THF rock music was just a giant Ponzi scheme

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Week 26

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NB. F stands for Fears

In the pyramid, each of the 4 tiers represents circa 15 years (~ a generation) of music business, starting from 1955.

Date: 28 June 2022
Motion: THF rock music was just a giant Ponzi scheme
Role: Deputy (gov.)

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One cannot help thinking in seeing the poor and young rock musicians of today against the rich and old rock musicians of the past that they get compensated in different ways. Young musicians release studio albums in a steady stream and tour their country, continent and the world, but receive scant income for their hard work. Older musicians, conversely, may not release anything and may not tour, for their frail health, but still seem to have good standards of living and a classy car, educated children and house of their own. Could it be so that the small print has dictated this in some way?

I have come to the conclusion that maybe rock music is the most massive Ponzi scheme since Bernie Madoff’s risk-capital shenanigan. Let’s go back to the basic premise of a Ponzi (also sometimes called a pyramid): it’s an economic arrangement where the owner or the scheme and the early adopters benefit hugely. Later adopters and initiates may get even, but latest initiates give without getting any in return, because the Ponzi/pyramid scam folds when there are no newcomers anymore and it isn’t fueled by an internal bottom-top moneyflow. Could pop and rock music be just such a Ponzi?

My suspicion is that the rock business was set up so that record-company owners and the earliest rock stars would benefit from any latercomers. Agewise we are talking about the first few decades. We are roughly talking about the age before instrument manufacturing moved to Asia, before punk rockers and synthesizers. So, those standing to benefit would be musicians and record bosses in operation in the 50s, 60s and 70s. From the 80s increasingly onward, through the 90s, 00s and 10s, young musicians would stand to benefit less or nothing from their musical work. How could this be implemented legally in practise?

It Could Be a Bigger Share of Streaming
One of the great injustices of our time is that a young musician today cannot get much income if his or her song gets played a million times over the internet. Musicians on apps are treated like a bunch of hoodlums where the Top 10–100 get most income (the so-called pro rata model), while all contribute to the attraction of popular music. We do not know how old musicians get paid for their music on streaming apps, for theirs is there as well. Usually they do not discuss this aspect of the business side of their music. Old musicians seldom complain about their situation.

It Could Be a Retainer
There could be an intra-industry arrangement in place, where a record company paid a so-called retainer to an aging musician. This means that (s)he collects a monthly salary just for being around and available, without a work obligation, a little bit like a professor at a university. Conversely, there would not be such retainers available for young musicians, apart from record-company personnel and the best session musicians.

It Could Be a Shareholder Status
The third way to channel money old musicians’ way is to give them shares. I assume most record companies are LLCs or PLCs, which means that they have a share base and options that can be distributed to the inner circle, the chosen few. That could include old-hat musicians. Their payday would be in the form of dividends that record companies paid annually out of their profits to the shareholders; executives and top producers included.

Rock music was not designed for just two early generations that came of age in the 20th century. The offspring of rhythm & blues and country, folk & western arrived here to stay. While old musicians had often a superb altosoprano or contratenor singing voice and good songcrafting skills, newer musicians are great at collaborations, networking and the digital or technical aspects of music production. Young musicians of each decade have often had attractive, model-category looks. I would regard it as paramount that a good musician could still buy his Rolls-Royce in this day and age, were he a household and successful name. But, it won’t be like that if music business is a Ponzi scheme. It ceases to be based on merit.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Spekulatiivinen aloite testaa hallituksen kykyä käyttää tietämystään tämän teollisuudenalan ahdingon luotaamisessa. I tiimin dynamona teen itse villeimmät spekulaatiot ja annan jonkin ajatuksentyngän tiimini partnerille, esim. kysymyksen siitä, kuinka tahallinen aloitteen väite on eli olisiko kyse (s)ala(n)liitosta. Jotta kieli ei jäisi keskelle suuta, aloitetta voi lähestyä hallituksen puolelta kahdella tapaa: musiikkibisneksen “asiantuntijat” yrittävät soveltaa tietämystään pyramidihuijausten maailmaan tai pyramidihuijausten “asiantuntijat” yrittävät soveltaa tietämystään musiikkibisneksen maailmaan.

