In this conclusion to the series on the two major streams of libertarian thought I want to look at economics. Ivo Vegter has (repeatedly) said that the purpose of markets is: "to distribute scarce resources with the greatest level of efficiency". Now this almost sounds good, unless you recall from the first post in this series that capitalism defines efficiency rather differently than most people – applying that definition it translates as: "to ensure the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". But let's assume that in fact right libertarians in this context mean efficiency to mean something similar to the meaning of the word in engineering: with the least waste. As long as "waste" doesn't include pollution this almost makes sense (forget that a core part of engineering principle states that you achieve least waste by ruling out duplication of effort – while capitalism attempts it through exactly the opposite approach claiming that multiple producers of the same good is more efficient).

The basic theory goes something like this: competition drives prices down, profitability and cost drive them up. Combine these and the market automagically sets the price almost exactly where the law of supply and demand predicts it should be (at least, if you wait long enough). Most economists agree with this as a basic principle but right libertarians under influence of Austrian economics now go a step further – from this rule they conclude that *any* price for which something can be sold is by definition the correct and fair price. There can be no rip-offs, nobody can ever be cheated or  lied to and nothing can be sold for too much more than it's value because competition prevents it – because in fact "the right price is whatever the market will bear". If anybody is prepared to pay it, that makes it fair to charge.

This is a major leap of logic which practically nobody (economist or otherwise) agrees with – the major logical flaw is that the market mechanism takes time to set a price to where supply and demand predicts and then has to constantly adjust it. This means that "whatever you can get" is not in fact by definition the appropriate price point – and there is actually room for fairness and moral concern for others to influence price setting. Of course a corporation is forbidden by law from having such concerns and this is (one of the reasons) why left libertarians believe all businesses ought to be worker-owned-worker-managed democratically controlled cooperations instead.

The biggest problem however happens at the point where Ivo's statement of Von Mises's definition is found to be begging the question. What if the resource isn't scarce ? Some resources aren't, in fact for some resources the supply is in fact infinite. The law of supply and demand leads to a logical conclusion that a free market ought to set the price point of anything with infinite supply at zero. In fact zero is also the appropriate price-point whenever supply exceeds demand by a significant enough factor. 

Now this raises a question: how do you pay initial production when supply there-after is infinite ? In our age this is true of anything abstract – of all information and ideas and intellectual creation. The market did not respond by setting a 0 or even a near-0 price as the supply of these items became infinite. It did not respond by finding a new way to fund just that first step of creation either. Instead the market responded by buying laws to create artificial scarcity through the institution of a legally controlled monopoly on reproduction.  They call it copyright and patent laws. That the basis of these laws predate infinite supply is somewhat beside the point – the laws were radically altered as supply became infinite to allow single entities (interestingly never the actual creators but rather the publishers) to hold a legal monopoly on reproduction so that they can deliberately slow it down and create an artificial scarcity to price the results. 

This happened despite these industries having lots of companies healthily competing with each other. The very government interference in the market that right libertarians claim to despise is the only way these markets persist – yet the Ayn Rand institute actively campaigned against Lawrence Lessig during the supreme court case he fought to just prevent copyright from being extended yet again. Seems right libertarians are all for government interference in the market when it suits them.

Ironically in this very same market we have proof that you don't need profit-driven business to produce the goods and pay the producers. Both the free software and free culture movements have churned out high quality intellectual products – both practical software products and abstract artistic products by instead having the equivalent of an Amish barn-raising. A lot of people from the community show up, produce together, and get to share in the use of the result. Since a song or software program (unlike a barn) really is infinitely reusable, they have no qualm with everybody on earth using it for free. Many will ask for voluntary donations (the ultimate example of consumer-friendly pricing) –  and however much they get, they are happy with. Courtney Love described it as: "A singer is in a service industry, like a waitress. We have to stop imagining we're selling a product and realize we're working for tips."

But surely this is a bit of a niche area ? Actually, no, it's not. In the vast majority of industries – production today exceeds demand, which ought to see massive global deflation and prices dropping like stones. In fact price drops only seem to occur in luxury goods and take rather a long time even there. Compare the price of a flat-screen television today with that of three years ago, but now compare food prices over the same period. The difference is that flat-screen television makers haven't been able to establish an artificial scarcity, food production has. In fact – every year – the USA and EU burn enough food to feed every hungry person on the planet three times over. They will cite logistics and such as a reasons but the truth is much simpler: they pay the farmers to burn most of their crops because that keeps the price of food artificially high.

True this is market interference and in honest many right libertarians have spoken out against it as well – but this is not the end. While maintaining artificially inflated food prices back home, they pressure poor countries to open their markets then use anti-competitive practises to put local farmers out of business – and sell their food at these artificially inflated prices. And every hour, 4000 children die to pay for the preservation of America's farming heritage. The thing is though – when right libertarians do speak out against this – they blame the recipient countries (apparently they didn't open their markets ENOUGH – which will somehow magically let them compete and put their local farmers back in business), they complain about farm subsidies but they never speak out against copyright law: which is exactly  the same thing, and as the DMCA and SOPA shows encroaches more and more on individual liberty. 

The soviet union used to have an armed guard at every xerox machine to prevent unauthorized copying. They didn't care much about copyright but they cared about censorship. Today we have 12-year old girls being sued for millions and pressured into settling for sharing a song they like – over and over, we have the BSA invading premises and holding guns to people's heads (well in Nicaragua they wouldn't *quite* dare to do that in South Africa.. yet), we have music industry hired-thugs storming people's houses like swat teams – suing and criminalizing your own customers can surely not be good business. Why doesn't competition and the magic market fix this ? Because there is no market. Only an artificial scarcity with government enforcement. So now our free world approach to copying is identical to that of the soviet union…  the motives may differ but it's the results that matter (to paraphrase Richard Stallman once more – though this time exactly about the example he himself was talking about).

The left libertarian approach of cooperations bring the barn-raising methodology of production to any industry, preventing exploitation, market manipulation, monopolistic practises and all the other tricks by which wealthy capitalists attempt to subvert the market process (and constantly succeed).  And in those industries that are truly post-scarcity, barn-raising production sets the price at 0 without any negative consequences or reduction in initial production. So I suppose as I look at the tattered state of the economy I am forced to remark: we can rebuild him, we have the technology – but he shouldn't look like this.

The United States declaration of independence begins by informing the British Crown of the most fundamental reason why they sought to break away from monarchic rule: that all men are created equal before God. Over the years this would come to be extended to include Women and finally (and sadly only in the last 50 years) black people. 

