[rayiner]

I'm not going to say I think our existing system is without flaws, but here's some food for thought: pop media is a wholesome product. It doesn't destroy the environment like Apple's or Samsung's phones. It doesn't con people into giving up personal information like Facebook. It doesn't take advantage of desperate third world labor like everything Wal-Mart sells. It doesn't use up scarce resources like gasoline production, contribute substantially to our carbon footprint like shipping, pollute precious water resources like manufacturing, clog up our rivers like farming. It doesn't destroy our precarious fish stocks like the seafood restaurant I went to last night. Music and movies are actually priced so most people can afford them, unlike say life-saving drugs or medical care.

So even if we're reevaluating the basics of our economy, it seems to me like music and movies are among the last things that deserve our philosophical ire.

[icebraining]

> It doesn't destroy the environment like Apple's or Samsung's phones.

"Looking at the 44 concerts, U2 will create enough carbon to fly all 90,000 people attending one of their Wembley dates (in London) to Dublin," Helen Roberts, an environmental consultant for carbonfootprint.com, told the Belfast Telegraph. Put another way, U2's CO2 emissions are reportedly the equivalent to the average annual waste produced by 6,500 British people, or the same as leaving a lightbulb running for 159,000 years. [1]

> It doesn't con people into giving up personal information like Facebook.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/arts/music/jay-z-is-watchi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...

> It doesn't take advantage of desperate third world labor like everything Wal-Mart sells.

Wal-Mart sells pop media.

[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jul/10/u2-world-tour-c...

[tedunangst]

Ironically, "musicians should tour nonstop" is the most popular answer for how they should sustain themselves while giving away free music.

[rayiner]

You're comparing apples and oranges. The carbon footprints of iPhones alone sold in a single quarter is in the millions of tons. You point to a couple of privacy breaches versus Facebook whose entire business model is based on breaching privacy.

[icebraining]

The carbon footprints of iPhones alone sold in a single quarter is in the millions of tons.

Yes, and humans exhale almost a billion of tons in the same period. I don't think just measuring the total is very helpful; you'd need to analyze carefully the value of each things, and what they replaced. How many carbons were saved when teenagers start defining themselves based more on their smartphones that on their cars?

You point to a couple of privacy breaches versus Facebook whose entire business model is based on breaching privacy.

Sure, but being less bad than Facebook is not an achievement.

[clicks]

> pop media is a wholesome product

That could not be further from the truth though, pop media is trash. Would you want your children exposed to the misogynistic, sexist, racist content being pushed by record companies these days?

We have been talking about environmental sustainability for a long time... pollution is bad, rare material scarcity is bad - it is time we started caring just as much about social sustainability. Pop media 40 years ago had stars that partook in peace activism, the founder of the most famous band wrote peace anthems like 'Imagine' and 'Give Peace a Chance', the most popular stars today are all involved in pointless stupid drama- Rihanna (beaten viciously by a guy, still wants to protect him), Thickle (http://vimeo.com/64611906), Cyrus - the girl my little sister was a big fan of when she was younger is making videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8.

A lot of pop media content is anti-intellectual, a lot of it objectifies women, a lot of it perpetuates racism. It is markedly worse than it once used to be. And there is less of an expectation of a news program or a record company to place the interests of its consumers before its own than there used to be. This is a problem, because it is very much polluting the minds of our young (and old).