Market Devolution, and Brie

The other day, as I was tootling around the internets, I happened upon a very quick exchange between one of my favorite authors and some random dude. They were talking about Kickstarter.

Kickstarter, said the author, isn’t charity. It’s an open market. Open to everyone. If you like something, kick in and contribute. Promote. And if you don’t? Stay away. No skin off your nose, no burr under your saddle. Move on, nothing to see here.

The second guy jumped in and said something that I thought was interesting. He said, in essence, “Sure. And like all other open markets, it will devolve to the most average, most generic, most commercial products possible.”

And of course, after I stopped laughing, I picked myself up off the floor, and had to respond. Because that idea was so easily shown false, so… laughable… that I had to jump in there and put a stake in it.

This is such an obviously inane argument. And it's refuted by a trip to the local grocery store. Not even the whole store. We just need to go to the dairy section. And not even the dairy section. Just the cheese.

See, if what our poor, misinformed critic of free markets (and that brings to mind the question – if he's not down with free markets, what is he a fan of? central planning? generics? is all commercial activity inherently evil in his eyes? Who knows?) fails to grasp is this. If he were correct, all cheese would be Velveeta ™. Or squeezed from a can.

And yet, upon a trip to the grocery store a couple of blocks from the house, we find a rich, varied panoply of cheesy goodness.

Maybe it's just me, but if your argument can be refuted by the mere existence of brie, it's not a very good argument.

But it got me thinking about the nature of free markets and what I'm doing as a writer (when I do write, which has been shockingly lacking since the turn of the new year) or as a publisher (did I mention that Flying Island Press has a new issue of Flagship available at flyingislandpress.com/flagship? No? Did I mention that it's free? Three science fiction stories that I thought were good enough to pay for and am now passing on to you? No? Well, shucks. That seems like a real oversight to me… but now it's fixed).

One of the things that's been keeping me from the keyboard is this thought – and that's all it is – that what I write has to be… really big. It has to be beautiful, and important, and has to bring tears to the eyes. That's what I'm really aiming for (and is one reason that Lamentation is as yet unfinished – that ending has to really BURN. And it's got to be set up just right.)

I'm trying to make brie.

But there's a market out there for all kinds of cheese. Even the squeezy kind. Even the Velveeta (again ™). There's a market out there for science fiction and fantasy stories that have positive things to say about humanity in general (see that link up there to Flying Island Press). And it's a matter of finding them. And making more cheese. Or bread. Or donuts. Or whatever your metaphor for writing / creating / productive work is.

After all, it's not enough to complain about pop culture if that's bothering us. We have to seek out good culture as much as we can. And if we have the time, discipline, a little talent, and the disposition, then it's up to us to MAKE good culture. (Cheese comes from cultures! Ha! Get it!? I just… ah, never mind.)