THR any tiny measure to redress the carbon footprint

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Week 25

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Ecology is filled with hypocrisy up to the brim.

Date: 14th June 2022
Motion: THS any measure to redress the carbon footprint
Role: Leader (opp.)

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Recently I watched a documentary by the FBC (domestically known as YLE) journalist Jessica Stolzmann, who had eaten a burger and been given the promise that it’d get climate-compensated in due course. She began tracking if this really was so. It turned out that the burger company paid largely lip service. The company in question is the most successful national burger franchise. Its owner has played a kind of a dual role in juxtaposition with the world-famous McDonalds. First he developed his understanding of the ropes, as if he were the McDonald brothers. Then he sold the company. After a few years’ sabbatical he bought his old company back and began to expand and redevelop it as if he was Ray Kroc. In a few years, in the early noughties, he overtook McDonalds and any other Finnish company in the burger business.

It turned out that there is an arrangement between four or five companies that lies behind that climate compensation. Two companies act as middlemen to syndicate the compensation. A start-up tech company handles the app, communications and maybe some other tech aspects. Finally, an African company sells or gives a wood-burning stove to a hapless Ugandan citizen, who uses it in her daily life and thus compensates carbon footprint for the Finnish burger company. The pretext is that the upgraded stove is more energy-efficient than the traditional one. Africans are usually oblivious to this. It is a joint scheme between two Nordic, one Silicon Valley and one Swiss firm.

In the next, I want to concentrate on ethical climate-compensation instead of such far-fetchedness.

Each Countermeasure in the Country of Origin (Instead of Outsourcing)
To make climate compensation ethical, it would need it happen in the country of the original exploitation or consumption, the “original sin“. It’s too easy to outsource the redemption of one’s sins to other continents or countries. Like, “Sin here and make Africans pay for it over there.” That does not sound fair to me. Africans might have sins of their own that they, too, should pay for on their own continent.

Reforestation Is a Good Countermeasure
Then, a measure should be tangible. It should make a difference in the balance. When we talk about compensation, one good countermeasure is reforestation, the planting of new trees. In Finland, there is a lot of knowledge about this, as is anywhere in Scandinavia or the coniferous tree belt. Outside Scandinavia, trees have been largely cut down for building material, firewood or scaffolding. But, a growing tree anywhere cannot be a bad thing, in particular if you can see a forest in addition to trees.

Renouncing a Car Is a Good Countermeasure
Another good measure is to scrap a car and take it out of traffic. I.e. if you cannot add to the amount of oxygen in the air, you can detract from the amount of pollutants in the air. I think the “PC”, the personal car, is one of the worst polluters on Earth. If all gas-driven cars were phased out of traffic and only jet and diesel engines were left to pollute, we would not have climate change as we know it. In practice, the solution would mean that any well-off person who should choose to go without a car even if (s)he could afford one, would contribute to carbon neutrality and prevent climate change.

So, if the burger company was being ethical about it, it would take a sedan, station wagon or SUV out of traffic or plant a tree – and do both in Finland. Planting trees is straightforward enough, but I would like to chuckle on the ceiling to see how the company received certificates, via or without middlemen, from people who would vouch for dumping, scrapping or uninsuring their cars (but not reselling them), which in turn should entitle the people to some benefits at the counters of the burger giant, such as a year of free coffee, or something. “The ceiling of the burger joint is the limit.”

An ancient form of Catholic wrongdoing, the trade in indulgences, is what the trade in carbon compensation most looks like. At any rate, Catholic solutions are “too good to be true”, and the Protestant in me opposes them. If we are supposed to make any difference in the world, we need to make amends that mean something.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Olen mielestäni oikealla asialla, kun vastustan tekopyhää ekologista anekauppaa. Sen tajuaminen ei pitäisi olla vaikeaa niille, jotka ovat olleet hereillä historian ja/tai uskonnon tunneilla. Muille puol(u)e(e)ni jäsenille jää runsaasti muita aiheita, jotka periaatteessa todistavat samasta asiasta. Yleinen draivi mediassa ja politiikassa on puolestaan hallituksen puolella.

THS the ‘infamous’ hypothesis about the End of History

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Week 24

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NB. This is an uncharacteristically bleak blog post, but try to bear with it. As always, it is an exercise.

