middle class musicians

Jon Bon Jovi: you're old and rich. Unsurprisingly you fail to understand the depth of impact that the democratization of music is having. You are correct to say that the old music industry is dying. This is a good thing.

The pre-internet music industry was controlled by a handful of companies who operated like a cartel. They controlled everything about the music industry and made a tremendous amount of money doing it. Good for them, they created an excellent oligarchy and reaped the rewards.

The internet lowers the barrier for entry to all musicians. You don't need to borrow a few million from a record label to get started. You can self release, self promote and create your business completely under your own control. This makes every band a small business. Oh hey, the internet has turned an entire industry into a small business generating machine?

You're fucking welcome, you old rich assholes. Hah! no idea when I wrote this but I echoed this commentary in an email thread yesterday. OUT YOU GO DRAFTYMCDRAFTERSON

state choice

I've often heard, and desperately believe, that companies can enact stunning turnarounds when they focus on their core competencies and only those. Are you a clothing superstore? awesome. Please don't let your IT dept. convince you it needs to build an office productivity sweet from scratch. Those dudes are not pulling you in a good direction.

This is a fairly common refrain and I was wondering how you would apply it to governments. Governments are historically very good at amassing powers and getting into wars. Also incredibly important things like providing and ensuring a stable environment for private individuals to conduct business. This includes shepherding the environment and enforcing contracts. But there are many things they do which I think they are terrible at: running companies is the first one. This is a partial thought that is interesting, don't remember when it went into drafts, out it comes!

Up and down and up ...

While I always enjoy my delightful spin up the happiness mountain, what with its socializing and being extroverted, the recharging period of mental weakness and timidity are a bitch. Its not depression I don't think, but its not terribly enjoyable. This is why I hesitate to engage, why I keep the world at arm's distance. For all of the dazzling joy and energy I feel on the way up, balance must be restored. Balance restoration suuuucks. I never seem to get depressed first and then get happy. Well, I suppose I wouldn't know if that was the case as its a cycle. And when a follows b follows a, the original state is not derivable. And now that I have entered a state of self-analysis, I can probably go write some more code. Wooo. Not sure I'm up for responding about job hunt stuff though. Maybe tonight with a beer or three in me.