Technofeudalism

Cory Doctorow advances the position that capitalism isn't evolving into socialism (as classical Marxism predicted) but into a new form of feudalism:

Capitalists Hate Capitalism

His explanation of the difference between "rents" and "profits" is new information to me (being a bear of very little brain where economic theory is concerned, anyhow). "Rent" in the technical sense used by economists means "income derived from owning something that the capitalist needs in order to realize a profit." It's passive income, so to speak. In Doctorow's example, the manager of a coffee shop has to compete actively with other shops to attract labor and customers. The landlord who owns the building, though, receives money from rent no matter who occupies the space.

In these terms, a gigantic storefront such as Amazon, to which all the individual sellers pay rent, exemplifies "the contemporary business wisdom that prefers creating the platform to selling on the platform" -- "technofeudalism." Doctorow offers several examples, e.g., draconian noncompete agreements forced on employees, the expansion of IP rights to absurd degrees such as the author who attempted to own the word "cocky," and patent trolls whose "only product is lawsuits."

One related abuse he doesn't cover in this article but discusses elsewhere is the universal software marketing practice of not selling electronic products outright but "licensing" them. A "buyer" of a Kindle book, for instance, doesn't literally own it like a hard-copy book, for Amazon can remove the text from the customer's device at any point for any random reason. Granted, this probably doesn't happen often (I haven't experienced it), but the only way to avoid that risk would be to refrain from ever connecting that device to the internet again -- hardly practical.

By Doctorow's title, "Capitalists Hate Capitalism," he means, "They don’t want to be exposed to the risks entailed by competition, and feel the goad of that insecurity. They want monopolies, or platforms, or monopoly platforms." Unlike in many of his essays, in this one he doesn't suggest hypothetical remedies but simply describes a problematic situation.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Dialogue Part 10 - The Silent Dialogue from Rude To Ridiculous

Dialogue
Part 10
The Silent Dialogue from Rude To Ridiculous 

Previous parts in the Dialogue series are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

We have discussed Edward T. Hall's book on cultural anthropology titled The Silent Language which examines cultures and body language, personal "space" and many other topics, most notably how "culture" resides in the subconscious mind.

https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Language-Anchor-Books/dp/0385055498/







And more recently The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help--or Hurt--How You Lead Kindle Edition by Carol Kinsey Goman

This book shows how being viewed as a Leader today depends entirely on body language, and believe it or not, how you hold your hand and fingers when you gesture!

https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Language-Leaders-Help---Hurt--How-ebook/dp/B004SQS6SK/

This SILENT LANGUAGE OF LEADERS is based on neuroscience, which you'd think would be independent of Culture.  But I'd challenge that idea since it has been shown how plastic the human brain is, and how configurable the human genome is.  Traumatic and other meaningful experiences in early life can re-arrange your genes and brain synapses so you develop propensities and abilities different from your peers who did not have such experiences.

Yet, humans tend to gravitate toward and organize around a certain type of other human -- and today we call them "Leaders."  A science fiction writer can challenge that notion, too.  Some Aliens somewhere out there might call those central poles of organization Servants.  Think about that.  We look up to Leaders.  Aliens might look down on them as the British Aristocracy looked down on Tradesmen.

How you regard others, how you sort and group others by the traits you see in them is configured by your Culture.  The very definitions of "Good" and "Bad" have huge Cultural components.  And Culture is silent.  Very silent. Non-verbal.

Most people don't know they have a "culture" or think the word "Culture" means polite or upper crust or high class, or maybe taste.

"Culture" is mostly non-verbal.

Most people can't verbalize the shattering revulsion experienced when they unexpectedly meet up with someone who is extremely rude.  They merely judge that person as an intrinsically bad person, not to be associated with.

Other people will view rudeness as if the miscreant were well aware of the proper way to act, but has decided to play the buffoon, the clown, or the disruptor.

One thing most humans do, though, is judge others by their behavior, their language, body language, choice of words (such as invective or 4-syllable-jaw-breakers), and perhaps most of all tone of voice.

All of these parameters are strictly dictated by culture.

Each combination of variables conveys a non-verbal message which is nevertheless dialogue, speech, communication.

Two (or more) people communicate on many levels besides words.

Text narrative fiction writers are hampered by this, while stage and screen actors can creatively and originally invent many unique characters all speaking the same text words.

Text narrative writers can "describe" their Character's actions, but can capture the "style" and thus meaning of the body language only by offering an interpretation of the movement, telling rather than showing what the Character is silently saying.

