I think this has got to be an off-shoot of the plainly incorrect conception of utility that a kind of vulgar, simplified neoclassical economics privileges. The assumption in that paradigm is that if consumers show a preference for one item over another when both items are the same kind of manufactured commodity, the preferred one must be the better one, that it is by definition the better one because consumers prefer it, and there's nothing further to be said about why it is better.
But of course most economists know they can't just stop there. The problem is that every avenue of investigation of consumer preference leads somewhere that mainstream economics in the era that defined its disciplinary remit (1970s-1990s or so, I think) is reluctant to go. If you look at pricing, you're inevitably going to have to slide towards political economy, towards looking at how regulations, laws, policies affect pricing, or how monopoly capitalism stifles competition with a myriad of corporate strategies, etc. If you look at consumers themselves, you're going to have to shift towards psychology or you're going to need something like game theory and ideas about asymmetrical information (which then lead back to political economy or policy studies). If you look at products, you're going to need to understand how things acquire meaning, how history and culture inflect into material life.
All of which economists or economics-adjacent specialists have done. All of which means that no, one song is not as good as another. The old game of "what ten books would I want on a desert island" or "which ten songs would I want if I could only have ten" is precisely about this point. It might be true that a person would take *any* ten books instead of no books if it came to that--that the utility of books to a reader is satisfied at a basic level by anything that can be read. Hostages and prisoners have frequently attested that having any book to read becomes a precious thing even if it is not a book they'd prefer to read. But at the same time, that feeling defines privation, is exactly what it means to not have one's happiness satisfied--the sense that you can't have the songs you want to have, the books you want to read, and have to settle for whatever is available. If you said to someone in that situation, "You can pay a premium to have a choice about the songs you can listen to, but it will be the entirety of your disposable wealth--you won't be able to buy other luxuries", then I think a fair number of people would choose that option. The culture we want plainly has more value than any-old-culture, which even in a vulgar economics is a fact that required attention. If Joaquim Book's Spotify only played polka tunes performed with traditional Yakut jaw harp and there were only 20 such recordings available, I think he'd discover that individual songs do not just have near-equivalent value, and he would find that he had an enormous unmet need.
Well said. On the political economy of pricing, the key to understanding music markets of today is that the very low current price to access recorded music is a result of a market failure: that with the combination of the internet and consumers having access to the digital files of recordings (did record company executives realize the magnitude of their decision to begin selling cd's?) musicians have no good way to protect their property rights in their recordings. The prices we see reflect that.
An analogy that came whilst walking this morning: suppose a society where, amongst other things, people like plums. There are people who have plum orchards, and they sell their produce in the market, and we can see an equilibrium price, say $1 per pound. Now suppose someone invents a drone that has the very special capability of being able to sneak into orchards, undetected, and pick plums to take back to their controller. And these drones come cheaply. The market price of plums will drop, because the farmers can only charge so much at the market before people just switch to using their drones. We wouldn't say plums no longer have much value; we would say the new price of plums does not accurately reflect their value.
Further, musical performances may lead to seismic activity, and may lead to recessions being prevented.
Geological impacts, re Ms. Swift, I will grant you. But I draw a red line at any hints of "economic impact" [sic] :)
I think this has got to be an off-shoot of the plainly incorrect conception of utility that a kind of vulgar, simplified neoclassical economics privileges. The assumption in that paradigm is that if consumers show a preference for one item over another when both items are the same kind of manufactured commodity, the preferred one must be the better one, that it is by definition the better one because consumers prefer it, and there's nothing further to be said about why it is better.
But of course most economists know they can't just stop there. The problem is that every avenue of investigation of consumer preference leads somewhere that mainstream economics in the era that defined its disciplinary remit (1970s-1990s or so, I think) is reluctant to go. If you look at pricing, you're inevitably going to have to slide towards political economy, towards looking at how regulations, laws, policies affect pricing, or how monopoly capitalism stifles competition with a myriad of corporate strategies, etc. If you look at consumers themselves, you're going to have to shift towards psychology or you're going to need something like game theory and ideas about asymmetrical information (which then lead back to political economy or policy studies). If you look at products, you're going to need to understand how things acquire meaning, how history and culture inflect into material life.
All of which economists or economics-adjacent specialists have done. All of which means that no, one song is not as good as another. The old game of "what ten books would I want on a desert island" or "which ten songs would I want if I could only have ten" is precisely about this point. It might be true that a person would take *any* ten books instead of no books if it came to that--that the utility of books to a reader is satisfied at a basic level by anything that can be read. Hostages and prisoners have frequently attested that having any book to read becomes a precious thing even if it is not a book they'd prefer to read. But at the same time, that feeling defines privation, is exactly what it means to not have one's happiness satisfied--the sense that you can't have the songs you want to have, the books you want to read, and have to settle for whatever is available. If you said to someone in that situation, "You can pay a premium to have a choice about the songs you can listen to, but it will be the entirety of your disposable wealth--you won't be able to buy other luxuries", then I think a fair number of people would choose that option. The culture we want plainly has more value than any-old-culture, which even in a vulgar economics is a fact that required attention. If Joaquim Book's Spotify only played polka tunes performed with traditional Yakut jaw harp and there were only 20 such recordings available, I think he'd discover that individual songs do not just have near-equivalent value, and he would find that he had an enormous unmet need.
Well said. On the political economy of pricing, the key to understanding music markets of today is that the very low current price to access recorded music is a result of a market failure: that with the combination of the internet and consumers having access to the digital files of recordings (did record company executives realize the magnitude of their decision to begin selling cd's?) musicians have no good way to protect their property rights in their recordings. The prices we see reflect that.
An analogy that came whilst walking this morning: suppose a society where, amongst other things, people like plums. There are people who have plum orchards, and they sell their produce in the market, and we can see an equilibrium price, say $1 per pound. Now suppose someone invents a drone that has the very special capability of being able to sneak into orchards, undetected, and pick plums to take back to their controller. And these drones come cheaply. The market price of plums will drop, because the farmers can only charge so much at the market before people just switch to using their drones. We wouldn't say plums no longer have much value; we would say the new price of plums does not accurately reflect their value.