful)
No-one makes money from 'creativity'. You make money from what economists call 'rent-seeking' from creative output, be it yours or someone else's. The people who get rich (or even just make a decent living) are those who are good at rent seeking, and those people aren't necessarily the same people who are good at 'creating'. Hence Disney inc still aggressively rent-seeking from the creative output of illustrators, animators, voice artists etc 70 years after the creative act, and you can bet those creatives or their descendants aren't making any ongoing money from it.
Being able to work at home or from your local cafe on your laptop doesn't magically free you from the need to either have a lot of capital to promote and exploit your creative output, or alternately the need to sell your creative labor to someone who does, it just frees those with that capital from the need to supply the infrastructure of an OSHA-compliant workplace.
Race to the bottom (Score:4, Insightful)
The creative class as a driver of the local economy was always a big stretch. If a guy (or girl) sitting in a coffee shop in Seattle can do something for $X, it's likely that a guy (or girl) sitting in a coffee shop in Estonia can do the same thing for a fraction of $X. Smart people that make up the creative class are evenly distributed across the planet. There will be places where you can support yourself on a creative class income, but it's not likely to be most of the places that people read /.
Economics... (Score:2, Insightful)
Until recently the 'creative class' would be distributed between struggling (70%), getting by (25%) and going great (5%). This applied to photographers, artists, writers, glass workers, a whole swathe of people. But with the rise of the internet all but the last one are being undermined financially by virtually free distribution of material from amateurs, as well as the effects of digitial copying.
Economics suggests that the price of an item will tend towards the marginal cost of production, particulaly with large scale production. So, for all those items which can be reproduced digitally at almost no cost, the price will tend towards zero.
So, the 'creative classes' need to think about new ways of making money from their skills. These days I see many top notch photographers are running workshops, which I think shows more forward thinking. Instead of bemoaning the way digital reproduction has undermined their art, they have started teaching others how to produce great images. This benefits them (we pay $$$) as well as improving the overall body of photographic work.
Maybe some of the other 'creative classes' need to re-assess how to make a living from their skills.
Re:He is using strange definitions (Score:4, Insightful)
> Musicians? Well, those that are good are doing OK.
Gimme a break. Making music and making money are completely different skills. There are plenty of wonderful artists creating beautiful things that have to make their living doing something else.
Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easier (and more lucrative) for existing companies to use lawyers to bankrupt anyone with a creative idea that might threaten those companies.
The moment you try to capitalize on your idea, you'll be looking at cease-and-desist letters and lawsuits claiming some kind of infringement.
The entire system needs an overhaul.
Re:for the retarded... (Score:5, Insightful)
If China is smart, they'll tell software patents to go to hell. When they then leave USA in the dust, it will be clear our system is foobarred.
In theory patents are supposed to encourage people to spend more resources coming up with good ideas. Instead they do the opposite because good ideas in software for the most part just pop into one's head while pondering a problem to solve and are not the result of thousands of hours of planned lab toil.
Thus, they are rewarding accidents that would happen anyhow. There are exceptions to the rule, but the rule overwhelms them in numbers.
Further, software patents dissuade mix-and-match because of the many patents involved in mixing.
Re:He is using strange definitions (Score:5, Insightful)
Making music and making money are completely different skills.
That's true everywhere. Writing a good, fast code in C and assembly is in no way related to smooth-talking a client into signing a contract to develop the abovementioned code. Many programmers who are capable of the former in their sleep can't do the latter if their life depended on it.
The musician in your example (talented but poor) needs to either learn how to develop his business or hire a manager. A talented programmer can develop business skills to manage his own business (contracts, ISV like iPhone/Android) or he can join someone else's company; then business opportunities will be taken care of by someone else (along with the lion's share of profits.)
It is not easy for a programmer to gain businessman's skills. I'd guess it's equally hard for an artist. But that's what the money is paid for. If you don't want to touch that, you are still free to code (or compose music) in your parents' basement. Only don't expect anyone to know about you or want to pay you.
The so-called "creative" market is saturated. (Score:5, Insightful)
The true creative class is the people who are willing to put forth the hard work to study particle physics, microbiology, colloid science, differential equations, managerial accounting, and parallel algorithms. Their dedication is what makes carrying out their creative dreams possible. As the article states, they're doing well, as there's still scarcity in that market. Their competition in overseas diploma mills that teach to the test do not produce the same results.