Readers will read the interpretation and visualize different movements that mean what the writer has told them the Character means.  The reader will make up the appearance and movements of the Character according to the reader's culture, or according to the reader's notion of different cultures.

For example, the most eloquent move a Character can make is the SHRUG.

There is the Italian shrug, the Arabic shrug, the Mexican shrug, the teenage defiant shrug, the Southern shrug -- the one shoulder shrug, the both shoulders to the ears shrug, etc. etc.  All that doesn't even mention what you do with your hands while you silently deny all knowledge of the subject with a shrug or declare in no uncertain terms that the entire topic is irrelevant with a passive-aggressive assumption of superiority.

By and large, in USA cultures (there are a lot of them!) the shrug is considered rude, especially when it conveys that the topic is irrelevant or unimportant.  Teens are excoriated searingly for shrugging to wriggle out of parental interrogations.

Have you ever seen a presenter in a business meeting shrug when the boss asks a question?  Maybe after the meeting, when a peer asks, but not during a meeting when the boss asks.

Have you ever seen a Presidential Candidate at a podium before a large audience shrug?

OK, *shrug* -- we have had a lot of actors, performers of considerable skill, running for President, so maybe you've caught one or two shrugging for effect, but not when attempting to project an "image of strength."

In some USA cultures, various shrug-motions are acceptable statements, while others are rude.  In other USA cultures, all shrugs are rude.

Another form of culturally nuanced "speech" that can not be captured well in cold text (but that actors can convey in full video) is impatience.

Most of the situations where a writer wants to show a Character being impatient will read as the Character being "weak" or "temperamental" and thus not fit to lead or command, or have their opinion on anything respected.

"Impatience" is considered a Character flaw revealing the flaw of "Bad Judgement."

Judgement is the ability to process vast amounts of apparently trivial data to understand the nature of the problem and find the most efficient way to vanquish that problem, never breaking stride toward the objective.

Deciding "what to do" is just as vital to success as "when to do it."  As in comedy, timing is everything.

So those who are seen to be acting correctly, but acting too soon, are seen as "impatient" which makes them just as untrustworthy as those who act too late, or take ineffective action, "too little; too late."

How a given Character is assessed by the Reader depends as much or more on the Reader's culture as it does on how the Character is written or played.

Extend that to how a human reader of today would assess the Character of an Alien, and whether the Alien is seen as "impatient" and thus weak or ineffectual, or as "decisive" and strong.

Does America admire swift action over minimalist action?

Does America admire swift action over effective action?

"America" -- the middle-of-the-road average is the biggest audience a writer can strive to reach.  This is true in other countries, too -- the average, middle-road citizen is comprehensible to both extremes.  Where exactly that middle is varies from generation to generation and among countries and cultures.

At this time, there is no "American" or USA culture, singular and distinct with rules of Silent Dialogue uniformly distributed.  Even by geography we are not a uniform country. Some areas still retain Character, but in any area of the USA you will find individuals from elsewhere diluting the average.

We are a mixed-muddle, so no generalization will hold.

If your Alien crash lands in a backyard in Texas, he might knock on the door (if his culture would include the idea that requesting entry is polite -- it might NOT consider a knock as polite).  The Texas resident opening that door might be from New York.

You know the expression, "In a New York Minute."  People move faster in New York City -- not so much upstate.

So are New Yorkers "impatient?"  Slow-speaking Southerners think so, and many consider it a character flaw to be racing around so fast all the time.

But New Yorkers see their lives as a race.  Early bird gets the worm.  Whoever is first in line, gets, and others do not.  You want the job? Get to the interview early.  Even doctor's offices have been known to post signs that if you are 15 minutes late, you will be charged for the visit but will not see the doctor.  

The USA was built on many ideas, but one most often quoted (because it's so alien to the denizens of other countries) is TIME IS MONEY.

In other words, time is a commodity.

See the post on Capitalism and how Money can be a commodity just like copyrights can be a commodity.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_11.html
Time is another property of reality that can be regarded as a commodity and commoditized.

Perhaps Capitalism should not be called Capitalism -- as noted, that is a misnomer -- but rather Commoditism, a process of turning the characteristic properties of reality into trade-goods.

We are seeing physics breach the frontiers of the space-time-continuum, discovering the Higgs Boson and chasing "gravity waves."  Black Holes and Dark Matter  all trying to get a handle on the nature of Time.

Is Time Travel possible?  Is Interstellar travel (or intergalactic) possible?

These are the substance of modern science fiction while fantasy genres explore alternate universes and dimensions where "magic" works and mythical creatures are real.