This is progressiveness at it's core, the fact that over time it was recognized more and more that all people are born equal, regardless of which God (if any) they believe in. In 1948 in the aftermath of World War 2 more than 100 nations began a process that culminated on the 7th December of that year in the publication of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A set of basic rights and freedoms which, it was agreed, all people had. Not granted by a government, not earned through effort – had simply by virtue of being human. Hillary Clinton in her speech to the United Nations on this past Human Rights Day spent several minutes hammering on the fact that these rights (including dignity, life and various civil freedoms) are not granted by governments and cannot be removed by them and the core of that document is that every government agreed to be a watchdog, agreed that where another government undermined these rights they would work towards re-establishing them – even to the point of military intervention.

In theory these things are libertarian ideals come to life. All libertarians claim to love freedom, claim to be opposed to oppression and the involvement of governments in the personal lives of people. Unfortunately our actions speak louder than our words and this is the most scathing inditement on right libertarians of all – their history shows the exact opposite. 

Capitalist or right libertarianism can in all honesty be called American Libertarianism it was founded in the USA primarily by Ayn Rand's objectivism, which itself is built upon the philosophies of Nietzsche (this is clear throughout a reading of her books and she herself stated it outright several times). But that itself immediately falsifies much of what right Libertarians claim – since Nietzsche utterly opposes the idea that people are born equal. Indeed his philosophy is built on the idea that some people are over-men, the greater pinnacles of humanity and naturally deserves to be more privileged and indeed more powerful and that the weaker subhumans don't deserve any true recognition at all.

While in America this inspired objectivism it's rather more effective inspiration was too a young artist called Adolf Hitler and it would come to be the basis of Nazism. Indeed Hitler believed that the Aryan race was the Ubermensch – above all others, the natural rulers and the only ones who had any rights at all (there's a lot more to Nietzsche's ideas than this and some of it is actually good but this part was horrible – and it's the only part that inspired both Nazism and Objectivism).

So right libertarians fundamentally do not believe in the equality of people – and if you don't believe in equal rights, then you have no reason to believe in equality in any other regard. In fact history bears this out. Right libertarians fought against the abolition of slavery in the USA. Claiming to support freedom, claiming to oppose slavery – yet they supported it when it was actively practiced. Their belief in the sacredness of property extended quite naturally (for them) to human beings as property. Considering how we frequently hear their present-day counterparts argue against any and all public property in the sincere belief that only private property can have any value (or as liberals see it: be exploited for the benefit of the few over the many) – it's not so surprising that the non-Ubermensch people's (in their view) fitted in the same category: it's best to own and farm them.

It didn't end there. Right libertarians and Left Libertarians have in common a professed claim to believe in social liberty. That rights like freedom of speech, personal views on morality, freedom of religion and the like are the most important things in society to protect. Indeed right libertarians claim their entire philosophy is about protecting those freedoms. 

But this has never been a priority for them. Throughout their existence in the only country where they have a measurable impact on politics they have trampled on and reduced these rights, while actively opposing measures to secure them. The libertarian party actively campaigned against the civil rights movement in the USA. Murray Rothbard (considered one of the great right libertarians of our time) wrote in 1994 that every libertarian (in his American view only right libertarians exist) should vote republican.

The thing is, right libertarians will tell you that they support the democrats on social issues but the republicans on economic issues. If freedom was indeed their highest priority then they would vote for the party where the social issues aligned with their values, but since it isn't and never really was they have consistently voted for (and had a massive influence on) the party that aligned with their economic ideals while actively undermining the social liberty ideals they claim to support. 

They have consistently chosen economic policy over human rights, greed over freedom. The only freedom they care about is the freedom to grab what they want, and deny it to others. 

There is another level, slightly less insidious but equally as false. Right libertarians in their claimed believes will usually declare that capitalism has consistently uplifted the poor. Ivo Vegter (probably the loudest right libertarian voice on the African continent) states openly that while the gap between rich and poor may have grown the level of poverty decreased and places the credit for this squarely on the shoulders of capitalism. Talking of how unregulated capitalism created this improvement in one sentence and then decrying the fact that unregulated capitalism doesn't exist in the next … with no apparent sense of irony.

Firstly the facts do not bear this out. IRS statistics indicate that under the most libertarian policies in America the share of total GDP earned by the top 1% doubled, while the share earned by the bottom 50% was cut virtually in half. Middle class salaries stagnated on paper, but when you factor in that working hours for the middle class is no roughly 60% more than it was 50 years ago, that works out to a massive decline (they are paid the same for a lot more work, meaning less per hour worked).

That's just the start however. The markets he cites where this amazing event is claimed to have happened all have this in common: in every single one of them there was a significant population of people who had no property rights at all, and thus their land and labor could be exploited with ease. In America they were slaves. In Europe they were the colonies – as soon as colonialization ended and the exploitation shifted to the voters (rather than people far away with no say in the government they lived under) these countries rapidly became socialist. People who had a say in the system, who had rights, refused to live in these ultra-capitalist societies, the only time they worked was when the suffering was exported to people who were denied the very rights libertarians claim to own. 

Even today this persists, corporations continue to pursue higher profits by relying on laborers who lack property rights and basic civil rights. Since they have no rights, they can be exploited in slavery conditions. The only difference is, now they rely on other governments to maintain that for them while professing to love freedom back home. So Chinese workers toil under conditions that are in fact much worse than slavery, so Nike can sell their shoes at the exact same premium they charged when they had local US workers – but with 20 times the markup.

The only people who benefit are the shareholders of Nike and the Chinese government. 

Capitalism has never worked in a society where all people had equal rights and liberty. The suggestion that capitalism rewards all who work hard and uplifts society as a whole is simply not true – it creates wealth for those with rights, by taking it from those without. Regulations on capitalism is meant to prevent this – but because nobody can regulate other countries it simply lead to capitalism outsourcing it's workforce. Creating unemployment back home, and suffering abroad. 

Right libertarians' answer to this ? Deregulate it locally. I almost want to support that, as European history shows the moment you bring the suffering home – onto people who can vote for the people who make the rules, they make sure those rules protect them. 

Left libertarians have a proud history of recognizing the equal liberty of all people going back several hundred years. At no point in history has left libertarians supported any kind of exploitation, any lack of rights for anybody, or any other form of inequality. Extending equality of people not just into law but into economics is the heart of left libertarianism and why I support it. Make no mistake – right libertarians believe themselves to be greater-than-thou, and thus deserving of not only ruling over others but exploiting and appropriating the fruits of their labors. 