What this article is referring to is the so-called "creative class" who thought they could start a grunge band by learning power chords, buy a Canon EOS and become a professional photographer, or become a psychologist because they were interested in their bad teenage relationships. They are the types who thought they'd win the lottery and become rock stars without the serious learning required to invent, build, and deploy something new.
Those people in the so-called "creative class" locked in an entitlement mentality are a dime a dozen.It may have worked in the 1990s when they and their friends were given unlimited subsidy by coddling baby boomer parents, but these days, you're on your own and actually have to know your shit. Universities today aren't full of ambitious engineers who will take full advantage of their $50K in student loans, they're full of future waitresses and customer service reps with a piece of paper.
A better article would be "Why did 17 million people go to college?" -- http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/why-did-17-million-students-go-to-college/27634 [chronicle.com]
Re:for the retarded... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:for the retarded... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a radical suggesion? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, the problem highlighted is that 'creative' people - and lets for the moment give them the benefit of the doubt on the level of their creativity - cannot find paid employment that allows them to produce new the new ideas and culture that keeps a society from stagnating.
My question is, why does everyone have to work?
We are trapped by absurd, outdated Protestant work ethics. Failure to bust your gut 50 hours a week is a sign of moral weakness, according to our leaders (most of whom have only ever worked through choice, not necessity) and our newspapers - sometimes even our teachers and parents.
This ethic is reflected in a society that is structured in a way that survival is next to impossible without work. Don't fool yourselves - even social safety nets here in Europe are specifically designed to make lack of full time employment unsustainable over the long term. What we need is to provide people with a decent living regardless of what they do, and make anything earned through work a bonus.
Maybe its time to stop blindly forcing the square pegs of our society (and everyone else) into the round hole of clock punching, just to serve some ancient disgust at the supposed 'fecklessness' of those who don't like the 8-6 run (I think its safe to say 9-5 is mostly a fantasy in the west now)
Its a valid question of how to pay for this; but not actually a difficult one. The simplest is to go after the rent-seekers; money earned by not doing anything can't possibly be created due to an incentive for the person earning it to do anything, so lets have it. Start with the Earth's natural resources - I have always considered the notion of a creature with a maximum lifespan barely over 100 years claiming that part of a 4 billion year old planet is his and his only to exploit.
Might it not work? Sure. But considering the current economic order is grinding to a halt, it is certainly worth a shot.
Re:Shortsighted (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:for the retarded... (Score:5, Insightful)
India made a choice of building what is essentially a colonial economy without the colony part -- they produce things (call center "service", software) they can not possibly use at home, and rely on exporting them abroad, then (supposedly) using money to buy things abroad for local consumption. It builds no infrastructure, provides very distorted demand for education, and keeps large fraction of population in perpetual poverty.
China, on the other hand, develops economy in a way that builds industrial infrastructure that can produce products directly usable locally.
Only the best ideas win and they don't employ many (Score:5, Insightful)
In the old days, most new ventures failed. Only a very few people could be at the top when an idea exploded. That wasn't a big problem. Fully exploiting those ideas required hiring lots of people. And thats how most people made their living. They didn't have to make a big win themselves. They just needed to be useful those who did.
Enter the economy of today. Most new ventures still fail. Occasionally, one still wins. But when it comes time to hire all those people to exploit the idea, they don't. Either the need for large numbers of employers never materializes due to automation and the non-physical nature of the work or, if they really must hire, they hire overseas.
The myth of the creative class was created out of need to believe we had an out. It was obvious to anyone that the American dream could no longer be supported by manufacturing. And I don't think anyone really believed that retail and burger flipping was an option. There needed to be something that was productive but different from what goes on in the emerging world and, therefore, safe. Well, it isn't all that different and it isn't safe. Employment security in the info economy didn't even survive beyond the business cycle in which it was born.
Re:How about a radical suggesion? (Score:4, Insightful)
...and the above poster demonstrates why western society is absolutely doomed.
I didn't mention socialism. I certainly didn't advocate the bringing back the USSR. I said nothing about regulating the markets (not a bad idea at all, but one not actually connected to my suggestion.) Yet you invoke some inane, pop-economic truthiness and claim you can predict exactly how people will act, and that this makes any suggestion counter the the current economic order equivalent to Soviet socialism.
You also suggest that anybody who isn't working is a layabout. To support this stupid statement, you would have to conclude that the recession currently going on has coincided with a great increase in laziness over a very short period of time...
