Media companies would do better to adopt new
technologies rather than fight them. They must come forth
with new business models and new venues of
dissemination of content. They have to show more
generosity in the management of digital rights. They have
to adopt differential pricing of their products across the
board, to reflect disparities in earnings and purchasing
power in the global marketplace. They have to transform
themselves rather than try to coerce the world into their
antiquated and Procrustean ways of doing things.
Q. Psychologically speaking, is there a certain kind of
person who is more likely to take part in this behavior?
Do you feel that this is a generational issue?
A. I cannot but speculate. There is a dearth of data at this
early stage. I would imagine that illegal downloaders are
hoarders. They are into owning things rather than into
using or consuming them. They are into building libraries
and collections. They are young and intelligent, but not
affluent. They are irreverent, rebellious, and non-
conformist. They may be loners who network socially
only online. Some of them love culture and its artifacts
but they need not be particularly computer-savvy.
XXXVII. The Fabric of Economic Trust
Economics acquired its dismal reputation by pretending to
be an exact science rather than a branch of mass
psychology. In truth it is a narrative struggling to describe
the aggregate behavior of humans. It seeks to cloak its
uncertainties and shifting fashions with mathematical
formulae and elaborate econometric computerized
models.
So much is certain, though - that people operate within
markets, free or regulated, patchy or organized. They
attach numerical (and emotional) values to their inputs
(work, capital) and to their possessions (assets, natural
endowments). They communicate these values to each
other by sending out signals known as prices.
Yet, this entire edifice - the market and its price
mechanism - critically depends on trust. If people do not
trust each other, or the economic "envelope" within which
they interact - economic activity gradually grinds to a halt.
There is a strong correlation between the general level of
trust and the extent and intensity of economic activity.
Francis Fukuyama, the political scientist, distinguishes
between high-trust and prosperous societies and low-trust
and, therefore, impoverished collectives. Trust underlies
economic success, he argued in a 1995 tome.
Trust is not a monolithic quantity. There are a few
categories of economic trust. Some forms of trust are akin
to a public good and are closely related to governmental
action or inaction, the reputation of the state and its
institutions, and its pronounced agenda. Other types of
trust are the outcomes of kinship, ethnic origin, personal
standing and goodwill, corporate brands and other data
generated by individuals, households, and firms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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