This sense of self-aggrandizement shines through when they say things like "I worked hard to get where I am". Of course you did, we all do. The fact that you had massive privilege as a white male to help you had no role at all, right ? Those who lacked those privileges and worked hard without getting where you are ? Oh right, you declare they are just lazy, you cannot believe that working even harder may fail to pay off in a system designed to keep them down. Then they point to a few people from such poor backgrounds who did become rich – but miss out that this one in a million stories. A few people win the lottery as well, that doesn't mean encouraging people to play lotto is sound economic policy and frankly the odds of getting rich that way is marginally higher than of getting rich by working hard in China ( or for that matter in Thokoza).

So right libertarians will oppose any protection of rights that do no apply to the rich, any protection of societies most vulnerable – because it removes their ability to exploit that vulnerability, and their claims as to why are simply false. Right libertarians are vocally against minimum wage laws – declaring they reduce employment below where the market would have it by artificially inflating the price. But when South Africa introduced a minimum wage law for domestic workers a few years ago that minimum wage was less than the urban average pay for domestic workers already set by the market, all it did was force the minority who were paying well below market rates to at least pay a fair wage. Incidentally the number of domestic workers employed in South Africa today are still exactly the same as it was before the law was passed: roughly one per middle-class household.

In none of the previous two posts did I launch so much of an attack on right libertarians while saying so little about left libertarians and it's because these facts are so scathing and so utterly destroy their rhetoric. Suffice to say that in each of the cited cases above – left libertarians were fighting on the opposite side. It was left libertarians who gave their lives on May 5th 1895 to secure the 40-hour work-week, an act we still commemorate yearly on worker's day. Left libertarians were among the abholitionists who ended slavery in Europe well before it ended in the USA. Left libertarians have fought hard against oppression and censorship, have been a voice for the voiceless and fought for the freedom and equality of all people. Protection not just from the evils of governments at their worst, but from exploitation by theft and greed as well, in the genuine believe that the only authority with any legitimacy is the authority of government-by-consent. 

As we speak left libertarian values (even if only rarely called so) is guiding the occupy-wall-street movement. The reason there were no early soundbites or action plans were simple: they worked by consent, it takes time to get consent, but as consent is reached – plans can be made that all of society benefits from.

One of the biggest differences between left and right libertarians lie in their approach to authority and power structures. In fact it would be more correct to say that several of the biggest differences lie here. Right libertarians generally declare that government does in fact have a purpose and a role to play. That role is very simple however: to protect the rights of citizens, most importantly their property rights (from theft).

Left libertarians do no consider this sufficient. In fact the vast majority of left libertarians believe that a republic cannot meet the requirements of Thomas Jefferson that a government can only be legitimate if it's done by the consent of the governed. For left libertarians – the only government that can consistently and over the long term govern only by (and according to) the consent of the governed is no government at all. Left libertarians believe in a governance by consensus model – where the community as a whole take decisions together.

The biggest downside of a governance-by-consensus model is that it can be slower, since all in the community can vote on all decisions – propose ideas and rules and goals discussions and decisions take a while to reach that crucial majority consensus. For left libertarians however, only this model where every citizen can question a bad law and get it repealed by the simple expedient of convincing enough of his neighbours can provide equality before the law and justice for all without oppression or exception.

For right libertarians this model is abhorent and they declare it to be "tyranny by the majority" while gleefully forgetting that every other system has consistently turned into (and most left libertarians would say that it's a logical certainty that they would turn into) a tyranny by the minority – which is of course, if anything, worse. In the case of the capitalist republics that tyrant minority inevitably becomes the same minority: the wealthy. 

The result is a class system of privilege by birth in which equality before the law becomes impossible, equal opportunity unobtainable and corruption unavoidable. In short- an aristocracy arises, whether their "right to rule" is legally secured in so many words or not is quite irrelevant. To quote Richard Stallman: it's the results that concern us, not the motivations.

Left libertarians go a step further declaring equally unacceptable any authority other than consensus. This includes political and crucially economical power. For right libertarians there is no such thing as "economic power". Ivo Vegter has declared: "the suggestion that a wealthy person has power over a less wealthy one is false, he does not have the force of guns or the legal right to use them to enforce his will upon you, your interactions with him must be voluntary or they wouldn't happen."

This is a prime example of what you may call the Stallman law of philosophy in action. The truth is that wealth buys power. Firstly it lets one influence politicians, it lets one afford better lawyers (or bribe judges) and so shelters one from the consequences of breaking the law (which is, in practical terms no different from having a seperate law in the first place) it's the result that concerns us. Wealth buys indemnity from the protection of the law, and the right libertarian suggestion that the government (which they demand must not be strong or empowered in any way) will provide equal protection of property and other rights to the poor as to the wealthy is outright and fundementaly untrue in practice. Or as Terry Pratchett put it: Owning a street full of slum is not a crime but living in one is.

Presumably one may design a justice system that is immune to the influence of wealth. How may one do this ? For starters one would have to make it impossible for the rich to have better lawyers than the poor, the only way to do that would be to strictly limit lawyers to "one-per-customer" and set a requirement that lawyers all charge the same fixed-rate for their services. Thus the poor could afford the best lawyer just as easily as the rich could and crucially there would be no reason why the best lawyers would all be defense lawyers and the prosecution left with the worst.

Mind you, that kind of market regulation is exactly what right libertarians believe must never happen and this form is outright communistic. I doubt I'll be popular with them for suggesting that such a communist measure is a requirement for their proposed system of social structure to actually work (since – by their own philosophical claims) the entire system is fundamentally dependent on the absolute recognition of property rights for all. 

That is the practical result: you cannot have legal equality while there is economic inequality, at least not if that inequality is to wide. The suggestion of just removing inequality from lawyers will be but a first step – you would soon find another way the wealthy can buy privilege and avoid the consequences of violating the rights of others and have to reproduce the process. 

The simple truth is that right libertarian nations degenerate into either clasist oppression or totalitarian communism – they are simply not stable as right libertarian free markets. Severe inequality never is. By minimizing inequality to a "fair" and "small" level (without completely removing it) left libertarians propose an equitable society where all really do have equal rights, including to the fruits of their labor, and by recognizing that money buys power left libertarians avoid the resulting pitfalls in the first place. 

Right libertarians will use phrases like "dictatorship of the majority" and "populism" to shoot down and denigrate any truly democratic values in their societies and the reason is very simple: nothing scares them more than true democracy. True democracy means the people have the power , and the ideas and priorities of the majority of people are what shapes the nation. This is a right libertarian's greatest fear – because right libertarians know there is no smaller minority than the wealthy, their economic ideals ensure this will always be true. A society alligned with the needs of the bulk of it's members will by definition allow unions to strike, protect worker rights and institute environmental laws (and I have no doubt a society run by consensus would do all of the above – far moreso in fact) – because the wealthy is not the majority and cannot get their desires and profit margins rated above the needs of the society as a whole.

