Fight the rentier economy with a rentier economy?
Praise and critique for Chris Hedges
I saw Chris Hedges on Al Jazeera the other day, and he’s a smart cookie. I enjoyed the broadcast, because he didn’t depress me with wild polemic. No, instead, he depressed me with incisive analysis. It’s always good to know that you’re feeling depressed for a very good reason, not just because someone wants it that way.
Hedges speaks at one point, in this fairly all-embracing summary of the dystopia that the United States (and, hence, we) are in right now, about the rentier economy (French pronunciation). That’s the economy whereby money is earned, not through work, but by letting out physical assets and services. It includes residential property, industrial or commercial property, rental cars, online music, ownership of a marketplace like a vegetable market or Amazon, stocks and bonds; and it got me to thinking: does it include Substack?
Well, I won’t bandy accepted wisdoms and fine definitions, but it does and it doesn’t. If you subscribe to Spotify or Apple Music or any one of a host of online entertainment suppliers, it’s true that each stream costs you nothing as long as you have an account, for which you pay a monthly charge. The website itself does not, per se, make content (some do, like Netflix), but hosts the content of others, like The Beatles. There will be a copyright arrangement between whoever now owns the royalty rights to The Beatles (since the death of Michael Jackson) and the portal where it can be heard. All that is of no concern to you, nor even really, once the arrangement is in place, to Spotify or The Beatles. Spotify has certain expenses, like that copyright, running its servers, employing programmers and content moderators and all that. But essentially the service it offers is provided by the likes of The Beatles. And they have nothing much to do, because their stuff was recorded 50 years ago, two of them have passed on and the others are happily wealthy. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are rentiers, as is Spotify; and they are rentiers because of the subscribers to the web portal.
You could say the same about Substack, except you can’t. Because Substack is different. People like to listen to Let It Be not once, but thousands of times. But very few people will return to re-read a Substack article. (Few enough stop to read them the first time.) So Substack contributors have to keep pumping the stuff out. It’s like being a newspaper, and newspapers cost money. Well, a lot of them do and, when I get a link that leads me to the Daily Telegraph or the New York Times, and it says, “No, no no, first register,” or “pay up” or “you get one article free and that’s it,” I click off, because, even if I had the money, which I don’t really, I ask myself “Do I really want to go through this rigmarole just to read something that Chris Hedges has already read and written about in an article of his?” And the answer’s generally no.
Now, the only reason I say that is because I like Chris Hedges and I trust Chris Hedges. If he reads something and tells me This is what it says, then I take it on trust that that is what it says. But I didn’t always. When I first came across Chris Hedges, I didn’t know him from Adam. I found that he ranted, and raved, and made outrageous accusations and claims. Only gradually did I come to realise that none of this was ranting and raving. He knew the facts that underlay his claims. The problem starts to be that, where a claim is based on what the New York Times has said, I don’t know really whether I can trust the New York Times. He does, but I don’t. In fact, he doesn’t trust them at all on some things. But he cites them as a source, and so, to cut to the chase, if the New York Times publishes something that Chris Hedges doesn’t think is claptrap, then I’ll take that on trust.
But, then again, how does the New York Times know that what they’re publishing is right? Sometimes, they publish things they know are wrong, or that get proved wrong, but they will not retract.
The quest for reliable information does not ever cease. Chris Hedges has sources that go far beyond what I have available to me, and I must rely for the most part on hearsay and, in law, Chris Hedges is no less hearsay than the New York Times is.
If you wanted to know what my view on any given topic is, there are two ways to find out. One would be to ask me. And the other would be to read the 520 or so articles I’ve written in the past three years. Now, all but a few of them are free to air, read away, and if you’ve questions you can still ask me.
The number of paid subscribers on this blog, however, is small. And, if you’re one of them, I want, again, to reiterate my thanks to you. You are immensely kind and I greatly appreciate your act of friendship. You could cancel, and you would not really have any less access to The Endless Chain, because I don’t want to lock myself up and put some performing monkey at the gateway to demand a fee so that I will turn my hurdy-gurdy for your entertainment.
When Robert Walker painted the English parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell, he at one point asked the sitter “Would you like me to gloss over your warts, sir?” “No,” came Cromwell’s reply. “Paint me warts and all.” The phrase warts and all has entered the English language as an expression of frank honesty, akin to La Cage aux Folles’ musical number I Am What I Am. In the times when paint was the only medium by which the great and the good could present their visages to all and sundry (no doubt, including themselves), the success of the commission would undoubtedly rely on the retouching of blemishes and rashes so that the sitter basked in the best of cosmetic lights.