In our Silent Dialogue we use Time to tell others who we are.  How fast you respond to a comment or question, how slowly you move to comply with a request or order, speaks volumes about who you are, who you think you are, and who you think you are relative to everyone else.

For example, if you keep people waiting for you -- say, the family is piling into the car to go see a movie, or guests are gathered in the living room waiting to sit down to dinner -- and you just do not show up "on time" (how early or late you can be and still be 'on time' is a mathematical formula!), you are informing all those people that you and your interests and affairs are more important than their time.

In some cultures, an explanation is due upon arrival, and it better show that your priorities are the same as the priorities of those you kept waiting.  In other cultures, any explanation is viewed as an "excuse."

The maxim is never make excuses and never apologize if you want to be respected.

In yet other cultures, following that maxim, or indeed any maxim, is viewed as indication of a weak character.

What might "time" be worth to Aliens on some other planet?

How would Aliens prioritize life-minutes?  Who keeps who waiting?

Is there some property of objective Reality that dictates cultural attitudes toward Time, or toward another individual's life-minute?

Today, the USA thinks of those who wait as less important than those who keep others waiting.

For example, a crowd gathers to hear a Presidential Candidate speak, and the Candidate is scheduled to speak at 7:30.  The TV cameras light up, the Security folks are their toes, and ten minutes after the appointed moment, a tech comes out and adjusts the microphone -- but no candidate, nothing.

Well, it must be he/she is doing something Important because being The Candidate is Important -- but the audience is not that Important.

Is this cultural value the only possible value?  Is this inherent in just being human?

Not necessarily.  Aliens might look at the entire procedure very differently, as indeed humans have, in other cultures Historically.

For example, you would think the High Priest working in the Temple in Jerusalem would have been regarded as an Important person doing Important things.

The people who gathered to watch, or to hear the High Priest read from the Torah on Yom Kippur, might be viewed by today's Americans as "less important" than the High Priest.  Yet, in that Historic time, there was a hard and fast rule saying the High Priest, no matter what, must not keep the public waiting.  Their "time" was important, too, and it was his duty to discharge his duties in the expected time-interval.

Today that translates into a set of Rules regarding the conduct of prayer services.  There are sections of Prayer which are flagged "Must Not Interrupt" -- if you are in the middle of such a section, and something happens demanding attention, you must first finish the section.  These section demarcations are carefully observed.

HOWEVER, if it should happen that the congregation has gathered and is ready for a section that is to be led by a Reader with specific skills (such as reading aloud from the Torah), or for example, the blowing of the Shofar (the ram's horn), and the ONLY member of the congregation with that skill is in the middle of such a section that must not be interrupted -- then the individual must interrupt that prayer-section and go immediately to serve the congregation with his skill.

The congregation must never be kept waiting, not a New York Minute!

The High Priest or an individual gifted with talent and skill serves the public without delay.  That "without delay" rule indicates something basic about the structure of Reality, while the "keep them waiting" rule used by public speakers today violates the strictures of Reality.  (small wonder things aren't working too smoothly)

We can only infer what that Structure of Reality might be.

We use our cultural prejudices to make that inference.

For example, we might infer that because "The High Priest" is not "more important" than "The Public" (because he can't keep the public waiting) therefore "The Public" is more important than the "High Priest."

But that would be a reasonable inference only if "important" and "more important" is part of the reality matrix.  Perhaps no ONE human is "more important" than another, so that since the High Priest is only one person, and the crowd of The Public is lots of people, the crowd is "more important?"  Or maybe "important" can not be attributed to a mortal being? Perhaps deeds can be "important" if performed at a certain time, but people don't have the attribute "important?"

Leaders, bosses, decision-makers whose decisions must be implemented, holders and wielders of "Power" are nothing but servants of The Public.  There deeds of service are important.  They, themselves, are not.

Aliens might look at it that way.

As writers, trying to create plausible Aliens, we have to be aware of all the ways different human cultures have viewed that objective Structure of Reality, the dimension of Time.

For example, the Navajo saw Time in a very different way than the settlers of the Old West, which led to a lot of scorn and uncooperativeness on both sides.  "Lazy Indians?"  Far, far from it!  But they wouldn't show up for work "on time" or get the job done by "quitting time."  Unemployable, lazy good-for-nothings -- right?

So given the panoply of views among just one species, humans, imagine how Aliens would see Time -- and consequently how they would "speak" in their "Silent Dialogue."

Music and dance are forms of communication stretched along linear Time.

Music, we define as Sound. But maybe it can be Silent?

Dance, is movement usually to a rhythm, but even a drumbeat can be silent, just a Conductor waving his/her hands.

