Friday, January 28, 2011

Royalties

Everyone loves VanGogh. Everyone knows that VanGogh painted a lot of paintings, but that none sold: and also that now a VanGogh auctions for $60M. The museums are full of VanGoghs: pk has long asked by what right they show them.

Now pk additionally asks: how many ideas spread at universities have paid the proper royalties? How well was Kepler paid? or Copernicus? By what argument does a kleptocracy's institutions have a right to unpaid-for ideas?

Do Christian churches have a right to talk about the Jews' God? Any other God? Which royalties were due? Which got paid?

Ivan Illich talked about cybernetic record keeping unregulated by the state to correct state power. He talked about social networking as potentially fostering conviviality. He got defrocked from the Church, then his best-selling books disappeared from our free marketplace and from the libraries of our free institutions. I seconded his ideas, offered to do them, asked the public to volunteer the infrastructure. The kleptocracy today uses cybernetics galore, touts social networking: where is its proof that Illich and I got our royalties?

How dare any human talk about being nice after what happened to Jesus?

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