This may indeed be the single biggest rift between left and right libertarians: right libertarians for all that they decry strong government on social and economic issues demand nothing less than a totalitarian police state on right's issues. I've read articles by them declaring that private gunmen-for-hire would be the ideal replacement for the policeforce.

Well of course – it's not like POOR people need protection from crime after all. Only rich people need that. It's not like civil rights such as presumption-of-innocence, habeas corpus and due-process were instituted to protect people from unjust persecution, on the contrary we'd be more free with trigger-happy private gunmen shooting you dead on sight with nothing but their word that you had broken a law (even one as simple as entering private property). That is the right libertarian ideal: the freedom for the rich to remove all freedoms from the poor.

In the next line – I will look more intensely at that last sentence and it's true  meaning and consequences.

A cardinal difference between communism and capitalism can be found in their definitions of efficiency. One could summarize it thusly:

• Capitalism deems it inefficient if those who are more productive do not gain a larger share of wealth.
• Communism deems it inefficient if a nation produces enough for all it's citizens to have their basic needs met but this does not happen because a few have a disproportionately large share of that production.

There's a bit of a fundamental goal difference prevalent in those definitions. Communism believes the economy should serve the people and the people one another. Capitalism believes nothing and nobody should serve anybody else (nor any tangible purpose)  it should just exist. 

Usually when left and right libertarians debate there's a lot of circular arguing without any real progress – fundamentally because so many core definitions are at odds in their views – the above example is a good one.  In this series of posts I'll be looking at some of these definitional differences and how they lead to the difference in the views of left and right libertarians, and why I side with the left.

Property is theft

Contrary to popular opinion this quote is not communist or Marxist in origin but came from Proudhom in the paper that first gave us the word "libertarian". Right libertarianism wouldn't arise until several centuries later, primarily in the USA and mostly under the influence of Rand. To left libertarians this line promulgates the deep paradox inherent in modern property systems – all that is owned today is only owned because it was stolen. Right libertarians have a different view – that property was created, by setlers working the land and such.  

For this reason many left libertarians declare that only land "in use" is ownable and only as long as it remains so – when it is no longer used it should be accessible to the next potential user rather than laying in waste. Left libertarians decry the inefficiency of a society where so many children sleep on pavements besides buildings that have been standing empty for years.  Right libertarians write long articles about how this entire line of thinking is nothing more than an excuse to steal the hard-earned property of others. My personal opinion is that it would be better for social stability over-all to recognize private property when it refers to single dwellings but differentiate in the case of mass-dwellings.

So who is right ?

The answer comes from a rather odd next question: is right of conquest a valid right of property (it was held so in every culture in the world until very recently after all) ? 

If you say "yes":

Well then the take-over of unused land by the destitute is a legitimate form of conquest, at least as legitimate in practical terms as any other. 

If you say "no":

Well then the current "owners" of the land have no legitimate claim to it. 

I should back all this up. This is where right libertarians are simply and basically lying about the facts of history. Property was never, ever created by setllers working the land. Trace back all the property in the world from current owner to first title deed and you'll find that before that deed was issued it was obtained by conquest: that is it was taken by force from the previous owner. In many cases those previous owners did not have deeds or paperwork, they were often collectivist societies. These traces are hard to do in Europe since in some cases you're tracing back to the ancient Roman conquests, but in the USA and the entire developing world it's quite easy: the land that people "own" was stolen by violent force from it's previous owners within the last three centuries.  This is why the ANC has a land-reform program – and it's out of trying to preserve the economy that they choose to do it on a voluntary-seller basis, they are giving the land back to the descendents of those it was stolen from.  That works in the rural areas, it doesn't work so well in major urban centers – even if those urban centers were built on such land.

The tricky bit is proving who did own the land before.  Right libertarians avoid the question by stating that property was "created" when the land was (recently) worked, if you carefully limit your definition of "property" to the modern title-deeds that almost works but if you have any kind of a respect for justice and indeed the property rights held so sacred by right libertarians you must accept the premise that people who have lived on a piece of land for many generations (perhaps thousands of years) are the only legitimate owners of that land you could recognize. 

So when left libertarians decry the fact that 5% of the world population own 95% of the wealth a big part of why we decry it is because that wealth is generated using land of which the ownership is morally incredibly dubious if not outright illegitimate. When we declare it should be more evenly distributed this is not "mooching" as Rand would put it but a demand for justice. The land was stolen, and then sold on. In any other aspect of human life buying stolen property remains a crime and the ownership remains illegitimate no matter how many times it was sold – if found it is still returned to the true owner. Land should be no different. The USA belongs to Native Americans, South Africa belongs to it's various tribes (not just black but also San and Khoi-Khoin), the fact that these people did not have systems of land ownership when the west got here does not in any way, shape or form justify the suggestion that those who implemented such systems could therefore appropriate the land right out from under them. 

The only land in this country legitimately owned by white people in fact is a particular section of Kwa-Zulu Natal because that was not taken from the Zulu people by force but bought in a mutually agreed contract by the voortrekker's for labour. The violence and warfare that happened after the fact are beside the point – here alone in all of Africa did white people who wanted to live on land where black people had lived for thousands of years recognize their living there as a legitimate property right and tried to BUY the land rather than simply take it by force.

Essentially I'm afraid left libertarians have the right coming and going. The right has to recognize right-of-conquest as valid to claim any legitimacy in the current ownership of land, and then it logically follows that the poor have every right to obtain (or rather: recover) land and property through the same means.  Alternatively if they somehow try to deny it – they must then accept that current ownership is illegitimate and we should enter a long period of mandated land redistribution to return the land to those who own it by rights.

Imagine for a moment a version of our world. Without checks on corporate power, one corporation has grown to be effectively the most powerful entity in the world. Rather than a massive free market- it had simply ousted all competition. In the developing world it's actually replaced the local governments. Over one third of the earth's surface is no longer countries, but simply assets of the corporation. There are no citizens, only employees. A small minority of entrepeneurs live there and run small businesses providing services and goods to the employees but 90% of the people work on farms and in factories owned by the corporation. On paper they own their land but in practice they are prohibited from selling their goods to anybody but the corporation who really only leases them the land. It's a modern form of sharecropping and the goods are bought by the corporation at ridiculously low prices to be sold to their customers in the rich countries where they operate. In fact the corporation is the third largest empire in human history. It has it's own private army – which is the largest and most powerful military in the world.