As Media Announcers learn to speak in a "tune" and cadence that just reeks "newscaster" or whatever role they are playing, so too do humans speak in tune and accompany the articulated sound with eye-blinks, hip-shifts, shoulder-shrugs, lip-twitches, and a thousand tiny movements that others respond to.

"Friends" move together when speaking -- eye-blinks synchronize -- and thus friends acquire the feeling that the other person understands them as no one else does.

It is a well documented feature of human communication, something we do entirely unconsciously.  It is possible that the aversion some people feel to communicating even via video chat is due to a failure to synchronize body language.  It's not "real" if you can't sit with a person, face to face, and assess them by how well and quickly they synchronize with you.

But what if Aliens felt threatened by the human unconscious tendency to "mirror" twitches and fidgets?  What if, to the Aliens, this involuntary movement was not fraught with deepest meaning, as it is with humans?

Perhaps the British "upper crust" trained not to fidget in earliest youth, to keep that "stiff upper lip" were favored over Americans?  For that matter, the inscrutable Japanese and Chinese cultural facial non-expression might be preferred - but even they blink their eyes.

How do you assess (judge) a person who fails to "synchronize" with you?  Can you have a meaningful conversation with someone who zigs when you expect them to zag?

How many of your limited life-minutes would you spend/waste on who keeps you waiting, who won't synchronize eye-blinks, who can't dance with you?

What would your Main Character make of such an Alien?  How could the communications breakthrough to save Humanity be made with no words to speak?

And of course, there's assessing whether the Alien is lying to you, saying the correct words but telegraphing an opposite meaning -- not just failing to communicate but mis-communicating.  What do you report to your boss when asked what's "really" going on?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 22 - Making a Profit At Writing In A Capitalist World

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World

Part 22

Making a Profit At Writing In A Capitalist World

Previous Parts of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

"Profit" is a term considered anathema in some circles - with fairly good reason.  The term "profit" has come to signify getting something you didn't earn, something actually earned by the sweat of others.

Those who oppose Capitalism could not destroy Capitalism because it is so good at racking up Profit.  Everyone wants "profit" when it is defined as "something for nothing."

But "something for nothing" is not the definition of profit nor has it anything to do with Capitalism.  Capitalism is about personal, individual ownership, which makes copyrights a form of capital.

-------------quote from a quick Google search------------

cap·i·tal·ism
ˈkapədlˌizəm/
noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
synonyms: free enterprise, private enterprise, the free market; enterprise culture
"the capitalism of emerging nations"
-----------end quote---------------

Google's definition of Capitalism calls it a "system" -- a political and economic system.

Capitalism is not a system and has nothing to do with politics or society.  Capitalism is "not a bug in the social system; it's a feature of Reality."

I saw this item on Quora back in June 2016 and admired the precision of this definition.

-------------quote-------------
https://www.quora.com/Why-would-a-working-class-person-prefer-capitalism-to-communism

First please understand that you can't really compare the two since they are different things. Communism is a socioeconomic concept while capitalism is a solely economic concept. Therefore there are no social policies which can be definitely associated with capitalism, which means the comparison needs to be exclusively economic or based on specific cases (e.g. USA vs. USSR). Also, no country on earth practices or has practiced true communism; by definition communism supersedes the concept of the state with small, self-organized communities, therefore neither the USSR nor China were "true" communist systems.

Now, why would a working class person prefer capitalism? I'd say because they would not enjoy living in a communist society.

-----------end quote---------- 

I could write this entire blog entry about the concept "working class" and how it can not possibly be applied to the USA.  The US Constitution can only function well if the populace understands there is not now nor never has been any such thing as "class" in the human species.  

SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE WRITERS NOTE: all bets are off if you are depicting Aliens. Create a species where "class" is a biological imperative, then launch your Love At First Sight story and see what happens next.

But where only humans are involved, the USA Declaration of Independence and the Constitution nailed it perfectly.  These founding documents are based on "All Men Are Created Equal" and we've fought out the battle over the idea of "all men" (which now includes males of different colors) and the idea that "men" includes women, too.  In other words, our social history has been directed along the lines of enhancing Individualism by turning individuals loose to craft their own destinies in their own pursuit of happiness ever after. 

These ancient words mean that in the USA, there is no such thing as class, working or otherwise.  There is no such thing as "the" 1% -- the ultra rich are "a 1%" not "the 1%."  

Social systems that divide humans into classes are called Aristocracies.  The USA views Aristocracy as resoundingly repudiated by thousands of years of utter failure.

