Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919, aka Rusty Lionhorse) was an Italian composer who wrote the libretto and music for the opera “I Pagliacci” (The Clowns) in 1892. It was a huge overnight success and it remains today one of the 20 most performed operas in the World. Even if you rarely listen to classical music or opera, you’ve probably heard and would recognize some of the great music and arias.
Leoncavallo composed more than 20 other large Operas, Operettas and musical compositions during the rest of his life but none were anywhere as successful when initially performed. His other compositions are viewed today as essentially unremarkable and they remain rarely-performed works. Leoncavallo lived comfortably well due to his singular success but he was frustrated for the rest of his life that he could not come close to duplicating the fame of his first opera.
There have been several recent news reports pointing out that most of the thousands of programmers of Apps for the iPhone, and other Apple products have generally not made any money from their time-consuming and expensive endeavors, even with strong consumer sales and keeping 70% of the revenues. A few lucky ones have had one big App hit (as in Pagliacci) and made some nice profits but none have had multiple hits. The vast majority of programmers make practically nothing for all their efforts. Now many are turning to Palm, Google, Microsoft and other companies who are accepting their free apps in the hope that a few people might make it big. Hope springs eternal despite reality and common sense.
The majority of Internet-related workers and businesses ventures, involving millions of people laboring in hundreds of fields and projects around the world have yet to make steady profits. Most of the content on the Internet is for free or available for very low prices. People frantically and continuously post all sorts of great things that we can all view or download for free, often on matters that we once had to pay to get from other sources. Even the print media (newspapers and magazines) are facing mass extinction due to all the news and commentary available for free on the Internet. (TMV is not the only site to blame. I post here for free – what a silly fool am I – but then would anyone really pay for my thoughts?)
Millions of people freely expose themselves, their family, friends, acquaintances and a few enemies to global ridicule on YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, and a myriad of other free sites. All prospective employers, spouses, debt collectors, and most Internet users are just a few clicks away from learning way too much about any particular person. Now a myriad of free porn sites is damaging the profitability of the original porn web sites that were some of the few businesses that made money on the Internet. Some people complain that the Patriot Act infringes upon personal privacy rights despite the fact that millions of people have voluntarily given those rights away for free over the Internet. We should all be singing that famous aria from Pagliacci: “Laugh, clown, laugh” while we hold back our tears.
With this deep recession, some people have suggested that the unemployed turn to volunteer work – as if that’s going to help them cover the monthly mortgage or rental payments. Some conservative republican capitalists have been trying to get people to work for free for years and now they have their best chance to bring back slavery in over 150 years. A number of desperate people have taken them up on this strange idea in the hope that somehow they could make valuable new business connections that lead to new employment or commercial opportunities.
It’s sad that volunteering at the local homeless shelter or other charities (where former volunteers and employees are now clients) is the hot new professional networking forum. At least they can all commiserate together. Some of the creative ones might be able to collectively come up with a few good new business ideas. Unfortunately obtaining seed funding or small business loans in this economy is another can of worms.
More than 20 years of outsourcing American jobs was an essential part of the eternal capitalistic search for the lowest possible labor costs enabled by the mantra of “Free Trade.” Most things that can be done in a factory or an office, on a computer, and over the Internet, can be readily outsourced to any low-cost location in the world. Probably only a few dozen jobs cannot be outsourced as they require a person’s or a business’ actual physical presence in the U.S. to serve paying clients. Many of these jobs are staffed by illegal aliens since most Americans lost interest in them due to the very low pay and difficult work conditions. Little did we realize these lousy jobs were immune from outsourcing and that explains why there were so many illegal aliens coming here for those same jobs. We really only have our business and political leaders to blame. Do we need another chorus of “Laugh, clowns, laugh?”
Americans can easily complete globally, regardless of their educational levels or experience. Retraining is actually not difficult because they must simply learn to work for 50 cents an hour. This would result in the median annual household income (with 2 people working) dropping to around $21,000 from its already depressed current level of $50,000. Now we just have to cut all our living expenses by more than half and we would be completely set for the future.
Once you give away your skills and services for free, it’s really hard to market and sell them for anything more later on. Humanity is splitting into 2 distinct camps, those few who reap all the rewards and the rest who do all the work and fight over the scraps. Too many of the fortunate falsely believe they made it on their own so they owe nothing back to society, and that luck and a lot of help from others were not major parts of their success.
Too much of the American dream was based upon limited anecdotal evidence retelling the lives of a very small number of big winners. That dream required completely ignoring the many noble failures, even by some who finished very close but just not enough. This is true in our professional sports, entertainment, and business sectors, as well as today’s Internet.
We all realize that “life is not fair” but today we also find that life is completely surreal. Many are now living a new American nightmare as prolonged high unemployment becomes self-perpetuating and a permanent barrier to individual, household, business, and national recovery. We really have to come up with a workable and achievable new American reality but we will have to drop all our past fantasies, current fears, and rigid ideologies.
We can beat up ourselves and each other endlessly over the mistakes we made, and for not having the foresight or honesty to see the problems we now face. Or we can move on with some new-found clarity and wisdom, and start the long hard work of collectively remaking ourselves and our country into something that more fully reflects our better natures.
To those readers who may criticize this post and some of my prior posts as being too negative, I’m actually in quite a chipper, playful and positive mood. Now imagine how depressing this post could have been. But then…the sun will come out tomorrow…
Submitted by Marc Pascal – who is still looking for a few green cactus shoots of economic progress in warm, sunny, and strangely quiet Phoenix, AZ except for my regular afternoon blasting of symphonies and operas from my CD player.