Re:for the retarded... (Score:4, Insightful)
India doesn't have software patents (http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/04/4837.ars) and we can see clearly how Indian software has left our patent encumbered western system in the dust with its amazing innovations.
How long did it take Japan to go from producing cheap and okay to producing first class goods?
Re:How about a radical suggesion? (Score:4, Insightful)
your proposal, which amounts to forcibly taking money from the productive to support the lazy and indolent, is the very essence of socialism
It's interesting to learn on Slashdot that Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek were socialists...
Re:for the retarded... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm old enough to remember when people said the same thing about "Made in Japan".
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
I highly recommend thus book. The problem stems from the definition of property. It's main characteristic is that it is scarce. Real goods are property. Ideas are not. The problem with patents and copyrights are they are trying to make a non scarce good artificially scarce.
http://mises.org/books/against.pdf [mises.org]
Re:for the retarded... (Score:3, Insightful)
an AC wrote:
>China is much more similar to Japan than India, as I have yet to purchase any good that ever came from India.
Poke around a bit.
Since the kids have taken over, there's been better quality control at Harbor Freight Tools and there have been some surprisingly nice things showing up from India:
http://www.harborfreight.com/no-33-bench-plane-97544.html [harborfreight.com]
Discussion of it here:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?173650-Harbor-Freight-quot-33-quot-Bench-Plane-I-like-it.-Especially-for-less-than-10 [sawmillcreek.org].
review here:
http://forums.finewoodworking.com/fine-woodworking-knots/hand-tools/10-harbor-freight-plane [finewoodworking.com]
People don't want to make junk --- give them the chance and the economic support and they'll choose to make good things (as opposed to ``good enough'').
William
(who is fortunate to have a bunch of tools from his father and grandfather)
Re:for the retarded... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are stepping on motorist/pedestrian problem: when you are behind the wheel, pedestrians are crawling evil creeps that solely exist to slow you down. When you are crossing the road, motorists are reckless obnoxious power-tripping assholes that solely exist to intimidate you down to a crack between pavement tiles.
Creative mind wants to freely use all the intellectual baggage of the humanity internalized in his head. He also wants others to pay dearly for every singe use of his contribution to the aforementioned baggage.
Re:How about a radical suggesion? (Score:2, Insightful)
You jumped into ad-hominem without addressing one single point that I made, yet your contention is that I do not understand economics? I am explaining to you that people do not do work when forced to by government, but they do work even when they don't have to do it at all in a free capitalist system, when they are rich already, I am showing the direct examples and I don't understand economics?
You wrote this:
What we need is to provide people with a decent living regardless of what they do, and make anything earned through work a bonus.
- which is ideological nonsense, which I addressed in my response to the "Occupy Wall Street Demand" list. [slashdot.org]
Society that enforces that everybody has a 'decent living' regardless of what they do, that's the society that will be poor and totalitarian, not a free, wealthy society. It will be a society of oppression, bureaucracy, totalitarianism. That's not economics, that's ideology and it will destroy everybody's reasons to work and all progress and will oppress and kill people who are the triangle pegs that don't fit into your square holes.
It will destroy the overall wealth of the society by making it not a free society, the only society capable of producing new ideas and new technology, not for the sake of money, as clearly seen from people, who are rich already, but they keep working, and their capital keeps working.
go after the rent-seekers; money earned by not doing anything can't possibly be created due to an incentive for the person earning it to do anything, so lets have it. Start with the Earth's natural resources - I have always considered the notion of a creature with a maximum lifespan barely over 100 years claiming that part of a 4 billion year old planet is his and his only to exploit.
- it's absolutely NECESSARY that there is a PRICE on all natural resources.
It's absolutely NECESSARY that scarce natural resources have a price on them, which would create a natural queue for those resources, and the pricing mechanism would allow those, with the best market driven ideas to get those resources instead of just burning those same resources for the sake of 'common good'.
There is no such thing as 'common good' that can be dictated by government force.
There is common good, but it's done by free individuals, who create new things that end up being for the good of everybody. The 'rent seekers' - it's their investment and work that was able to give them ability to BUY those locations you want to own for free.
You know what? Nobody stops you from doing better and from BUYING those locations from those very people who own it today. But it is absolutely necessary that there is a market price associated with those places. This is the only way to distribute those resource in the most efficient manner according to what the market really promotes via individual votes of purchasing power.
You think I don't understand economics? You think economics is a 'feel good' ideology, not a system that is aimed at producing best possible results at the correct prices. You think market is 'evil', and not a price discovery and discount mechanism.