Without a "working class" you can not have an Aristocracy.  

So in the USA, there are people who make a living by working, but they are not a "class" -- at any time, any given individual, can become independently wealthy, self-employed, employ others to work for him/her/whatever, go back to school on a scholarship, or get injured (perhaps in war action) and go on the dole or a well earned pension. Humans do not come in "classes."  Humans are resilient and adaptable - ever changing.  We all work.  There is no such thing as "working class."   

Writers work, but do not form a "class" in any sense.  We have nothing in common with one another, which is the exact trait we have in common -- unique individuality. 

That is the precise condition under which Capitalism thrives, flourishes, and produces far more than is invested.  Capitalism is an "undocumented feature" of the Reality Matrix that writers are uniquely suited to exploit.  

The term Capitalism has been co-opted by politicians and redefined.  Academics subsequently wrote a lot of books for Economics courses (often required for various majors in college) because of their Publish Or Perish business model.

To understand Capitalism, think about raw, basic survival, say on Mars or some other harsh planet among the stars. To understand what a Main Character or Hero is and does that is so admired, the writer must understand the reality of Capitalism with all the mis-directions and academics stripped away.

By stripping away that co-opted idea-grab that Capitalism is a system (thus created by humans), a writer creating fictional worlds peopled by Aliens or driven by Romance can use the core concept Capitalism to
a) create alien worlds that are truly alien but comprehensible and
b) to run their own writing business.

The basic idea of Capitalism goes like this:
A) Person One has a resource they can't use
B) Person Two has an ability to use that resource but does not have the resource
C) Person One LOANS that resource to Person Two
D) Person Two uses that resource
E) Person Two gives that resource back to Person One with some extra from what using the resource produced (amount determined by prior contract)
F) Person Two keeps all the rest produced by using that resource as personal property.
G) Person Two now has the resource and the ability to use it to create more resources
H) Person One now has the resource and more but still no ability to use it

That resource is CAPITAL, and the process of loaning it and collecting the return OF Capital and ON Capital is Capitalism.

And the story of where that Capital goes repeats the cycle as Person One finds something else to invest the resource into and Person Two keeps on producing more and more, reinvesting excess resource to grow the business and employ more people.

In the Publishing Business, the writer is Person One who has a Resource (unpublished manuscript) they can't use, and the Publisher is Person Two who has ability to use that resource but does not have the resource.

Writers LICENSE their copyright (not SELL, license, a kind of loan) to the publisher, thus loaning the publisher the resource under terms set by contract.

The Publisher uses the manuscript, turns it into a book and gets people to buy it.

After the set term of the contract, the license the publisher holds expires, and all the licensed rights revert to the author (capital is returned) plus all the royalties paid in between.

Today, in this new world, Person One now puts the book up on Kindle or other e-book format and the reputation for that byline or title created by Person Two (the publisher) continues to sell the book, fewer copies but at a greater profit to the writer per copy. Thus the writer "capitalizes" on the Publisher's hard and expert work creating reputation.

Publishing is a perfect example of Capitalism in action and has nothing at all to do with governmental forms or academic economic theories of "society."

Capitalism has to do with combining talents of individual people whose individual talents would not earn them a living -- but when "packaged" by an organizer (like a publisher or producer) those individuals' resources can be transformed into potatoes and oranges bought at the supermarket.

The problem for working writers is that what they get paid, net-net after decades in the business, about averages out to potatoes and oranges.  A good, widely published, widely reviewed writer can cover a modest lifestyle of room, board, clothing, transportation, -- today, maybe not medical care.

SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) carries a healthcare policy for members that is very expensive but better than nothing.  Few can afford it, yet all need it.  Writing is way too sedentary a profession to maintain health well. The future of Obamacare is not certain, and switching policies can elevate the cost.

Nobody I know works harder, longer hours for less profit than fiction writers.

When all the time is accounted for, time mastering craft skills, time learning, time researching, time dreaming, time writing, time re-writing, time in copy-editing, time formatting, time repairing computers used to write, time marketing, time interacting with readers, time studying markets, -- already the writer of fiction makes less than minimum wage (even if they don't raise that dollar amount of minimum wage soon!)

In my experience, the most creative, sharpest minds contributing to gross domestic product get paid the least per hour worked (over say, 25 years average annual income) if they are working writers. There will be years topping $100,000 income, but then the IRS takes a chunk of that calculated on the idea that this income level will be sustained year after year.

Long ago, the tax code allowed writers to "income average" over 5 years, smoothing out the spikes and valleys of tax owed, taking into account the irregularity and unpredictability of writing income.