It might be a “wrap” for the world…

Date: 13 Jun 2022
Motion: THS the ‘infamous’ hypothesis about the End of History
Role: Deputy (gov.)

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When scholar Francis Fukuyama wrote, 33 years ago, a fifteen-page essay at the tail end of the roaring 1980s in The National Interest, predicting that world history would not progress farther from his vantage point in a liberal USA, amid the turmoil of the Tiananmen Square, many people took note. My history teacher broached it in class and related to us the basic content of that essay. He was in his mid-forties and had a Freudian type of a facial haircut. He was a leftwinger. Maybe it was in retrospect the last great eye-opener to an academic who had graduated as a M.A. in history and who was interested in such linear thinking. For what it’s worth, I think that the essay has bared our foreseeable future to a great extent.

It is unfashionable to paint with such broad, unrelenting brushstrokes today. People try to be nice, so that they would not upset other people. Attention is the new black. Fitness & orthorexia have become the new religion. Tourism to far corners of the world is a given. Underground ideas have ceased to remain underground. A notable exception to the prevalent world order is Greta Thunberg in Sweden, who prophecies about the end of the world, of whom the world is taking note. In the next, I tell why Greta’s pessimism is not ungrounded.

Class Escalators Are History: End of History 1.0
What has become harder to attain is upward class mobility. As the middle class is being eroded in the middle of demographics, people are faced with a choice: they have to rise to the upper class, based on their good fortune: genes, industy and/or talent. If this is not possible, one’s fate is to join in the ranks of the under- or working class. Excelling in art, gambling or a sport are shortcuts to fame and money, as always. Class mobility does not occur that much anymore. People are bound to become either masters or servants: the master class or the servant class.

Nationalism as a Force Is Gone: End of History 2.0
When the 20th century was still upon us, it was not uncommon that new nations were born out of the old ones. A slew of ex-colonies became independent. India “gave” us Pakistan and Bangladesh. Nations changed their names. Some nations preyed on the others, usually neighbouring ones. Borders were movable and negotiable. But, not anymore. What borders we have in the 21st century seem destined to be permanent.
The present war in Ukraine is a case in point. Even if Russia has wanted just a “just readjustment” of their borders with Ukraine, it has been met with tremendous international resistance. It is as if the world was saying, “do not mess with maps“. What’s more, nationalism is linked up with its ideological distant relatives chauvinism and Nazism, the latter of which has through (the tuition of) history become such a piñata that it is being hit at from both sides in the conflict. The Nazi Card is certainly being waved. In any event, nationalism is a consumed force. It might also mean, by way of extension, that Cataluña (in Spain) and Scotland (in the UK) will hardly see independence from their respective superordinate governments.

The Liberties We Enjoy Do Not Increase: End of History  3.0
What’s more, it seems that we already live amid the most amount of permissiveness we may in the first place. Drugs, p**n and s*x are not hard to come by — at large, if one knows where to look. Money can buy most corruptions that we have. Our mobility is not restricted, apart from space travel. If we had more liberties, they would encroach on the liberties of others, and would need to be settled in court or the parking lot. We have already reached “terminal velocity” when it comes to freedom and liberty. The only way is toward more restrictions, which was niftly demonstrated by the covid pandemic.

As the Leader of the Opp. countered: What about the evolving technology? Isn’t that a continuation of history? Don’t we have now what we had not in the 70’s? It’s true that tech is evolving, but it is very lopsided. It benefits only the “5 Ts”. Those 5 Ts are: telecommunications, tourism, trade, traffic and travel. Even the hyped (green) innovation, the Electric Car, can be seen to belong merely as an innovation in the larger scheme of traffic. In other words, technology only makes our communication, economics and logistics spin faster, without improvements beyond. Very few real technological advancements can be seen in unrelated fields.

The worst thing is that we do not know when our “credit” is “maxxed out”. Laws of nature govern our actions. There is no centralised administration, even if we like to pretend that the UN is such a body. Two things are on an upward curve, one short-term and the other long-term: inflation (price overgrowth) and natality (population overgrowth). When those two things are going up, and reach a boiling point, the world may be going down.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Tässä puheessa luetaan madonluvut maapallolle. Käytän pontimena esseetä, joka on sopivasti juuri täyttänyt 30 tai 33 vuotta laskemistavasta riippuen (kirja–essee). Sijoitun I tiimin 2. puhujaksi, koska kiistän tai torjun toiseksi viimeisessä kappaleessa jotain, mitä vastapuolen aloittaja sanoo melko varmasti.

