Corporate Anarchy
Just a few months or so after writing about Corporate Anarchy and about the economics case against Wal-Mart in my About The Founder section, an extremely long bill which no one could possibly read (S. Amdt. 5685 to H.R. 1424) momentarily came and passed the Senate (though defeated in the House), and will provide all extremely big and profitable companies with direct lines of credit from the government.
How generous of the government to be so kind to those companies who are trickling so much down on me. And thank you, corporations, I was just able to replace my cardboard box with a plastic one. All thanks to you. Also, if you want, I got my last twenty-dollar bill buried in the ground a few yards northeast of my plastic box. Go ahead and take it, I trust you'll trickle some of it back down on me someday. Thanks again guys.
And I don't even know if the Bailout Bill is really called the S. Amdt. 5685 to H.R. 1424, that's just what it said on a few pages on yahoo and google, the actual bill that I downloaded from CNN didn't have the amendment number on it. And I couldn't find any synopsis of the bill. This (and other tough-to-get-the-news-for-big-events situations) are making it more and more clear to me that BetterStream is going to have to get into the news business too.
Our "Partisan" Elections
And in another example of the "non-partisan", non-polar nature of our presidential elections, both candidates voted for the Bailout Bill. That's right, the two candidates from "opposite" sides of the political spectrum voted for what is known only as the corporate "Bailout Bill". That's what the media exclusively calls it. The Bailout BIll.
No, they're not even trying to disguise this one, just settle it quick. I'm surprised it even made the news at all and wasn't delegated strictly to the Conspiracy Theorist's -- who, incidentally, it seems are the only ones you can get your news or current events from anymore. Besides from stand up comedians.
I still find it fascinating that democrats are for the "working class" and Republicans are for "small government", yet they all slid a few [potentially] trillion-dollar senate bills through this week. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. No, I didn't read the bills yet. Sorry, 250 pages of legal rhetoric sounds like a pretty severe punishment. Sorry, I'll try to do the right thing next time. I'll try to be better next time.
Great Power, No Responsibility
Basically, big companies assume the least responsibility, when they should assume the most. They screw up everything because it makes good, smart financial sense. And it really does too. They get rewarded for screwing up. It would therefore be bad business not to screw up.
But the downside is that good business practices and good customer service have now become a niche. When did this happen?? Well, you could call the era that it happened in, the "Wal-Google Era", or the "Google-Mart Era" or the Touchtone Phone Era. Whatever you call it, it's the era of devaluation through non-creative grandiosity amd massive availability that's free to all. Google and YouTube give all of your work away for free in order to charge ridiculous advertising prices off of it.
Gunpoint Devaluation and Deincentification
Does the content creator have the right to charge for access to his work on GooTube? Nope. If you want to be part of the "GooTube Team", you must give all of your work away for free--with no self-promotion--so Google can then charge you 10 dollars a click for sending a website visitor your way (after you spent your life getting them clicks for free). No freedom. No choice. No artistic autonomy whatsoever. No consideration. GooTube's way or the byway. That's right, they got the highway too. And it's the same way on tv or in the land-based business world, it's just that we allow ourselves to be abused so much more on the internet, and we take the abuse because everything's FREE!! IT'S FREE!! I love saying that, because all prices are relative. Even free prices. Haven't you ever heard the expression "Nothing's free in life."
The Mortgage/Bank Sector
Bad Habits:
- Screwing up.
- Lending to to everyone.
- Lying to everyone.
Results of Bad Habits:
- Large intake of money.
- Small amount of fines (gov't tax).
- No revocation of licenses to broker.
- And now the new reward, the bailout.
'Bailout Hard with a Vengeance'
a short Hollywood movie charting the rise of events leading to the bailout bill
CORP.: "How u doin' everyone? Us? Oh, we're just committing a lot of fraud.
STATE GOV'T: "Well, just keep doing what you're doing", but when your business fraud reaches mass consciousness, we have to do this little tax here to keep the masses quiet, hope you don't mind?"
CORP.: "No problem. We'll keep screwing up. Thanks. I think we'll double our efforts."
FED. GOV'T: "Good job doubling your efforts, keep your profits, but can we interest you in a bailout drizzled in balsamic vinaigrette?"
CORP: "Yes, that sounds exquisite. I'll take two."
Key Advantages of BetterStream:
- Consideration to all content-creators, ability to function and customize in any way the content-creator needs to,
- Personalization and Customization,
- Content Diversification -- a place to put all work (i.e., not just video, but video and music and photos and even blogs and other writings and other art forms),
- Security,
- Ease of Use.
Key Disadvantages of BetterStream:
- Not a household name
- and as always, no good deed goes unpunished :)
Key Advantages of YouTube:
- Mass availability
- Ease of use.
Key Disadvantages of YouTube:
- no consideration to content-creators.
- no bad deed goes unpunished
As far as YouTube's advantages.. they're only advantages to the audience and are disadvantages to the artist. Mass availability and ease of use are only advantages to the artist when "consideration to content-creators" is also one of your advantages, otherwise mass availability is a genuine disadvantage.
For example, mass availability of an artist's work with no return to the artist causes the artist's work to not only be devalued on a small level, but to now be devalued on a huge level, so even after achieving fame and reaching the world with his or her art, the artist is still broke and confused and now bitter -- the ultimate artist devaluation. Maybe the goal of GooTube is embittered art, but I don't think they have the imagination for that :)
We're already starting to see more of it: Broke Famous People. Well-known and widely-appreciated artists (the bums of the 21st Century) owned by internet-dominating CONTACT providers such as GoooooooTube.
Well of course they're broke. How do you create art and other content full time and entertain and intrigue a massive audience if you don't get a dime in return nor any type of promotion?
And when I say 'no consideration to content-creators', I'm not just talking about no money consideration, I'm talking about not even allowing the content creator to make money on their own accord (such as by inserting their own banner ads on their own pages where there are currently none), and altogether completely suffocating the content-creator by not even allowing basic customization or the permission to advertise their own efforts or promote "real life" venues.
Bulletins on your user page don't accomplish that. Your user page is not where your work is, your work is on permalink pages picked up by search engines. A content-creator needs some promotional abilities of their own on the page hosting their work (not just hidden in a collapsed description area), but a good old-fashioned banner goddammit!
GooTube affords artists only the ability to showcase their work, but not ro make the connections that they need to make in order to succeed or in order to sell some of their work at the "Opening", which is a 24-7, 365 [unrewarded] event on YouTube. Also, GooTube's content-devaluation efforts have made the audience feel as though giving anything back to the one entertaining them is some form of tax or is at least a great burden.
The best analogy is to call GooTube's system Communism without the social benefits. In diametric opposition to the idea of a Renaissance where creators are treated like human beings and art and creativity flourish as a result, GooTube devalues art through mass availability, ease of use, and the biggie: no consideration to artists (or most content creators).
Mass availability and ease of use are great, but shouldn't come at the expense of the artist, because, again, that will lead to a mechanical, computerized version of art or the destruction of art and content itself. Yes, GooTube is capable of that.
Goodnight and Good Luck BetterStream.com, Ben Ligeri