In those countries the corporations tales of bringing upliftment to the poor world is eagerly believed since the corporation is by far the largest tax-payer and thus enjoys the protection of the governments. In the poor world there are no governments left and the enforcement of laws (really corporate rules) is left to local governers who are nothing but middle managers that report not to the people in their countries but to the board of directors who in turn report only to the shareholders.

And those are the lucky people. Much less lucky are those who were born in the former countries that are now corporate land. The corporation rampantly and openly engages in slave-trade, those natives are mere property, shipped by the corporation to where-ever their services are needed and then sold to the corporations own employees to provide labor in the projects those employees run on corporate behalf.

This dystopian world-view is not some liberalist prediction. It's history, recent history. It's the world as it was in the 17th century – the corporation is the very first corporation to ever exist with a board and shareholders. The Dutch East India Company.  It's managers are despots and entire countries are nothing more than corporate assets. To suggest that this cannot happen is to be ignorant of the fact that it has already happened. The DEIC remained the most powerful entity in the world for nearly 2 centuries, ultimately it was destroyed primarily by the British. To call it the third largest empire in human history is to ignore that it was, in it's own time, the second largest – only Mongol empire was larger. That of Alexander the Great was less than half it's size. It would become the second largest after Britain effectively usurped it's assets and turned them into British colonies. The combined empire of Britain and the former East India colonies was larger than that of just the East India colonies (obviously) but at the time when they coexisted the the East India Company's empire was larger. 

Do not imagine that modern corporations could not, or would not, act this way and end up this powerful without systems in place to prevent it. Governments are one such system. I am not saying it's the only possible one – but the very concept of restraining the power of private corporations with other private corporations is ludicrous.

Journalists have named it the Arab spring, a spate of uprisings in the middle east that saw one dictator after another get ousted after decades of what seemed to be unassailable power. For decades Western Governments did business with these dictators (especially oil business) condemning the nature of their rule but never moving against them – because they claimed any attempt to do so, or impose sanctions (…as if we'll ever see real sanctions against an oil producer) would only harm their beleaguered citizens further. Ultimately those citizens got fed up. Too much money in the pockets of the elites while their citizens got hungrier and poorer. Finally a generation grew up that was ready to risk their lives,  take to the streets, and oust their oppressive former leaders. 

That was, the Arab spring in a nutshel – it's not quite over yet (the latest casualty – Gadaffi still hasn't officially relinquished power) and it's likely to keep on for a little longer. From the start it was clear that other dictators were afraid of this spreading into their countries. China made defensive moves, and there is much speculation that Kim Yong Ill's recent visits to China and Russia was really about securing allies after Gadaffi's fall – built on a fear of a similar public insurrection in North Korea.

What nobody seems willing to suggest is that this could also spread to Western Nations. The (and indeed the more Westernized African nations like South Africa) imagine themselves immune – after all, we're not dictatorships we are free democracies. I beg to differ. The London riots despite all the claims by politicians and popular media to the contrary was not just criminality. It was the beginning of a similar spark of revolt I believe.

The idea that having a democracy makes you immune from such uprisings is just wrong. It's based on the idea that if people have a peaceful way to oust bad governments (through the vote, court systems etc.) they wouldn't risk doing so in unlawful ways. There are three major flaws in this reasoning however.

The first is that democracies are always free. At the risk of getting myself Godwinned I must point out that Hitler originally came to power through an election. You can elect a dictator who is then very hard to get rid of again. Many other dictators around the world throughout history originally came to power in a free election. Robert Mugabe is a more recent example.

And you don't have to be called a dictator to be one. When there is only one way an election can go – that is a dictatorship, and when all the election will do is shuffle a bit between two parties that are both sold out to special interests then all you have is a structurally fluid dictatorship.

There are very few free democracies left in the world and America, Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa are not among them.  They do have various degrees of individual freedom but in many cases this has been twisted to make the dictators and their wealthy cronies simply more powerful. Instead of those freedoms being used against cronyism, it is used to protect cronies.

South African's love to complain about our government and blame it on the ANC, declaring how things are falling apart but there is nothing special about us. We call it Tenderpreneurs, American's call it Lobbyists, the results are the same. The rich gets richer with the help of goverment corruption and the poor get poorer.

To claim capitalism is working you must prove that the poor actually gets richer – those who argue this generally show long timelines and try to prove that the poorest in society today lives better than they did 50 and 100 years ago. That is not a very difficult thing to prove – technology advanced, science advanced these things raise quality of life even for the poorest of the poor, but there is nothing either of those statements that depends on capitalism and no proof that capitalism helped this process. Even if it did, you are not proving that it will continue to do so today. More importantly is to see what happened to the quality of life of people today compared to ten and twenty years ago. That shows a marked decline worldwide.

As the age of corporatism reached it's greatest scale, the poor got more poor, and now with the coffers of the economy plundered they are stealing the only thing those poor had left – the social safety nets put in place by our grandfathers. Their welfare checks, their public education, their pensions, their medical assistance and all the other things that potentially offers and escape from poverty is being ripped out from under them by governments who can almost legitimately claim that they cannot afford them anymore. Nowhere is those governments suggesting paying back the money that people already paid into these funds and from which they will now never benefit again. This leaves the middle-class robbed and the poor with even less recourse to ever be less poor.

Many captialists defenders imagine otherwise but the reality is that big gaps between rich and poor breeds contempt, protest and ultimately violent revolution. If we don't learn that from history we are doomed to repeat it. As we strip away these safety nets, the poor is feeling the pinch, their youth lose their last prospects and lash out. The London riots were immature. Stealing a TV from your neighbour doesn't help -but they were not simply "lawlessness by lesser people" as was suggested and implied. They were protest by inexpereinced protesters (after all it's been a long time since Westerners had practice). But as one protester said: "Two months ago we marched on a police station with a memorandum. 20 thousand people marched, peacefully protesting police behavior and we didn't even make the local paper. We loot a few shops for 2 days and we have international media attention".

Does that excuse violence ? Not at all, but it does explain it. Western governments are now in real trouble – they have allowed their cronies to plunder the system until there is nothing less (some economists predict American inflation rates will hit 30% within two years), so they actually cannot afford to maintain the safety nets that worked for decades. That provided a means of self-upliftment and a way out – and kept the poor at least hopeful that some of them may grow to better lives, gave them a reason to be peaceful. Now they take those safety nets away, to the glee of their cronies who get to offer their for-profit versions (annuities for pension plans, medical insurance instead of medicaid) to the middle class for even more profit and couldn't care less that the poor could never afford it, while the middle class as they switch to these things get robbed. For years they paid into these schemes and now they never get to be paid out.

