Mike_Beggs
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14 years ago @ overland literary journal - Australian literature ... · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - another nail in the co... · 0 replies · +1 points
"John Howard, Prime Minister" by David Barnett and Pru Goward
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - another nail in the co... · 0 replies · +1 points
Dead Kelly
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - responding to the Prod... · 0 replies · +1 points
It's unfortunate that writers and publishers feel the need to argue for what is a rather convoluted way of supporting their lives and activities. Ultimately the argument for continued protectionism rests on the need to allocate enough social resources for their survival. Why can't they just say that and call for more direct means of doing that, like direct state aid?
The stuff Bernard Keane dredged up in Crikey from the writers' submissions - like Peter Carey's sneering comments about 'Excel-sheet readers' - really does look pretty foolish. (This is about the only time I've ever agreed with Bernard Keane, by the way.) It uses anti-economics rhetoric in support of what is really a completely market-oriented way of dealing with the underlying problem, that commodification does not do a good job of allocating resources where they are needed.
The Productivity Commission argument that protectionism is not a fair or efficient way of doing what it's supposed to, is right, even if - as Sophie hilariously showed in her own quotes - their own rhetoric makes them walk right into Peter Carey's caricature. The problem is, of course, that the Productivity Commission has no intention of replacing the status quo with some more direct way of supporting writers, editors, etc. But that's what we ought to push for.
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - two writers · 1 reply · +1 points
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - Australian places defi... · 1 reply · +1 points
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - There Goes the Neighbo... · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - copyrights and wrongs · 3 replies · +1 points
As for who's making a living off whose creativity: everyone's dependent on other people's creative labour. Even artists eat, live in houses, wear clothes, travel in trains, and so on. The issue here is a breakdown in how capitalism manages that interdependence so far as artists etc. are concerned. And anyway, as Jeff pointed out, the vast majority of them have never got that great a deal from their "fundamental right to ownership and control of the work".
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - copyrights and wrongs · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ overland literary journal - copyrights and wrongs · 0 replies · +1 points