The new Blair administration in Britain made a big song and dance about the 'creative industries' as a model for the future. This year all the results came in. British Phonograph industry, profits down; Museum attendance down one million; British broadcasting, was 25 million pounds in the black, now 250 million in the red; British films share of the box office receipts down. The creative industry schtick is a sign of economic decadence. Despite being at the centre of the Dept of Trade and Industry's policy, they represent in fact just four per cent of the UK economy. But for the self-image of capitalists it is more important to be 'creative' than it is to be 'productive'.
The real material basis of these trends though, is that in 1984 food represented fifteen per cent of household expenditure and cultural goods ten per cent. Today those figures are reversed.
In message <v04220807b4ce8e08c290@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Michael Perelman wrote:
>
>>Intellectual property is everywhere. Disney clothes, Nike shoes,
>>pharmaceuticals
>
>Well yes. How *big* is this everywhere? Do you have any measures of
>magnitude, or is it purely gee-whiz subjective?
I would read all of this intellectual property emphasis as an attempt to resolve problems of production at the level of the market. After all you can't get people to buy more shoes than they need (except by lowering the price, and hence changing their needs) but you can get them to buy your brand instead of someone else's. British household expenditure on clothes is remarkably stable for more than fifteen years (which explains a lot!). The elevated importance of marketing over productivity is a contemporary, and fleeting expression of a failure to do anything dramatic in production. -- Jim heartfield