So to the TIME spent creating and writing and marketing (even with an Agent, it's a lot of time spent marketing), add the time spent on bookkeeping and accounting and tax preparation -- or the expense of out-sourcing that work.

You aren't "making a profit" at writing until you have paid all those bills, plus your own salary, rent for your home-office and business machines and their supplies (yes, ink for your printer is a business expense paid before declaring a profit).

And that does not even begin to account for capital invested before a career can take off, money for classes, lessons, travel to and from such schooling, computers, phones, tablets of various types constantly upgraded and the professional-level software necessary to produce copy that can be submitted in the proper formats.

See?  There's that word, capital.

Running a business is all about capital investment vs. return on investment (called ROI).

The point of Capitalism is to invest a resource, then turn the crank of the business model, and return that invested Capital, keeping what's left over (after all expenses) as Profit which is then REINVESTED into that business or another business.  Capital is recycled Profit.  They are the same thing. Capital is not MONEY -- Capital is a resource, like a copyright or a house you buy with a mortgage and then rent at more than it costs you.

Money is to be spent on expenses.  Capital is to be invested and recovered plus a profit.

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle-ebook/dp/B0175P82RA/

If your house's roof starts to spring leaks, it can cost less to patch it if you only consider the money you will spend this month. But then another leak will happen, and another patch.  You also have to consider your time as money -- to go get the materials and climb up there and patch the roof yourself is time spent not-writing, and money just spent.

Your time and your money regarded as capital would lead you to a different approach to solving the problem of a leaky roof.  Call the best roofer in town, replace the entire roof this month with a top professional job and materials (not Home Depot).  You do it that way, you have made a "Capital Investment."  Your capital (time and money) will now "work for you" and pay back in "royalties" (a little each year the roof does not cost you anything).

If you plan to charge the cost on a credit card, and pay it back slowly, the interest the card charges you is NOT a capital investment by you.  It is money spent. Calculated carefully, it can turn out that getting a whole new roof will not "pay for itself" (return your Capital) because "revolving credit" is way too expensive.

A roof can cost the entirety of a book advance plus a royalty payment or two.

Your copyright is your capital.

You invest it into a Publisher, trusting them to use it to make a profit.

You can invest the "interest" you get from loaning your capital (advance+royalties) in a roof. Your house is capital.  You've taken your "profit" (advance+royalties) and reinvested that capital in a capital investment which itself pays dividends. And you still own your copyright.

Your copyright is your capital.

Capitalism, the definition specifies, is a system that assumes you own your copyrights and can rent them out, or sub-license them how you choose.

Is Capitalism a "system" -- or is it a simple fact of surviving in the real world where no individual has all the skills and resources necessary to survive?

Capitalism is the system of contract law that allows a person with a resource to loan that resource to someone who has the ability to use that resource.

The ability to write songs is a resource, the songs written are capital -- but it takes an orchestra and maybe several singers to make a profitable YouTube Video of that song and get millions of hits and launch careers.  The song writer still owns the copyright on the song.

His or her heirs can inherit that copyright.

Copyright law specifies a number of years before it goes into public domain -- i.e. is taken from the rightful owners, the heirs -- but there is no statute of limitation on owning a house or a farm property. There is no difference between a copyright and a farm.

Art, paintings or photographs, fabric patterns, animations, all kinds of art we create become our capital which we license but still own.

Whether creating such works of art is profitable depends on the size of the market that will pay for it - i.e. depends on popularity.

Commercial Art is a different field from Fine Art.  Both create capital. Usually Commercial Art is the only kind that turn that capital into capital+profit.

In the sharing economy, the open source economy, you are free to give away your copyright, and get paid in enhanced reputation - name recognition, publicity, or just spiritual gratitude.

To some extent, people using your open-source resource will toss some money into your PayPal account from time to time, but the "open source' movement is thriving without money.  It runs on pure capital alone, or maybe some bitcoin here and there.

Fan Fiction is that kind of sharing-economy, open source resource, where the writer gets paid in name-recognition, reputation, and writes things for other people to pick up and write about.

So there is a profit to be made off the capital investment of time/skill etc., but that profit is not convertible to money.

Capital and profit are not money.

In Capitalism, capital and profit can be converted to money, and money can be converted to capital and profit.  If your unusable resource is money, you can loan that money at bank-interest+risk, and if the gamble does not fail, you get your money back, plus inflation, plus a profit.

