What RBG Taught Me

I am sure that of the 200,000 Americans who have died thanks to COVID-19 we have lost many national treasures, but we have lost two more to things not COVID related.  This year we have lost John Lewis, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  I am sure I will post many things about the Supreme Court in coming days, but for now I want to reflect on what Justice Ginsburg taught me (though I never met her).  She paved the way for equality for women in many areas in the 50’s and 60’s.  Starting in the 70’s, I entered the fight for equality for the disabled.  My fight went to legislators and the Library of Congress.  I was able to do this thanks to RBG because she opened the door for people to think about equality and discrimination.  She fought for gender equality.  Martin Luther King and John Lewis fought for racial equality, and I along with others fought for disability equality a little later.

 

Back when I was a kid, gender equality was called Women’s Lib, and that term was often used in a not very nice away.  Back then, companies had these things called typing pools.  The men with the real jobs would need something written up.  It could be interoffice memoranda, company communications, or external communications.  The assignment would be given to one of the women in the typing pool and that’s how paper communications were done.  Women were not expected to get jobs other than that, and even that was a concession because the men all wanted real jobs, and not typing pool jobs.  The highest career attainment open to most women back then was that of secretary to a man boss.  That was it.  The end.  Ginsburg led the way to change all that.

 

The three fights I mentioned were met with opposition.  It was against the law for me to go to my nearest public school, for example.  Since I am legally blind, I was forced to go to the blind school.  The radical idea that many disabled children might be better in regular schools with regular children was met with stern opposition, though most of that was well meaning.  And of course, we all know about the opposition to racial and gender equality movements.

 

What I would like to say is change is difficult.  It is hard for all of us to first realize things have changed.  It is even harder for us to realize things must change.  And finally, it is very difficult for us to accept that change will occur whether we want it to or not.  Nothing worth fighting for comes easily.  Against the backdrop of change are those who fight to keep things as they were.  For them, change is bad.  This is often motivated by a fear of change because change transitions us into a period of the unknown.

 

America is browning.  Of that there is no doubt.  What will this mean for the future?  Who knows.  Those who fear change say it will mean an increase in crime.  These same change deniers fought hard against gender equality for women because such change would cause the breakdown of the family, cause social unrest, and delude women into thinking they could do more than they actually could, and on and on and on.  Yes, change brings consequences.  We have seen, for example, a rise in single parents and alterations of the fabric of the nuclear family brought about in part by the increase of women in the work force, a more tolerant attitude toward divorce, and the sexual revolution. 

 

In today’s world, technology is often the bringer of change.  What will happen to our privacy thanks to “Big Brother” technology.  How are mobile devices affecting our children?  Will we ever gather around the dinner table as a family again or will we be glued to our smart phones?  Who knows.  What I do know is there will  be consequences from change, some good, and some bad.

 

In America today we see the affects of changing attitudes.  People who call for police reform are met by opposition who call for more of the same type of policing.  People who call for transgender equality are met with religious opposition calling for a reversion to the status quo or even for the rolling back of some of the changes which have been made, thanks in part to Justice Ginsburg.  Those who say they no longer want the glorification of the Confederacy in the form of public monuments are met with those who say the fabric of our government is being torn apart.

 

Ginsburg taught me that change is inevitable, and when it is time for change, we must embrace it, fight for it, and accept it knowing that society will change.  We will not like all the consequences of change, but nothing is permanent.  When TV was invented, the public was treated to high quality documentaries, as well as porn.  But who among us would want to eliminate TV? 

 

America is browning.  Most Americans believe in gender equality extending to transgender equality.  Most Americans believe in pro choice over pro life.  Most Americans believe policing must change in some form or other.  Most Americans believe the world is much older than 6,000 years.  In a democratic society such as ours, all of these believes will bring about change.  Those who oppose change and wish to revert back to the way things were are fighting a losing battle.  Things will never revert to the way things were and if you look throughout human history, change has always been there and no one has ever fully reverted to the way things were.  The only variable has been the pace of change.

 

And finally, whenever you have a society like ours in which change is easy to make relative to other forms of government, some changes will be more wrong than right and this will bring about more change.  Back in the early 20^th century, the US decided to kill all the wolves in Yellowstone National Park thinking this would be better for everyone.  It turned out to be a disaster so eventually, wolves were brought back but now, our understanding of wolves is much better than it used to be so things are not exactly as they were before. 

 

During this election, many Americans fear change, but Ginsburg taught me that change will happen regardless of whether I am afraid of it or not.  She taught me to fight for the changes which are worth fighting for, then adjust to make the original changes better.  She started by fighting for equality for women.  She realized later that this should also apply to transgender people.  So she modified her change to make it better.

 

All the fear mongering today such as your suburbs will be destroyed, you won’t be safe unless Trump is elected and so on, does absolutely no good.  If Trump wins the election this year, a year will come when a Democrat wins.  Don’t get sucked into a politics of fighting against change because though you may have a temporary win here and there, you will always lose in the end.

