It's probably a safe bet that very few DK'ers read this blog with any regularity. If, however, you glanced at it today separately from this series, you will have noticed this particular blog post, about an interactive public art piece in the form of a scoreboard, called Capitalism Works for Me!, by artist Steve Lambert, as part of the Crossing the Line festival in NYC currently going on. Besides the obvious economic philosophical questions involved, I thought to make this the subject of this evening's SNLC, since I'd actually seen this public artwork in another location some time back. More below the flip......
From Lambert's own page on this artwork, he starts:
"Starting a conversation about Capitalism is like walking up to a stranger and asking, 'Can I talk to you about Jesus?'
The word 'capitalism' is a red flag. And for good reason—pretty soon either some dude is talking your ear off about 'The System' or aggressively confronting you about taxes. Ugh....
I’m excited that this piece takes on what for most Americans is a taboo, or even nonexistent subject: whether global, hegemonic capitalism actually works for most people. But whew, talking about that is boring! And telling people what to think is worse!"
In the NYT blog post, Lambert elaborates a bit more:
'“I wanted to get people thinking about something better than the system we have,” said Mr. Lambert, who wears his own sympathies as openly as the brown fedora, orange sneakers and neo-Amish beard he sported on Friday. “But if you bring it up in a one-on-one conversation, people usually just run.”'
The official page from the Crossing the Line festival on Lambert's work is
here, and mentions that in addition to the scoreboard where people can vote "True" or "False":
"During the hours of operation, Lambert and his team will engage participants in a few simple questions prior to voting, and responses will be captured on video and shared online at visitsteve.com"
Note also:
"First come, first served. Participants should arrive at least one hour prior to closing to ensure enough time to vote."
Hmm, capitalism in action, don't you think? From the NYT blog post, Jennifer Schuessler notes a general 'voting pattern', probably easily predictable:
"Some rough and unsurprising patterns quickly emerged: younger voters, European tourists and people in working-class jobs tended to vote false; older people, visitors from red states, and the more prosperous tended to vote true."
There's actually a bit of nuance in some of the comments, per Schuessler's post. Examples from one "False" and one "True" voter, for example:
"....a line soon formed, and just after noon a cheer went up for the first vote: a “false” from Michael Smith, 18, "a vacationing high school student from Palatine, Ill., who had wandered by while killing time before his hotel check-in.
“Capitalism may work for me personally, but it isn’t working well for the country as a whole”
"But at least one 'true' voter, James Wallace, 43, from Manhattan, spotted a hidden note of realism in Mr. Lambert’s idealistic project.
“'The sign doesn’t say "Capitalism is perfect," he said.'"
Even on this very site, Daily Kos, capitalism actually is in operation, in the sense that anyone who is registered can post a diary, and can watch to see who reads the diary, or recommends it, or comments on it. In crude economic terms, the diaries are "product", and readers of DK are the "market". Diaries can then float to the recommended list, or sink in the general morass, depending on the actions of independent readers who read diaries, judge their merits or demerits, and act accordingly.
Speaking just for myself, if I'm honest about it in my own particular circumstances, I would have to vote "True". The business I work for gets to try to sell its goods in the marketplace, in fair competition with other vendors of similar items, and we have to sink or swim based on our own energies, smarts and talents (admittedly within the financial constraints and quick of the particular firm that I'm with, but that's another story). Even in something more trivial like selling stuff on-line, I have to compete against other "vendors" who are selling the same items, where I have to watch pricing and how the particular market for those items comes and goes. Yet I can acknowledge that aspects of our current capitalist system, where those who have more can get government to bias economic policies more and more in their own favor at the expense of small fry, are wrong and need correction.
Perhaps another way of putting it is a paraphrase of the quote that has been attributed to Winston Churchill, but reworked here:
"Capitalism is the worst economic system except for all those others that have been tried."
One part of me thinks that the reason that capitalism has spread so far and wide is that it's most in tune with how people really are and behave, as opposed to how one thinks they
should be and
should behave. Plus, in your own work situation, ask yourself honestly: do you really think that all your co-workers are just as good as you?
Oh, and I never did mention where I saw this installation before, as it should be clear that I'm not in NYC currently. I saw the "Capitalism Works for Me!" installation last summer in Santa Fe, NM, at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Rather an out of the way location, not really guaranteed to draw crowds, and I have no idea at all how well it did, in terms of public attention. Granted, I saw it, but that doesn't really count for much.
BTW, yes, this is another autobot posting, as it's opening weekend @ the symphony. So I'll be back a bit later, once all that's done. With that, time for the standard SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories for the week.....