Just nitpicking here, but 1984 is a critique of totalitarianism. The only references to systems of government in the book refer to "The German Nazis and the
Russian Communists".
Orwell was a democratic socialist. He was opposed to totalitarian politics, not communism per se.
It's true that it's about totalitarianism to some extent. But we have Orwell's actual words here that it's chiefly about communism
> [Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office.
And of course Animal Farm is only about communism (as opposed to communism + fascism). And the lesser known Homage to Catalonia depicts the communist suppression of other socialist groups.
By all this I just mean to say when you're reading Nineteen Eighty-Four what he's describing is barely a fictionalization of what was already going on in the Soviet Union. There's just not a lot in the book that is specifically Nazi or Fascist.
I don't have any opinion on whether he thought there were non-totalitarian forms of communism.
I think that Orwell understood his own people much more than Russians, so it might be useful, while reading him, to take a look at the mirror as well..
The problem is that "Free Market" economics (which some people still argue is a valid economic theory for some reason) states that the market will decide what things are worth. The market decided a long time ago that movies, songs, books, photographs etc were, in fact, worth nothing. That's the effect of digital media. It's completely incompatible with the free market.
Weirdly enough, the people who were most vocal about this so called "Free Market" were the people who tried to defend their ability to make money from things that can be copied infinitely with almost zero overhead.
This isn't an opinion on whether or not digital media should be free, it's a statement about digital media being completely incompatible with outdated economic theories.
The person you're replying to may actually believe that his personal information should be worth $0. The only reason it's not is because it can be used for targeted advertising and a bunch of even more horribly dystopian purposes.
So, the fact is you're both correct. Personal data should be worthless (in fact, it should be only available with the permission of the "person") if not for bad actors profiting from the purchase and sale of this data.
The broken economic theories of free market economics state that digital media should be worthless, except that current laws and regulations extend out-dated intellectual property laws to protect incumbent distributors and rights holders (this only rarely actually protects the creators of the media). The idealistic goal of the creators profiting from their creations has been corrupted beyond recognition.
Basically, the things you both are discussing are both nuanced and broken. They exist outside of the context you're putting them in.
> The market decided a long time ago that movies, songs, books, photographs etc were, in fact, worth nothing. That's the effect of digital media. It's completely incompatible with the free market.
This is such a willfully ignorant take, it’s wild. Anyone who has a cursory understanding of game theory can see that if this were true a simple recursion would occur:
1. Everyone would pirate movies/tv/books.
2. There would be $0 in producing media.
3. Significantly less media would be produced. Anything capital intensive would be gone.
4. Demand for anything that could be produced would skyrocket. Imagine putting together a blockbuster film when the world hasn’t seen one in a century.
5. People would pay money for the product of 4.
Just because we can get something for $0 doesn’t make it worth $0. I could enslave my neighbors and make them work for me, that doesn’t make human labor worth $0.
It's not an ignorant take, it's reality. If you don't want that outcome, stop supporting outdated economic theories. I didn't say I wanted this to be the case, I said it is the case. The only reason digital media is sellable at all is due to laws and regulations. Not only are these laws and regualtions historically anathematic to those who defend the outdated economic theories, they're also protecting the wrong people. The distribution networks get a much larger share of profit than the actual creators.
People should exchange money for digital goods. That money should go primarily to the creators of those goods. None of this is happening very much, and it's actually moving in the wrong direction.
Ah! I think I missed your point because I read your comment through the lens of the root comment. My apologies!
We’re actually largely in agreement, especially about content creators deserving compensation and the fact that distribution is vacuuming up most of it.
People used to buy NS-10s because they knew professional studios used them. They were then underwhelmed when they sounded worse than the hifi speakers they had at home.
Many audio engineers live by the mantra "if it sounds good on NS-10s, it'll sound good on anything".
It'd be moving touchstone is the problems, speakers in the consumer space don't evolve as fast as computing tech in the user space.
You could get somewhat close by looking at what was a middle of the road consumer laptop from Dell/HP/Lenovo 5 years ago and buying one of those though.
He actually explains it. It's due to the round trip time increasing from further away water droplets when filmed at an oblique angle. Light hitting a droplet 3m away has a 3x times longer round trip than light hitting a droplet 1m away.
Orwell was a democratic socialist. He was opposed to totalitarian politics, not communism per se.
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