 

 

Who Should Pay for News

At the behest of media companies, the Australian government wants Facebook and Google to pay for traffic to news sites.  It is common practice for people today to use social media or news filters to get their news without actually paying for it.  Media companies in Australia claim they are losing revenue as a result while the consumer is happy because they get to read news at no cost.  The proposed legislation is more complicated than simply getting some sort of payment because the government also wants to ensure news outlets are not discriminated against by Google or Facebook.

I believe the discussions on this subject are immature and fail to take into account what is actually happening in the news business.  The music industry has already gone through this process and the news media is lagging behind, but still going through the same process.  So let’s look at what happened to music and I think the parallels will be easy to see.

Once upon a time people bought records.  These records were either singles or albums.  The fact music played for free on the radio only enhanced sales, despite early fears to the contrary, and as a result, record companies found it crucial to have their songs played for free over the radio.  This encouraged people to actually buy the music.

Along came the digital revolution and the internet and everything was thrown into chaos.  People could rip CDs and simply send files of songs to one another.  Platforms such as Napster, which was eventually shut down by the courts, gave people a way to acquire new music for free.  This nearly caused the music industry to collapse.  Movies soon followed and piracy was well and truly something anyone could do.

Apple stepped in to save the music industry.  Apple did two things.  First, it invented the iPod which allowed people to listen to vast quantities of music digitally.  It did more than this, however, because it also gave people the ability to create and manage playlists.  This transformed the way we listened to music.  Instead of putting albums on to the record player or into the CD player, we could listen to a song from this album, and a song from that album.  The album started to decline because people wanted to listen to only a song or two from an album without buying the whole album.  I don’t know how many times in the past I would buy an album only to find I only liked one or two songs.  The second thing Apple did was create iTunes which was a music store which allowed people to buy one song or an album if they wanted.  It cost US$0.99 per song most of the time.  Yes people could get things for free, but since the songs were not that expensive, and since iTunes made it so easy for people to download and buy, people bought.

Apple’s contribution to the music industry saved the industry, but did not last too long.  Eventually, iTunes moved from a buying service to a subscription service.  For a monthly fee, people could listen to whatever they wanted when they wanted.  Pandora and Spodify probably led the way in this area and after the dust settled, iTunes and Spodify seem to have emerged as the winners.  A subscription service gives the consumer endless choices of music as well as the ability to explore newly released music, while providing musicians and record producers with an income, although I think the income is much smaller from song sales now.  This has led to touring emerging as the primary source of income for musicians instead of record sales.

Now let’s look at news.  Back before the internet and social media, people used to buy news albums.  News albums came in the form of newspapers or magazines.  With the advent of the internet, the way we consume written news changed.  Just as with music, people wanted individual songs (articles) instead of the whole album.  Why should I buy an entire newspaper with tons of articles only a small number of which interest me when I can simply go to the article I want?  Why limit myself to one album or magazine?  What if I want different perspectives on the same story.  Would anyone go out and buy The Age, The Australian, and The Herald-Sun to get different perspectives on only one or two stories?  A politician might just to get a read on how they are playing in the press, but the average consumer would never do this.  And why should they?

So people clicked on this article from that magazine and that article from this newspaper and so on.  This is where we are today except a lot of what we consume is free.  What the industry needs is an Apple to step in and restore some sort of order.  Given what we have learned from music, the first evolution of iTunes model won’t work for media.  People are not going to buy one article for 99 cents unless it is a specialty article, like one from Nature magazine for example.

Speaking personally, there are only a few publications I would be willing to subscribe to.  These are The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.  Aside from highly specialized journals, that’s it.  These three I mentioned are very strong brands in the US and can probably survive with the old subscription model, but even they are struggling. 

But if there was a giant media store like iTunes or Spodify for music, or Netflix for video, people might be willing to pay a monthly fee for that.  I probably would.  So instead of all the smaller players needing to have their own pay walls, this large media store could have one pay wall and links to articles and stories could lead to articles behind that one pay wall.  Facebook and Google would simply need to authenticate.  This would only work if the news store was inexpensive along the lines of a Spodify, Apple Music, or Netflix monthly subscription. 

What does all this mean?  It means media companies should grow up, stop acting like children, and understand how the market has shifted and adapt to it.  Forcing legislation through never really works well and the end result will mean that Australians become isolated on social media.  This is because both Facebook and Google have said they will simply block all news links to Australian subscribers.  So once again, Australians will lag behind because Australian business is too stupid and lazy to deal with free market forces.  I find it fascinating that people like Murdoch scream about the need for less regulation until he wants regulations to help him.  Then suddenly not only does he want more regulation, but he wants to cram it down everyone’s throat.

I think the government should step out of this, and let market forces solve the problem.  One of the features of a free market society is that things change, and when they do, those who adapt survive, and those who do not, die off.  The fact is, people do not want to buy newspapers.  They don’t want to subscribe to them unless they are exceptional, such as the New York Times in the USA.  That is reality.  Trying to legislate a different reality is not only ineffective and silly, but it is doomed to failure.