What, I wonder is it about a mugshot of a criminal that makes the criminal look like a criminal? Heavens, Mr Trump’s official portrait now looks like a mugshot. Like his mugshot, even. I wonder how long he practised that mean stare before allowing the photographer to press the shutter release.
When Lord Lichfield was the official photographer to the British royal family, he was very much in the same ranks as Robert Walker: he took pictures to please the sitter. Now, things are changing. It’s the sitter who holds the photographer in his hand, and the question is whether the artist is reproducing the inner truth of the sitter, or whether he’s simply photographing an act. And, indeed, whether the two are not one and the same thing. Whichever it is, the sitter is not the passive partner here, rather he is the active participant, controlling the artist.
To decide which photograph of Donald Trump best shows his inner self, you would have to, according to one person I used to know, take lots of pictures of him, and one of them would be the best. And that’s a little what you have to do to understand Trump’s government and his policies and the direction in which he wants to take America: you need more than one source of reporting, because, sure as sugar, you won’t get it all from The Guardian.
What virtually everyone I read on the current state of the US is saying is act! do something! don’t just sit there! And my problem, and the point of this essay, is that a lot of people are saying that, at least in part, from behind paywalls. Including Chris Hedges.
Now, as I say, I like Chris Hedges. But, without wanting to put words in his or anyone else’s mouth, there is a sense online, besides the ardent Trump supporters, of having to organise into some resistance, in order to kick back at … well, in the end, to kick back at the rentier economy that has helped put those who regard the present situation as a mess, in that mess. There is a rentier economy that is asking us to resist a rentier economy. So, if you want us all to listen to you, those who adamantly need their paywalls to even be able to afford to lead Liberty over the Barricades, here’s the deal:
Drop the paywall. Drop all the pay stuff now, and tell us what we need to know. You cannot hand out muskets at a barricade to fend off the artillery and ask everyone to give you 20 bucks for the bullets. And, although the analogy is a stretched one and you can argue that the rentier economy of commercial property is a far cry from the rentier economy of Substack, the net effect is the same to the paying public: to occupy an apartment, they need to pay the rent; and to see what the leaders of the resistance are advocating, they also need to pay an entry fee. If things are as bad as you say they are—and I think they are—let us access your wisdom for free. Just until we’re out of the woods. Please. Otherwise, we’re all up the Suwannee in any case, aren’t we? And, if we’re not, then what is it you’re actually selling from behind that paywall?
For example, I subscribe (free) to the blog of Joyce Vance, in which she has recently talked about people voting: the right to vote. Her blog is entitled Civil Discourse. Discourse is communication of thought by words; talk; conversation. But, chez Joyce, this discourse is one-way, unless you pay. I wanted to chime in with my own experience, but I can’t, unless I pay her. She is greatly worried about the future of universal suffrage in the United States of America but, to offer a solution, and it is a solution, I need to pay her.
What is my solution? Well, where I live, in Belgium, and where Australians live, and where Egyptians live, there is no right to vote. It is an obligation to vote. Now, that may surprise you, and many Australians have expressed dissatisfaction over the years with their governments, so a compulsory voting rule will not guarantee you a trouble-free administration, especially not in Egypt (where it is not always clear what happens to votes once they have been compulsorily cast: in a recent election, the office that issues fines for not turning up at polling stations collapsed in a heap when about three million people withheld their votes in protest). But a compulsory vote solves one issue: preventing people by trickery from casting their votes. The voting stations are overseen here in Belgium by a government official, but manned by coopted citizens. Voting is a community act.
Moreover, there is no rationale for withholding the rights of suffrage from incarcerated persons or from children. There would have been an argument in the past: how to get the detainees and their paper votes from prison to counting hall—one or the other would have had to be transported. Now you can do the whole thing electronically. The avowed aim of incarceration is to wean criminals off criminality and reintegrate them into civic life. They do that by giving them employment, with libraries, with education, with sport. So why not with political awareness? If Republicans fear that the demographics of prison populations are such that prisoner votes would favour the Democrats, they should listen to how much support there is in penitentiaries for Donald Trump! And, once the rule of law gets re-established in the United States of America (prospectively, in four years’ time), there may yet be a few more Republicans behind bars, whose votes will be greatly valued, thank you.
As for children, I have cited this article many times, and I will cite it again: reduce the age of suffrage to six. Six years. Because, by the time kids are eighteen, the pensioners have already messed up their futures. And if demented pensioners with ten years to live can vote, so can primary-learning children, with their whole lives ahead of them.
I myself have little wisdom to offer, but what I have, is yours, all of you, for free. And, again, I thank those who have a paid subscription for your special attention (French pronunciation). It’s more than money, you know. It’s a pat on the back. And we all need one of those from time to time. This is mine to you.
Who’s Elliot Clay? Elliot Clay? He is what he is.