Might it not work? Sure. But considering the current economic order is grinding to a halt, it is certainly worth a shot.
- the current economies are coming to a halt due to the government system that has put enough burden over the economy so that it can no longer provide good results for the market.
You want change that really would fix the problem? Minimize government involvement into economy, not do what you propose - more government force.
Re:Shut the fuck up (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the new markets don't always fulfill the economic needs of the country as well as the old ones.
One trend with technology is that it allows more to be accomplished with less labor. But the labor force is still there and needs something to sustain it. We no longer need a factory worker to put a door on a car, and another to put the hood on, and another to do the windshield. We just need one to supervise the robot that does all of this. You can't just expect a large portion of the population to commit suicide because there's no longer an economic use for them. Or maybe, as you suggest, they should just 'get the fuck over' the fact that they have no job and no money and are only alive because of food stamps.
If only someone had warned us. Oh, wait, Kurt Vonnegut did when he wrote Player Piano half a century ago. Bill Joy did when he wrote Why The Future Doesn't Need Us a decade ago. Ray Bradbury with Fahrenheit 451. Each of these warnings were brushed aside as implausibly dystopian. Of course, there are no easy solutions and none of them involve 'getting the fuck over it.'
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2, Insightful)
What logic did you use? you made a factual statement and declared it a problem. So, don't get so high up on your logic horse.
Anyways, Ludwig von Mises has been proven wrong, and the whole group is devolving into a lunatic fringe. He was wrong about gold, and he was wrong about the consumer being the sole driver of what gets produced.
I would go another step and suggest that letting the consume be the sole determiner is bad for society, as in it will spiral down to the lowest common denominator. For example, the same people who are screaming about American jobs also go to Wal-Mart.
He was right abut socialism, but that gets takes out of context. What he was talking about was Soviet implementation os Socialism; which is different then medicade/Social security, etc...
Re:for the retarded... (Score:5, Insightful)
The use of the word "colonial" is what you are protesting but, the original poster is correct. They chose to a "colonial" style economy. If they hadn't they would have 50% unemployment and a revolution on their hands. We in the west make the mistake of seeing India as an emerging western style economy. The are not. They are an emerging Indian style economy.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2, Insightful)
No they are not. good ideas abound, and everyone has them. Implementation is the only hard part.
And computers make that part easier... not easy, just easier.
Have you even tried to bring something to market? because your statement flies in the face of pretty much everyone else's experience; both successful and failures.
Re:The so-called "creative" market is saturated. (Score:4, Insightful)
What you said about "buy a Canon EOS and become a professional photographer" is definitely true. In the past 10 years, the number of "professional photographers" has about quadrupled, easily, based on attendance numbers at professional photography conventions and local business listings. And it is mostly 23 year old girls with doctor hubbies who pay for their gear to give them something to do to keep them out of trouble, or it's guys who work in IT looking for a weekend hobby they can make some extra money at. But they're not actually "making a living" at it...they're living off their husband or their real job.
In the meantime, though, all of these part-timers are putting a serious hurting on the former full-time photographers. The mom-and-pop studios that have been around forever. As their businesses dwindled (death by a thousand cuts), they've had to close up or get part-time jobs themselves to make ends meet. So there's more photographers, more "creatives" than ever before...but fewer and fewer of them are actually making a living at it. The article is dead-on about how this is a story not being told, and how it's the corporations who ride on the backs of these creatives that are actually making money. "The Industry," ie, the camera makers like Canon and Nikon, software companies like Adobe, the "professional organizations" like the PPA, WPPI, and the magazines trip over themselves to blow smoke up everyone's asses about how great and wonderful it is to be a professional photographer, and champion "success stories" (which are mostly untrue), because they don't care how many photographers there are or whether they're making any money or not. Every new schmuck who opens up shop has to go buy thousands of dollars in camera equipment, software, websites and services, and the corporations make bank. So in a time when fewer and fewer photographers are making enough money to get by, you would never, ever know it listening to the industry.
Anyway, the article is spot-on. The corporations are winning, the people who "own the server farm" are winning. Blogs using crowd-sourced cell-phone pictures for news stories: winning; photojournalists: losing. istock.com and Getty Images selling stock images for $1 and paying the photographer a few cents: winning; editorial photographers: losing. Camera makers, software vendors selling $$$$$ in gear to housewives: winning; portrait and wedding photographers: losing.
The moral is, if you want to make money in the "creative economy," don't be a creative, sell stuff to creatives.