In 1992 Brazil tried to do the same and ended the government pension plan (this was a democratically elected government long after the dictator years). Protests broke out with everyone from young teenagers to the elderly in the streets, risking arrests, but standing by their point – this was the money we had put away for our old age in schemes you demanded we pay into, you cannot end those schemes without giving it back. 

The protesters won. The experiment failed and the pension plans were reinstated. Why do we think that America, England and South Africa are immune ? Why do American's think they are ? Why does Cameron think that he can stop what happened in London with propaganda ? 

These nations have the same situation now that Brazil was in in 1992, but it's aggravated by the fact that it's not just the middle-class who paid in that are losing out, they aren't just taking the pension payments away. They are destroying all the safety nets at once, robbing the middle class of their money and the poor of their hope. There can be only one outcome: violent revolution.

I hate the idea of that, but it's an inevitable consequence of these actions. It may not be too late to prevent it yet. A change of course may yet be able to. I doubt one will happen though. The denial of the democratic dictators is too strong, like their unelected middle eastern compatriots they will pretend all is well until they protests become revolutions and then claim to be winning and crushing those revolutions every day until the revolutionaries are standing on the rubble of their mansions. 

Anybody who thinks that what happened to Gadaffi cannot happen to Cameron needs to read some history books, it can and most likely will happen. The trends begun under Reagan are reaching their inevitable conclusion. We can still change course but the time left to do so is very short. 

We can listen to those protesters while they are still looters in a few neighbourhoods, or we can keep pushing until the White House is burning. Never for one moment imagine it cannot happen. America was born from a violent revolution against an unpopular British government who impoverished it's citizens remember. 

The truth is, even if Milton was right about everything and you suddenly figure it out now… he was wrong about one thing. There isn't a population in the world that is equalized enough to do capitalism his way without being instantly at war with the poor.

In a recent slashdot discussion, I postulated that the general belief that the more ethnic groups are located in one region (as a result of immigration for example) the higher the rate of violent crime between was wrong. I stated my belief that this is only true if those groups remain largely unmixed. When the majority group is a particularly tolerant and accepting one who welcomes the newcomers adopting some of their practices and being adopted in turn, I believe a highly peaceful society can exist. This is much the same philosophy that guide Nelson Mandela's approach to South Africa in the early 90's and what he hoped to achieve (sadly the races in South Africa remain largely seperated into their own communities). I was asked to back up my assertion and came up with a mathematical model which I think does just that, and which I now want to share in this post – to get comment.

I'll copy and paste my post below:

Lets do it practically so you understand my reasoning. Firstly, constrain ourselves to urban areas – the crime rate in rural areas is correspondingly lower but that's because of the lower population, the same experiment could work but you'd have to greatly increase the areas you look at to get a valid answer.

Right, so if the title wasn't obvious enough – I'm taking a diversion from the foss-archeology series to talk about something topical – notably the current brouhaha caused by Rebecca Watson and that video. Now for those who aren't aware of it, here is the what happened. Miss Watson was speaking at a student conference as a prominent feminist voice. After the conference and subsequent festivities she was headed toward her hotel room when she found herself alone in the elevator with a young man. The young man told her that he'd enjoyed her talk, found her interesting, and asked if she'd like to come to his room for coffee.

Miss Watson declined the invitation and he respectfully accepted her decision. At no point did he act the least bit aggressively. At no point was he pushy. At no point did he suggest that he would not accept whatever she chose to answer with grace and respect. Which he did, even though he did not get the answer he had obviously hoped for. What is more, he didn't push any further after that no. They got to their floors and went their own ways. 

We know the full details because there is a video of it, Miss Watson posted it on her blog and then decried it as a sexist move to proposition her in an elevator, declaring it creepy. It blew up into the major feminist argument of the day. An example of how women are threatened and viewed as sex-toys by men how men have all the power and how evil we all are.

Richard Dawkin's made a now infamous comment about it decrying the silliness of it all – and now they all hate him. Well I think I agree with him – what's more he did not go far enough. I will get to his argument in a moment, but first I want to state my own view. Now that I despise discrimination in all it's forms is something I deem beyond dispute – I have written extensively on the topic many times, most recently here. Well here's the reality – the sexist discrimination in this event was entirely on the part of Miss Watson.

She says she felt she was in a threatening situation. Really ? Because she was alone in an elevator with a person who just quite coincidentally happened to have a penis ? That is the ultimate sexism – yes some people rape, yes more of them are men than women – but to just automatically assume anybody who was born male would seek to act on sexual desire by force is nothing but outright gender discrimination. It's assuming behavior on the part of a person purely on the basis of that person's gender. 

Her reaction there was nothing short of unmitigated and absolutely inexcusable sexism. The man in fact had not exerted any power in the situation at all – in fact she had all the power. He indicated his desire (and whether he did so politely or not is really quite beside the point) – and then left the decision entirely in her hands. She could choose. If she shared his desire she could say yes, if she didn't she could say no.

By her reasoning all flirtation is sexual harassment (I bet a lot of women who enjoy flirting would hate it if they weren't allowed to). Or perhaps only women should ever proposition somebody (since many feminists have fought hard to have it be acceptable for women to do so) ? Is that not sexist ? She had the power to say yes or no. He did not in any way seek to force the decision upon her, he merely indicated to her his desire and let her decide. Nothing was to happen unless it was a mutual desire and since it wasn't, indeed nothing did happen.

She was not threatened, she was not being a victim of somebody abusing his power – she was the one who had the power and her judgement of the situation was utterly ruined by her sexist view of all men as violent predators – even when an individual man had done absolutely nothing to deserve that assessment.

I don't even think there was any sexual objectification here – the man had heard her talk and claims to have respected her views. Finding somebody attractive does not imply that you don't value them in other regards. Surely Caryn would be offended by the suggestion that because she thinks I'm sexy she cannot also enjoy conversations with me about intellectual matters and respect me as a professional and as a person ? I certainly respect her intellect and her personality and think she is a wonderful person – I also find her very attractive, and none of these things are mutually exclusive.

Nothing he had done suggested that he only thought of her sexually – and even if he had – since this is not a work situation, since he has no influence on her future and didn't even suggest a relationship, would that be so bad ? He was interested in a one-night-stand if and ONLY if she shared his interest. If they had both shared it, then it was perhaps objectifying but it would not be in the least harmful to anybody – in fact it would have been gratifying to them both. Since the interest was one-sided, it had no impact whatsoever -except to give her something to shout about and get more famous for.

