If you are bored by technology, philosophy, and music, stop reading now and go do whatever else it is that you do. Marx famously predicted that one day human kind would "leap into freedom." I'm not sure quite what that means, but I think it is something like this: one day human production will so exceed demand that we will no longer be needy beings. Virtually everything we really need (food, shelter, medicine, etc.) will be available as cheaply as air is now. I think that Marx was onto something. Of course it will have been achieved by the free market in spite of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
There are two paths which have been proposed to achieve such a goal. One (Marxism) was to radically collectivize human beings, in order that they might work together in perfect harmony and efficiency to overcome the material limits by means of which nature ruined so many good days between Monday and Friday. Well, that didn't work. The other (Lockean liberalism) was to free individual enterprise as much as possible, so that the most industrious and clever would compete against each other to multiply the original wealth that Nature and nature's God provides for us. It was Locke's genius to realize how much of the value of something simple, like a loaf of bread, was due to industry rather than to natural materials. Consider what is invested in the loat: plowing, planting, harvesting, and milling; plows, pans, and ovens; wagons and bakeries. And of course someone has to bake the darn thing.
As I sit here I am listening to free jazz on my new 60 gig iPod. Its the size of a five dollar calculator, and my entire collection of CDs, built up over twenty years, will occupy about a quarter of it. Much of the rest will consist of music downloaded (legally!) for free. I already have about ten hours each of Jazz, Celtic, and Rock. Free reggae has been a little harder to find, but that seems to be coming. Just to make sure that I don't squeeze out the storage capacity on our main home computer (we have three in the house now, and two more at work), I bought an external, portable hard drive. Like the drive on our desk top, and my iPod, it has 60 gig capacity. It's the size and weight of a fat wallet. I remember a commercial a couple years back where a woman at a bar says that the juke box holds every version of every song ever recorded. Well, we are getting there.
At least in this one area of technology, capacity is expanding much faster than need. In a few years time I will be able to get and store more songs than I can listen to. Of course, that presents its own problems. But the software is getting better and better at helping us to organize the bounty. Someone like me, who really loves a lot of different kinds of music, is richer now than anyone was a few decades ago.
If you are the Rolling Stones, which is to say, an established player in entertainment, this is not so good. Way too many copies of Jumpin Jack Flash are jumpin around illegally. But in the Jazz and Rock worlds, at least, very small independent bands can now find an audience. Small market radio stations now have listeners all over the globe. Hobby radio stations broadcast all kinds of music 24 hours a day on Radio 365.
Of course it will be a while before health care and houses follow the same trajectory. But I am guessing that sooner or later they will. Baring some ecological disaster, we just have to make sure not to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs. Right now Apple is one of those magic geese. With the possible exception of Walt Disney, I can think of no brand name that represents so much persistent genius. I wonder how long it will be before the Justice Department goes after them with its axe.
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