"Freedom" thread or something

I think you're placing too much emphasis on the recession.  Despite it, we and many other rich world countries are still running fairly large current account deficits (Germany being a notable exception).

I would think that a healthy economy where people can prosper (not just the wealthy) requires that even those in the labor force are able to also be "consumers", especially in a consumer-driven economy. But if we make everybody miserable, in the end the only consumers left will be those that are currently rich people. 

 

The rich and powerful have always controlled things. In the past we called them the Aristocracy and now they are called the Top 1%. Nothing has changed and won't untuil humans grow up and out of the need to have more toys than the next person and develop a conscience.

Me and my awful analyses  

But the arrival of A R Rahman on the scene in the 90s turned the prevailing order upside down.  He operated out of a small self made studio with the computer being his chief instrument.  The well produced sound he obtained changed the face of film music and opened up the field for a new breed of musicians.  However, in the process, musicians playing acoustic instruments were gradually orphaned as composers moved to synthesizers and dumped live instrument recordings.  By the noughties with lifestyles getting increasingly hectic, even the live scene was not enough to bail out the musicians and they began to leave the trade.  

Cut to the present and the audience has begun to get bored of being hammered by digital, 'processed' music and live recording has attained a cult of novelty.  Unfortunately, by now manufacturers of these instruments as well as the musicians have become far fewer in number.  And composers often go to Europe for orchestral recordings.  No problem there, the quality obtained from a symphonic orchestra is far above our local musicians but the need never existed before.  The fact is a lot of know how has been lost through the upheavals of the last 20 or so years.

Now why am I filling in all these details?  Because in India govt only pays lip service to the arts. I believe opera for instance is funded by the govt in Europe and that seems to have (naturally) attracted a lot of criticism in these recessionary times.  I understand the consequences of subsiding something that is unproductive but at the same time I would like to submit that humans themselves cannot adjust with the same pace as dynamic markets.  If listeners begin to crave a certain sound that has died out, you can't magically pluck it out of the free market.  A revival of such skills and craft can take a long time.  Neither Rahman nor listeners were really at fault in the above example. It is the govt that has to prioritise and decide whether something is indispensable in defining a nation's identity and therefore is worth preserving.  And they don't need to make a unilateral decision and force it on the people; use democratic means and hold a referendum.  Our music is defined to a large extent by our indigenous instruments.  Left to market forces, they will die out and give way to a westernised approach.  Whether or not that is a good thing can be debated all day long, but if once it is decided that this does define our identity, then a laissez faire approach is insufficient to defend it.   

This is an issue that Aldous Huxley raised in Brave New World, so I will not claim any credit for following this line of reasoning.  There are some intangible but valuable aspects of human life that may not fit into the market scheme of things. In that case, we have to question whether we should put the market imperative ahead of everything else or we have to make an effort to preserve certain aspects of our culture.  What I have said about one style of art throwing out the other can be extended to the arts themselves.  I don't think music labels make a lot of money anymore and some have surely been bleeding over the last few years.  It is conceivable that they too will shut down in the not so distant future. What then happens to music itself?  In the free market, music or cinema are not arts, they are just products in the entertainment industry.   There is no space for outrageous artistic endeavour without commercial sense in the free market.  And arts is just one example.  What about wildlife preservation?  There may be no ROI in that endeavour but is it not an unquestionably humane endeavour to seek to protect innocent animals from hunters?  Or should we just roll the dice and pray to God that the number of people whose free will permits them to preserve an endangered species will always outstrip the numbers of those whose free will permits them to mercilessly take their lives? Why is the second option more convincing?

Pl understand that as a practicing accountant who swears by 'tallying' the balance sheet, I do understand how the market works and why it is needed.  So I am not a leftie railing at profit motive and the creation of wealth by themselves. I just don't wholeheartedly endorse or embrace the free markets because I recognise that there are some walks of life that are not compatible with them. I recognise that taxes and deficits are a mess but so are the free markets.