THB it’s better to write down notes than to debate impromptu

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Week 23

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NB. This is a metadebate: a debate on the specifics of debating.

An illustration of the four ways of jotting down notes.

Date: 4th Jun 2022
Motion: THB it’s better to debate impromptu than write down notes
Role: Member (opp.)

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Sometimes you think you see an exceptional speaker who takes the podium and lets it rip up there, terrorising the audience with a verbal precision strike. Sometimes in movies, too, you see someone act like this and address a big group or at least a roomful of people. But, lest we forget, talking spontaneously comes to people who are leaders or experts in a given field – with years in the thing clocked in – whereas debaters are most often rookies on topics, with no clout. And in movies, the characters in a role deliver invariably speeches that are somehow gut-wrenching and soul-searching, for it’s their body and personal history that does the speaking rather than the mind.

A good speaker may appear to speak naturally, but the structure of the speech lies at the back of his or her head. And that takes memorising by heart. Memorising the speech structurally takes as long as coming up with things to say. So, prep time only avails itself to either thing: You can try to memorise something that you do not yet have – or you can try to develop that thing.

The good news is that notes do not have to be dull or written on dull surfaces, such as a Moleskine notebook or one’s laptop. Static platforms lead to static speeches. More dynamic platforms might lead to more dynamic speeches. I can present you with four alternative ways to write down a speech.

Bingo Card Method
My most recent innovation, from this spring, is the Bingo Card method. It boils down to creating a template, a 5×5 square grid, such as the one with which bingo is played. You are supposed to write down your arguments in the squares. As the space is tiny, you can only write the bare bones of your argument. But, keep on writing and try to fill in as many as you can. My best guess is that prep time does not let you cover all the space. At any rate, even if you filled just a dozen next to each other – beginning in the middle and straying from there – you’d have several “bingo rows” to follow. You can choose the combination of arguments, i.e. ‘party line’, that you like best. What is best about this method is that it permits some kind of matter-of-fact, real strategic thinking while being seated and awaiting one’s turn.

Cube Method
For the Cube method, you need a cardboard cube of some size. It could be the box of a Christmas-tree decorative ball or golf ball. Then, you attach post-it note stacks to each of its sides. When completed, you use the cube so that you write your arguments on the sides of it and revolve it as the speech progresses. If you leave protected time at 30 sec, you have one minute to use on the contents of each side. Finally, you remove each used slip of paper.

Gaussian Curve Method
A nice way to use a traditional sheet of paper is to draw the normal distribution on it. If you know that you are a have-lots-to-say speaker, you should leave it looking like a hill. Likewise, if you are a leader or whip on either side. You won’t be interrupted that much, and that’s why you need a lot of space for many arguments of your own. Conversely, if you know that you are a have-little-to-say speaker or are in the middlemost roles, you should leave the curve looking like a valley. You should fill up the left- and right-hand-side slopey areas with your arguments and leave the middle empty for the POIs of the rival side of the debate. This means you spend a lot of time listening to their questions and answering them; that’s why the middle space is hollow, for notes.

Post-It-Method
A close relative to the Cube method is the Post-It method. It means that you take a normal sheet and cover it with 6 post-it slips of different colours. You write your arguments down and put them in a certain order. If you leave protected time at 30 sec, you have one minute to use on the contents of each side. While the debate continues, if you see it fit, you can replace the arguments with one another and so change their order.

These methods should allow you to debate and excel in a ludic but not ludicrous way.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Koska minulla on eksplisiittiset metodit merkintöjen tekemiseen, on paras, että olen viimeinen alkuperäistä ainesta tuottava puhuja. Muuten on vaarana, että “tunnelma lässähtää”. Edeltäville aiheiksi käyvät vaikkapa se, että muistiinpanot ovat harvoja tilanteita, joissa voi vielä käyttää käsinkirjoitustaitoja, ja että ne edesauttavat suuresti puheiden post-dokumentoimista, jos puheista pitää vaikkapa blogia.