One thing writers must understand about making a profit is that bank interest is not profit.  The tax law treats it as profit and taxes interest, but banks deliberately calculate and set the rate of interest on CD's and savings accounts to cover all their expenses (accountants, tellers, Cloud Megs, hacker intrusions, etc) and give you just exactly enough more dollars to keep your purchasing power going down.  Yes, you lose purchasing power by putting money in a CD and reinvesting the interest.  The interest rate is calculated to be less than inflation, but in such a way that you don't see it.  You look at your numbers and think you have more, but you actually have less.  That is what retail banks do for a living, and they are good at it.

Writers and other artists, being in one of the lowest paid professions, must understand this quirk of tax law - retail bank interest is return of capital, not a payment of a profit, so when you pay taxes on interest, you are actually giving the government some of your capital, reducing your ability to earn in your old age.  The only way out is to get out of the retail level of finance.  Deal wholesale.

To deal wholesale in capital and money you need a lot of capital -- a lot -- so your capital can be invested and earn money you can spend without reducing your capital.  In fact, well invested (Mutual Funds are a good start, but their fees reduce earnings potential), your capital can grow at or above the rate of inflation while yielding a good living.

The trick of it all is to get your mind around the truth about Capitalism.  It is not a social "system" -- it is a fact of reality: humans are interdependent; no man is an island.

Money can be used as capital, but it is not capital.  When used as capital, money becomes a commodity.  It can be traded as a commodity on the international currency exchanges. Money can be a thing in itself, unrelated to potatoes and oranges. In math, this is called Units Conversion.

So the operational, everyday-useful definition of Capitalism is the contract-structure that allows using other people's resources in a way that benefits them most, and yourself second.

As a writer, who owns copyrights, that means you are the one who is benefited most.

You start out with nothing, create something, loan it out, get it back plus a profit, and can loan it again and get paid again, and you still own it.

The cost of creating that something, the overhead expenses you invest in your business, have to be less than what your copyrights bring in for you to declare a profit -- and that means your business has to pay you a living wage before you can declare a profit.

It is very rare for a writer or any creative artist to make an actual profit from their work.  Only during the (usually few) years when the work is reaching its broadest audience is the income more than the cost of doing business as a creative artist or a performing artist.

A reason for that hides within the structure of the big businesses that own publishing or production.

Yes, movie and TV studios and the independent producers who sell them shows are also owned by other types of businesses.  In the case of films or stage productions, the real owners are often "Investors" (individuals with extra millions to invest on the chance they will get their money back and much more).  Many times "Investors" put up the money for a stage play or other production more for the prestige than profit, and are happy to break even.

In this "Changing World" impacted by electronic distribution, Kindle to Netflix to promoting books on blogs, the vast and significant change in the Fiction Writer's business model is also now impacting non-fiction.

The biggest casualty in 2016 is the NEWS BUSINESS.

Here is an article from FORBES about Snapchat and its impact on the News business

http://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2016/06/19/what-snapchat-tells-us-about-the-future-of-news-and-information-gathering/#440c2d41480d

 -- by appealing to the youngest people, Snapchat is setting the stage for adult behavior 20 years hence.  And in this infrastructure shift to electronic media and personal connectivity, which is so deep and so basic (more so than maybe the Printing Press), 20 years is the blink of an eye.  Do you remember cell phones from 20 years ago?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones

That Wikipedia article shows the evolution of from 1947.  Scan down the article and look at what changes in 20 years. Realize a writing career can be 40 or 50 years because writers don't usually "retire" with a pension.

Facebook is buying these communications start-ups that appeal to specific demographics (target audiences) for a reason, but I doubt that Facebook's execs think of themselves as running a News Service (like AP or Reuters) designed to gather facts and sift out rumors and opinion.

Here is a quote from the Forbes article on Snapchat, tailor made for writers looking to make a Profit off their writing skills in a Capitalist World.

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Most adults, if they have even heard of Snapchat, know it as the place where messages disappear after a few seconds. But the company is adding more and more options, and it is now the network on which young people not only use different kinds of messages, and no, not all messages self-destruct in three seconds, some stay in the in-tray for up to 24 hours, and others can be kept for as long as the sender likes. What’s more, young people even read the company’s online magazine, as well as using other channels it has set up, including one to send money.

So while most of us grownups don’t even know what Snapchat is, Evan Spiegel, now elevated to the status of visionary, and his team have created a company valued already at some $20 billion—so far he’s turned down a $3 billion offer, and then reportedly another for $4 billion—and that is now the new television for young people unable to disconnect from their smartphones, and that 23 media partners are now using to reach a younger generation of readers, attaining millions of hits each month, and that other brands are using to advertise their wares during the Super Bowl. This is highly profitable advertising, as well as non-intrusive, unlike the trash that we have to put up with on other networks and publications unless we install an ad-blocker.

