I asked how a libertarian/Hayekian system would work in practice this week. I directed it at a specific system that I like in theory but am quite skeptical of its applicability in practice. However, you can zoom out and ask this question of any system, be it left or right leaning, that proposes to organize people and production:

How does this system raise all boats, rather than raising only the yachts or survival rafts?

I think this nicely encapsulates the concerns of emergent design, unintended consequences, game theory, incentives, and social justice in talking about the intersection between policy and society. Don’t tell me about how great your favorite system’s rules and principles are; tell me why it works with real people who range from sinners to saints and from paupers to princes.

Transcendental features

If you’ve ever worked on a business predicated on eyeballs or argued against going down that path, you’ll want to put this one in your quiver:

Ads are an ugly business. You barter away functionality, aesthetics, privacy, and performance for a marginal money maker predicated on using manipulation to get people to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t want.

That’s just the first two sentences in a dense and rewarding thought by Kellan Elliott-McCrea on business transcending itself. He’s not just taking pot shots at advertising either: the thought ends in calling out Apple for killing its own technologies in the name of perfection and progress. You should read this thing, it will take only a few minutes.

What do designers do?

I’ve dabbled in trying to wrap my head around designing things for people. The global definition of design I’ve settled on, one that includes designing visual things, experiences, reading, and understanding programs, is that design is deciding what to leave out. I might like this definition by Jason Fried even more:

Design is about solving problems, making things clearer, and making things work better.

Choose my definition or his, but realize this: at some scope, we’re all designers. Decide on the primary purpose of whatever it is that’s in front of you, solve the problem for the audience of that thing, and then take things out until it’s clearer and better.

The ebb and flow of classical music

Classical music is often seen as a discipline and industry in decline. The Economist points out that, taken on a scale of more than the past few decades, this isn’t strictly the case:

Interest in Bach has waxed and waned since his death in 1750, and 60 years ago it was in a waning phase; the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein said you “had to go to certain churches or special little concerts” if you wanted to hear his music. Mr Elie shows how the development of ever better recording techniques since then has allowed Bach to pop up everywhere, despite a supposed decline in the popularity of classical music: as a soundtrack to Walt Disney’s animated film, “Fantasia”; as part of the backing in some of the Beatles’ songs; even as a jingle in would-be classy television advertisements.

So technology has raised all boats, per se, to the point where anyone can know what Beethoven’s symphonies sounds like, whereas not too long ago you had to actually drag yourself in front of a real symphony to find out. On the other hand, if your measurement starts in the sixties, when recordings became prevalent and there was a gold rush, per se, to put every piece on wax and kings of classical were made, then things aren’t so great right now.

The connection I want to make is this: classical music is one of many industries that demonstrates the US economy over the past half-century, in a nutshell. The 1950s and 1960s were exceptional years, no economy past or possibly future saw such across-the-board gains. Everyone wants to put classical music or the economy back to where it was in 1950.

Every policy maker and opinion writer has a story about how to do that. The truth may be that the fruit wasn’t just low hanging, not just sitting on the ground where you have to reach down to pick it up, but the fruit was sitting on trucks with a note attached about how to turn a profit. No amount of policy tinkering can recreate those conditions. No number of society balls or enigmatic soloists can dial classical music back to the heyday of the sixties.

This week turned out a little more gloomy than normal, eh? I was in a bit of a brooding mood when I wrote it. Next week will be more happy!

Your pal, ~akk