[LINK] Criminal Minds [WAS: Meet the music industry’s new misinformation puppet and learn how to benefit from her tricks]

[David Boxall]

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 at 10:35:26 +0100 Leah Manta wrote:
<http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2009-September/085057.html>
> ...
> The attack was very subtle and, even I have to admit, very well 
> played by the spin masters and agents of deceit at EMI as they moved 
> their new misinformation puppet to the front line of their private 
> war on anything that poses a threat to their dinosaur business model.
>
> As you pick your way through this story I hope it becomes apparent 
> just how duplicitous and calculating the music industry can be. And 
> how they, and their puppet like employees, will stop at nothing to 
> frustrate the efforts of genuine independent musicians and genuine 
> music lovers.
> ...
The piece goes on to detail a history of carefully contrived trickery,
inconsistent with what I would expect of decent members of society.

Which brings me to a thought that has been brewing in my mind since
before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC): that business attracts
criminal minds. The confidence trickery described in the subject article
is one example of that psychology. Microsoft's FUD tactics
<http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2009-September/085052.html>,
unnecessary use of proprietary technologies by firms like Sony and Apple
and other abuses of "Intellectual Property" privileges are similar in my
mind. The behaviour that led to the GFC (while the culpable were paid
bonuses, some exceeding what an average worker could expect to earn in a
lifetime) provides further examples. The fact that we accept such
shenanigans as normal business practice supports my premise.

I marvel that Market Capitalism can redirect the energies of
personalities that might otherwise be mobsters to potentially less
harmful ends. While Capitalism harnesses them, they are by nature still
what they are. Without a firm hand on the reins, they inevitably do
harm. Unfortunately, with conservatives like John Howard and George
Bush, instead of firm hands, we got limp wrists. The pattern is now so
well established that their less conservative successors have not
learned the lesson or, if they have learned, fear to heed it.

Those of that bent will probably assert that I'm accusing everyone in
business of criminal intent. I'm not, but I believe the record shows
that much of what's done in the course of business, though not illegal,
probably should be. To my mind, it's worth putting a few behind bars to
keep the (undeniably valuable) rest from doing harm.

"/Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for
the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
/Attributed to John Maynard Keynes - probably paraphrasing
Adam Smith.**

-- 
David Boxall                    |  All that is required
                                 |  for evil to prevail is
http://david.boxall.name        |  for good men to do nothing.
                                 |     -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)