[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by giddion

The publisher works as a form of insurance to him, they have lawyers and financial reserves by which to protect the authors IP rights - J.K. Rowlings will also speak strongly of this function as random house lawyers have worked hard on her behalf protecting her money when pre-releases were leaked to the web or fan translation were released prior to the official translation.

C'mon.. can't you think of any example of an author needing protection than a billionaire? I mean, really..

Originally Posted by giddion

Publishers handle publicity, you can speak all you want about ratings and reader recommendations etc but there is a HUGE and I do mean HUGE volume of readers that essentially don't think for themselves, I know readers and not thinking sounds like an oxymoron but it's true. Many people don't buy an author until a certain person (can we say Oprah) or reviewer tells them to. It's the publisher that gets the book into the hands of those important people and its all $$ based. It's also the publisher that gets those exciting little review snippets on the jackets and and again I've seen people making book choices simply because of how those mini reviews sound.

Yah.. but isn't it odd how they seem to be putting most of the promotional work into authors who basically sell themselves already? I mean, if I were to tell y'all here that Rowling was writing a $secret_new book, the rest of the world would know in minutes, and the book would be sold out before they opened the pre-order queue. There definitely seems to be something fishily pointless about these publishers.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

I suppose I should explain something with regard to my last post... The examples I gave of "least favorite politicians" are certainly somewhat contrived and are deliberately over-the-top. What I was trying to get at was this: When considering a government program and trying to decide whether I think it's a good idea, I often find it useful to imagine what it would be like if it was being administered by the politicians and bureaucrats of my nightmares. If it still looks like a good idea then, it's probably worth implementing as a government program. If not, it fails the test.

While thought experiments are certainly acceptable, isn't this one a bit too procrustean? It seems a tool that can be wielded by anyone to invalidate just about any government action whatever, just so long as you consider something "likely" (which will vary with the political views held by the wielder, which in turn means that it's ultimately pointless, as you're only using it to confirm your own intuitions with it).

Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm

That is just about the scariest thing you've written. The "correct type of diversity" suggests that some person or organisation controls this. As you have been suggesting that the Govts lead on this, I'm assuming you want the Govts to control the diversity. I'm almost at a loss for words to describe just how scary I find that. Govts have enough powers as it is without making it even easier for them to censor material they find objectionable. Or do you really think that isn't what would happen? If so, you really need to open your eyes to what the various Govts around the world can already get up to.

I find this somewhat amusing. Just how much diversity do you think is "accepted" even by today's major publishing houses? While i'm impressed by the fact that both Neal Stephenson and the guy who wrote the DaVinci Code are printed, I find the emphasis you all put on "scary government" a bit silly.
It is easily possible to set up a system where you have input from non-govt in govt-sponsored organs (see the Fed for a popular example), but that aside, isn't the whole bloody point of the "Web 2.0" religion that there are far fewer content controls, and that all you'd have to do is prove you're being read in order to be eligible for funding?
The question of the role played in all this by the Government seems more or less beside the point, other than as a tax collector. All they'd have to do is collect the cash, and send it to an NGO that redistributes it.

Far more "content control" happens due to self-censorship, in the "we're protecting you from all the fluff written" variety, or the variety exemplified by the behavior displayed by the US news media, if you compare the stuff they printed before and after Katrina happened, when it became acceptable again to criticize a president, and the media weren't scared they would stop being read and so go out of business if they wrote anything bad about the Savior, G.W. [this is very closely related to the "voting with purses" variety of content control] or just as voting-with-purses (resulting in that da vinci code writer guy making money) than through Shady Government putting out contracts on heterodox writers. If people still call their governments 'democratic' even while suspecting or knowing they're doing that sort of thing I think the word has sort of become meaningless anyway, and the same goes for when you really consider it "conceivable" that they would.
Still, all that goes on "legitimately", "now", and, most importantly, opaquely, through things like "market forces" (you know, that famous invisible hand that makes everything right in the world), so there really is nothing to worry about.

Originally Posted by Patricia

I can't help agreeing with Am on this. John Stuart Mill wrote of the dangers of the tyranny of the majority. Governments and majorites habitually try to control minorities. There's no way that we ought to frant them extra powers to do just that.

I suppose there isn't, no.. but accepting the status quo as the "best alternative" to "government controlling everything" seems a bit defeatist to me as well.
There are many faults with the current models, and many improvements that can be made, and I suspect there are decent enough ways to set them up without stifling "Creativity," that vaunted and elusive drive/charactertrait.