Which brings us to Dawkins's view, her anti-male sexism is bad enough but it's not the worst of it. She and her supporters have declared this a perfect example of "potential sexual assault". I have to side with Dawkins here – this world is full of people who suffer under very real discrimination, including institutionalized sexual discrimination in countries where women get the death penalty for adultery, where female circumcision is promoted,. where women have to wear veils and get no decision-making whatsoever. And the real victims of sex-crimes be they men, women or children. Calling "would you like some coffee ?" potential sexual assault massively demeans the plight of all the victims of real sex-crimes and is insulting to those who suffer under real discrimination.

Yes, it's insulting to those people who suffer under the very real effects of humanities worst discriminatory practices to suggest that what Miss Watson experienced was remotely comparable, in particular it's the worst kind of demeaning to those who have experienced the horror that is real rape or sexual assault to call that little event "potential sexual assault".

That is why I call her not only a sexist but  a traitor to the very cause she claims to be a voice for as well. Shame on you.

As I make no secret off (to the point of having written an article on the topic for a major national publication), I've been in the situation of being a victim of domestic-abuse. I am not a victim now, I am a survivor and I refused to let what happen there ruin my life, and I also neither emotionally nor rationally consider there to be any truth to the suggestion that all women would do what that particular woman had done to me. 

It is therefore quite personally insulting to hear somebody declare that being propositioned politely was comparable to what it's like to go through real abuse, assault or rape – even if I've experienced only one of out three I'm quite sure it's the least horrific of them so I can only sympathize deeply with those who have experienced the others. Miss Watson is not among them, but is trying to associate her non-event with their plight for her own gain – exploiting them further and the only justification she can offer for this association is the sexist and outright wrong mistrust of all men.

Well I say it again Miss Watson: Shame on you.

I have, over the course of my life, dealt with discrimination on several levels – and come to hate it in all it's forms. But what makes it so hard to deal with is that it is so hard to define. For me the definition has, over time, come to be rather simple: discrimination is any judgement made about somebody that is not based on their personal choices.

This definition isn't perfect – because there are still argument about whether some things are choices or not. A good example is the continuing discrimination against non-heterosexual people in society. The worst of this discrimination comes from fundamentalist religions who tend to insist on declaring that it is a (sinful) choice – and thus it's okay to treat those who make it horribly.

Now firstly science has proved beyond any reasonable doubt that homosexuality is a natural biological occurrence affecting roughly 10% of the population of any sexual species – which includes humans. It's a genetic thing (well actually not quite genetic – it's epigenetic but that's beside the point) – not a choice. Which isn't to say that some people may not make a choice in this regard, but considering that you would be choosing to spend your life ostracized and maltreated, this must be a tiny minority.

Secondly – even if it was a choice – I don't think that my definition gives you the right to mistreat anybody. Discrimination based on sexual preference is frankly among the more horrible kinds – and frequently institutionalized.

It is also wrong to think that a simple definition only gives simple answers. For example – none of us choose our race, so I am utterly against judging people based on race (that is essentially discrimination to me). This is just as true when somebody declares that black people are "lazy" as when people declare that white men are privileged abusers of power.

The problem is – previous institutionalized prejudice have created certain social inequalities along such non-choice lines and how to deal with these? I had coffee at Seattle over lunch. I could not help but notice that – barring one, all the customers were white, all the staff were black. This is a consequence of societal inequality created by a previous generation – but it's an inequality that exists nonetheless.

It's easy to say "if we just stop all discrimination it will correct itself in time" but that means being prepared to live with several more generations of this inequality persisting. That is hardly ideal. The trouble is – every attempted solution such as affirmative action can only be implemented by once more having institutionalized prejudice (defined as any case where everybody is not equal before a law – any law that gives some people precedence over others). Prejudice that may restore the balance (though we've seen no evidence of this) but only perpetuates the root cause of group-based exclusion that led to it in the first place.

Ironically – there has never been a country where affirmative action came with a time-limit. Which would seem sensible if it's true goal was to simply correct an inequality of the past – after all, you don't spend forever correcting a problem, and if that's how long it takes – then you obviously need a different solution.

My definition also doesn't preclude all judgement. When a thief steals, they chose to steal – so we can judge that as wrong. When a man loves another man – they are acting on a born-in imperative, and to judge that is not acceptable. 

This may be seen as morally wrong by you – but you're not being forced to participate, and an inclusive society will treat those who are different with respect and dignity even if we don't approve of them or wish to live as they do. Fundamentalism in all it's forms cannot accept this – and has thus become one of the great evils in our society, whether it's Christian, Muslim, Budhist or Atheist fundamentalism is really rather beside the point. 

There are even greater complexities -between the cultures we choose and the ones we are born into. I am born to be an Afrikaaner but I see myself also as a geek, an anarchist and a metalhead – and these are valid cultural identities as well. I was born to love rugby and braaivleis, but as it happens – I don't particularly like watching sports – not even rugby. This is odd in my religion, and I should have the right to make that choice.

That's the core of what I'm trying to say here – discrimination is one thing that is wrong in society and by my definition easy to recognize – but it's not everything that is wrong. Our lack of compassion and empathy and inclusion is just as big a wrong that often (but not always) overlaps.

We can judge as wrong those choices that harm others, but other choices should be met with acceptance and tolerance and compassion. And never assume we can even tell what really is choice and what isn't – and where something is provably not a matter of choice (such as race, sexual preference or gender) then making any assumptions whatsoever based on this is by definition a guarantee of harm.

This is where archetypes cause inevitable problems. Is Castor Semenya a man or a woman ? Well it turns out the definitions are simply not as clear-cut as we want it to be -and one talented young athlete had his/her life ruined because of this. Such horrors come from archetypes. Does a woman have to have ovaries to be a woman ? What about a woman who had ovarian cancer ? Does she stop being a woman if they are removed ? If you're born without them – should you lose the right to participate in sports forever ?

Mark Twain famously said that truth is stranger than fiction because truth doesn't have to make sense. This is a very true statement. The world has no compulsion to comply with our primitive brains and their limited definitions – and the only way to build stable, peaceful societies in such a complex world is to have open minds. Accepting of difference and constantly battling against our inner prejudices and presumptions. 

Every assumption you make about a person is a potential act of discrimination. Only when you realize this, can you truly treat all people fairly and equally. This is a hard ideal to live up to – hell I am far from perfect at it-  but it's the only ideal worth striving for.

