Expensive Tastes and Bitrates
posted by Frank Pasquale
“Expensive tastes” pose a problem for egalitarians. If we want to make everyone equally happy, we’ll have to devote far more resources to the “pea-phobic princesses” than to hardier folks inured to suffering. On the other hand, if someone isn’t responsible for their expensive tastes, how different are they from the “eggshell skull” plaintiff so protected by tort law?
Perhaps the key moral issue here is to avoid cultivating expensive tastes. That might lead us to applaud China’s new discouragement of luxury goods:
Xinhua, the government’s official mouthpiece, warned that big spenders risked becoming “intoxicated with comfort” and sinking “into depravity”. Last week the mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan, went a stage further by calling for controls on outdoor advertisements that promote . . . “ultra-distinguished” products, on the grounds that they “encourage luxury and self-indulgence, which are not conducive to harmony.”
It’s “glorious to get rich,” but not to flaunt it. Just think of how many Americans thought of folksy Sam Walton as being “just like them.”
On the other hand, the expensive tastes of the overrefined can subsidize the rest of us. Though a declining model in the airline industry, it might reemerge in music. Consider this news on Apple’s new DRM-free files:
The Apple iTunes store, the largest seller of music downloads, began selling tracks from EMI Music yesterday without any restrictions on copying, for a slightly higher price than usual, $1.29 instead of 99 cents. To sweeten the deal, those tracks have better sound, with a bitrate of 256 kilobits per second (kbps), up from the standard 128 kbps. Apple has gone so far as to say that this results “in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording.”
Hooray for the “golden ears,” whose supersensitivity to quality music may end up buoying an industry driven to distraction by declining sales.
But before we get too comfortable with that model, consider this cautionary tale quoted by James Boyle:
It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriages or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches ….What the company is trying to do i s to prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from travelling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich . . . . And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to third-class passengers and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class passengers. Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous.
Having just endured another terrible Amtrak travel experience, that seems as true today as it did in 1962.
Illustration credit: Edmund Dulac.
June 4, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Posted in: Intellectual Property, Legal Theory, Philosophy of Social Science, Technology
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Responses (7)
Bruce Boyden - June 4, 2007 at 2:35 pm
How come almost everyone flies coach on airplanes then? Everyone who’s paying their own way, that is.
Frank - June 4, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I agree, I think first class used to be a cash cow for airlines, but now more and more businesses are refusing to pay for it. I think a sad consequence of that may be higher prices for the rest of the passengers (ceteris paribus, of course).
Laura - June 4, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Frank,
Re: Amtrak–my husband was flying from Boston to NY a few years ago, and ran into none other than Michael Dukakis, then head of Amtrak. My husband couldn’t resist asking him why he was flying when he could have taken the train. Dukakis’s sheepish reply: “Well, I had to be in NY for a meeting at the last minute, so I couldn’t rely on the train. But we are trying to fix these problems.” I guess nothing’s changed…
Frank - June 4, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I could definitely imagine that, Laura. My own experience this weekend involved the train breaking down, everyone having to get off at South Attleboro station, lug their stuff up three flights of wet/slippery iron stairs and then over to the other side of the tracks, and get on an overcrowded train.
And I saw none of the crew help any of the elderly people with their baggage. One woman appeared to throw out her shoulder. They just bellowed endless “apologies for the inconvenience” during the interminable ride to Newark.
Matt Bodie - June 4, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Frank, I’m a little confused about what you mean by “expensive” tastes. There seem to be two possibilities: (a) items that are more expensive and can only be appreciated by a small groups with “refined” tastes, or (b) items that are more expensive and everyone can appreciate. The audio quality example seems to be (a), but first class flying is (b). Not everyone would notice the difference in audio quality, but everyone would prefer flying first class over coach, no? What do you think about J.S. Mill’s point that certain types of entertainment should have more value, even if they do not offer more base utility, because they are more refined forms of pleasure? (Shakespeare vs. E! True Hollywood Stories, for example.)
Mike O'Shea - June 4, 2007 at 6:28 pm
That’s a shame, Frank. I retain a sentimental fondness for Amtrak as a child of the drive-everywhere Midwest. When I went East for college, I thought it was so cool and cosmopolitan to take the train from Boston to Providence to visit a friend at Brown. No car!
It wasn’t fast, but as an undergrad I didn’t have anything pressing to do anyway.
Amtrak retains two advantages over air travel. One, you’re at ground level, not in the dim, poorly oxygenated pressure tube of a modern airliner. Gah. Two, unless things have changed a lot in the last few years, the seat dimensions are more humane than a coach airline seat.
I loathe air travel. I’ll drive if it’s under 500 miles.
Frank - June 5, 2007 at 7:20 am
Mike–yes, I probably should focus on the positive. I heard once that it takes five positive interactions to make up for one negative one, so perhaps my Amtrak ratio is 3 or 4 to 1. I’d probably only complain more if I flew or drove.
Matt–I like your distinction between “a) items that are more expensive and can only be appreciated by a small groups with “refined” tastes, or (b) items that are more expensive and everyone can appreciate.” It’s likely that the former need to be cultivated, whereas the latter just happen.
I’m with Mill–there are good reasons (entirely aside from distributive concerns) to cultivate certain forms of culture. (See, e.g.,
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2006/05/is_bach_better_.html). I think Dworkin tries to make a “neutralist liberal” case for state support for the “fine arts,” but I don’t know if that can be done.
So I can see the tension you’re suggesting–Mill’s “higher pleasures” are expensive tastes that have to be cultivated. My only response is that these are areas where cross-subsidization may be the strongest. People sitting in the front row at the opera subsidize the standees; high rollers at museum benefits help pay for art for all. Here’s an interesting quote from MOMA:
“Despite the museum’s much-ballyhooed $20 entrance fee, ‘we lose money on admissions,’ Gara says. ‘It costs about $50 per person who walks in.’ The $20 ticket price doesn’t cover security and utilities, and only 50 percent of visitors pay the full price anyway.”
from
http://nymag.com/news/features/2007/profit/32904/
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