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This business model based on advertising is one that novelists have never needed to tackle, but TV Series writers must internalize to get the climaxes (cliff hangers) just before the formulaic commercial breaks.  News (televised or internet) packages are structured the exact same way for the same reason.  A Package is that little bit of actual news sandwiched between commercial breaks.

We'll explore more of that Forbes article in Part 23 of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World, looking at the future of our business model.

Fiction publishing and news publishing (such as newspapers on paper and magazines printed on paper, even Radio and TV News or the old fashioned News Reel at the movies) were never "profitable."

Historically, book and Magazine Publishers were owned by other bigger businesses or investors specifically for the "tax write-off" and the Prestige, entree to "the right" cocktail parties and social networks.

In non-fiction, the News business also grew up as a hybrid "public service" or charitable way of paying society back for profits made on other products.  From the 1700's and "movable type" the local town newspaper was a low-margin business at the very best.

News (whether you view it as fiction or non-fiction!) is a capital intensive business.

To gather the product (information), individual people have to go out where the events are occurring, observe, gather and check facts, then cast all that data into the format of "information" by writing the article.  The article has to be transported back to the editing office,  edited, shaped to fit the newspaper's available space, laid out, compiled into print, printed on paper (which has to be trucked in from a manufacturer -- likewise ink -- never cheap), then the paper has to be hauled off to be offered to reluctant buyers.

All those people have to be paid, and all that stuff has to be bought, and all that transportation costs.  This is also true of online newspaper distribution operations such as Huffington Post.

Print papers combined the advertising model with the pay or subscribe model and survived right up until now.  They are still trying to find a way to make money online.

So historically, print and broadcast news operations are labor intensive, capital intensive operations that were owned by larger businesses, mostly for tax write-off, a public service, and prestige (in the case of "news" of course, power over political processes is another form of profit).  Even with advertising and subscriptions, even at their most profitable, news operations have never been stand-alone operations that made a profit.

Publishing and News are two kinds of business that have traditionally been designed specifically to lose money.  So they paid writers and journalists as little as possible to keep them providing material.  These businesses weren't cheating.  They simply could not afford to pay wriers and journalists more and still break even.

Today, in this changing world, Publishing has been moved from being a prestige-crown-jewel to a profit making operation.  That is one reason the price of paper books and e-books are so high, relative to what those prices were in terms of a loaf of bread a hundred years ago.

With razor thin margins, publishers had to 'consolidate' (buy each other until there are only a handful of publishers left who cover the whole world).  So they don't publish books that "ought to be published" or "deserve to be published" any more. They publish books the computer algorythms predict will sell very broadly and very quickly.  Likewise "News" publishes what will captivate the most eyes.

Even though writers are paid a percentage of the cover price for a book, and thus have a built-in wage hike for inflation, that percentage has not gone up, but agent's fees have gone from 10% to 15%, taxes (state, federal and local) have gone up.  Writers' margins have narrowed while publishers are just barely making it unless they have a few blockbusters in a year.

News, likewise, is now making a transition to a stand-alone for-profit business, and therefore needs a much wider audience for commercials and subscriptions.  The only strategy available to get that broad an audience is to make the News more Entertaining (fictionalize it, jazz it up, create a "narrative" that will keep people glued to their screens).

This shift in the non-fiction writer's business model has caused less capital (time, effort, energy) to be expended on fact-checking, thoroughness, meticulousness.  Non-fiction (News) that is fact-rich is a very expensive to create, and the truth is the market is too small.

Very few people will pay (by watching commercials or subscribing) to get a listing of un-exciting, dry, boring fact after fact.  A few will tune in for a "story."

The cure is, of course, to make fact-gathering much cheaper (Go-Pro cameras in drones?), so that news can be published in fact-rich but boring summaries to that tiny audience that prefers it.

Sometime soon, a Science Fiction Romance writer will write a book set in a world built around a new business model for publishing -- both fact and fiction publishing.

The technology is being implemented rapidly.  Something obvious is staring us all in the face that we are just missing.  The writer who sees it will write the classic everyone refers to for the next hundred years (like 1984, or The Cold Equations).

It may be as simple as what some indie bloggers, and web-radio and YouTube personalities are already doing, gathering and presenting the facts that contradict the "narrative" adopted by the bigger news operations, broadcast network or cable news.

News and Book Publishing may become, once again, not-for-profit operations that just break even in a good year and are tax write-offs in other years.

Where would your career fit into that future?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com