So to those who read this, I want to leave you with a simple task. Take your race, think of a different once and spend just five minutes thinking about what your life would have been like if you had been born as a member of that race. This act of trying to imagine what somebody else thinks, feels and goes through in life is called empathy. It's a basic human survival trait evolved over aeons – we all have it, we can use it, and through using it, make a better world -because that simple act, is how we breed tolerance, acceptance and all those other ideals which allow humans who are different to nonetheless coexist in peace and harmony.

And if thinking peace and harmony are nice things to have makes me a pinko-commie-liberal in your eyes… well then you're exactly the kind of fundamentalist I despise who makes this world as horrible as it is. Nationalism and patriotism are, after all, just another kind of prejudicial fundamentalism. That said, I can and do try to empathize with those who hold such views. It is very hard to find a way to think respectfully toward somebodies views when the very essence of those views is a lack of respect for mine – but I do try anyway, because not trying would be give up on the very essence of what my views are about. 

I do hope that trying to talk compassionately to those so filled with hatred for all that is other from themselves, is a better way to perhaps teach them compassion than to respond to hatred with hatred, for in their minds, it would only prove them right. 

Cory Doctorow has built a lot of his arguments in favor of less restrictive copyright on stating that youtube's massive content output is so much bigger than that of Hollywood. Mostly the argument against him is based on the statement that he is rating quantity over quality.

I want to address that by saying that while Hollywood films are certainly more expensive (even low budget films) the suggestion that they are higher (or even high) quality is ridiculous. Some Hollywood movies are high quality, are great films, classics of their genre's and they get cinema's packed – despite the age of home theater systems and digital downloads.

Good quality Hollywood films do not seem to have lost out much on their traditional income – though perhaps their DVD sales are a little lower (this is by no means proven as there is no evidence to suggest that if downloads didn't exist people would buy instead – quite frankly with the recession as it stands, the evidence suggest that most downloaders would, if they couldn't download, simply have gone without-  the sale would not be made either way). 

Now granted a lot of what is on youtube may be considered "worse" and certainly less mainstream – but is that true ? When a proud mother posts a video of her 3-year old dancing, it may only be of value to his father working in another country – but surely that value to him alone is worth having the option for  ? This is what the internet is best at, putting the creators of content (even those with very tiny niche markets) directly in touch with the consumers of that content.

Now usually we hear that this "only works for bands like radiohead and nine inch nails who were already well established by the record industry before they went indy". The claim being something like "indy bands that never sign, never make money" – which is just not true. On the contrary as the Diesel Whores sing in a song aimed mostly at other bands: "5FM is NOT YOUR FRIEND". 

In fact the traditional publishing industry has a truly pathetic rate of recognition for true quality and most truly great works from the pre-internet age had to go through massive hoops just to get out there. In the world of books – Gone with the Wind was rejected by 14 publishers before a small little publishing house in New York that mostly served a couple of pulp authors dared to take a chance on it, it became one of the greatest selling (and simply greatest) works of literature of all time – and spun of one of the best-selling movies of all time as well.

And the argument that "going indy" and refusing to sign only works for established artists ? The argument that new (but good) artists cannot make it big without signing ? A prime example here comes from 1983. Some 4 years after the Runaways split up, their lead guitarist and backup vocalist finished the debut album with her new band. She was all but forgotten in the industry. 23 major labels rejected their recording. So in desperation she self-published. It became the biggest album of the year and established Joan Jett as the undisputed queen of Rock 'n Roll to this day (and she is still unsigned). 

"I love rock'nroll" is an anthem that every rock lover knows, even if they were from a later generation and got to know it as a Britney Spears cover – the reality is that Joan Jett was a brilliant musician, one of the best rockers of all time -and she could not get signed. If she hadn't gone indy, we would never have had her music.

She proved that new talent, good talent, can go indy and become multiplatinum successes – and she did this BEFORE the internet. Now this doesn't mean every indy band will become multiplatinum if they put their stuff online. Most of them may get a few more people at their next show, it may pay for them to keep playing, most will never become mainstream famous. 

Is that so bad ? Most bands that are mainstream famous are not very good. But by putting musicians directly in contact with listeners, what the internet can do is keep niche markets for non-mainstream genres alive. Rock outside the small mainstream, modern classical  composers (let's ignore the oxymoron in the concept), and yes – little girls dancing.

In this we get a true cultural tapestry of all that is our culture, a record of our way of life like no previous society has had, or could have created, and that alone is truly valuable. But we also get to have more art, in more genre's and more styles – artists who could never have survived before can have a better survival now. Artists who can't get signed now because the old model is so costly and their niche market too small (not because they are not brilliant artists but because not many people like the kind of art they create) can reach those small niche markets – afordably. A small niche market is still a lot of people when you can go global.  

Sure a lot of it will be junk, but a lot of it is junk now – and so is a lot of the big media conglomerate's product. The new Pirates of the Carribean movie and the new Lady Gaga outfit …er… album – that's junk. It's crap – and it's getting more airplay and marketing than they are giving the good stuff they have signed.

The thing is that what youtube videos are now would have been impossible with the technology of just a decade ago, in another decade they will be able to match the current big budget blockbusters in special effects, storytelling and acting will follow. And Hollywood will probably survive too – their big budgets will be doing things that are impossible for them now, and will be impossible for home filmmakers in a decade, and both will coexist – and as citizens and consumers we will have the benefit of more. Hollywood doesn't like that, no corporation ever liked competition – but it's not them we should worry about.

It's everybody else. Including all the young filmmakers with niche markets – smaller groups of people whom they can reach, that they couldn't reach before. The ability to create the richest cultural tapestry in human history – is surely worth the odd ketchup stain. 

I can draw this argument through to all the arts (and in fact just in this post I applied it to several – notably film-making and music but many others). Many of the greatest artists of the past starved, their work not truly valued until long after they died. Mozart,  Van Gogh, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas – the list goes on. 

How many of the greatest artists were never recognized because no copies of their work survived for the later generations who would see it's worth ? What youtube can do, among it's collections of everything (including the junk) is store it all, keep it all there, and that means not just the niche-market good artists, but the great art that we now cannot recognize survives – to be recognized by our grandchildren who will. 

If we allow the content corporations to kill that opportunity off – then we have truly learned nothing from history, and we deserve to be culturally deprived. Then we deserve for the archeologists of the future to write us off as a generation that had lost all artistic sense and created nothing more noteworthy than Lady Gaga – a generation where the shock-value was the only value. 

We have so much more to offer… let's make sure we don't choke it.