Today was pretty cool. Did a little geocaching down near Eagle with Aryntha and Rai (and no, we didn’t see anything dealing with Kobe Bryant) which resulted in the finding of a very old 50’s telephone hut half buried in a hillside. We then trundled around the mountains a bit on gravel roads till we’d run into a private property sign and be forced to turn around. It’s amazing how much of the wilderness out there is owned by someone. Aryntha took lots of pictures for posterity then we had dinner over at Fiesta’s in Edwards.
The major topic today was the job market and the economy, which both suck in ways that words alone cannot describe. The comment on CNN was to the effect that layoffs are increasing because sales are decreasing because no one is buying anything because they’re all unemployed… How does one fix this? Can it be fixed? Is this the decline and fall of the American Empire? Is King Bush playing fiddle as Washington burns? I don’t know, but I hope not.
My idea involves the fat cats at the top of the corporate food chain taking a little hit in their 6-7 figure incomes and keeping their employees from hording their meager $500 paychecks and waiting for the axe to fall. Will this happen? Will the RIAA admit that MP3s aren’t the source of their money woes? The answer to both is pretty obvious.
Speaking of MP3s, the BBC did a report recently in regards to the RIAA and their war on Joe Consumer. In this report the BBC points out some interesting facts such as: RIAA members for the last ten years have been making a *lot* of money on vinyl to CD re-releases but now the catalog has been drained and that cash cow has run dry. The RIAA members have halved their yearly releases over the last 5 years. And above all let us not forget that people are simply buying fewer CDs because the music released today *SUCKS*. (Asterisks and caps added by this author)
So, lo and behold we have some data pointing to the fact that yes, MP3 file sharing has impacted record sales, but it’s only a small leak in a ship full of holes.
What does the RIAA hope to do with their Gestapo tactics and “we spend more on lawyer’s retainer fees per month than your entire neighborhood earns in a year” bullying? Will this make people buy more CDs? Will it ensure they start making “enough” millions in pure profit again? I don’t know, but I doubt it.
Anyways, the crows circling the job market and the economy, which both lie in smoldering ruins, has got me a bit worried; though I’ve been though this before. When I got out of the Navy I got a job with a laptop hard drive manufacturer called “Prairie Tech” then within weeks was laid off due to the tech crunch of 1990-1991. I spent the next few years working my way through different job fields weathering the storm till the economy improved.
Well, Aryntha and Rai headed back down the mountain about a half hour ago. They’ve got cats to care for and Jag is driving in tonight on her way from Wisconsin to California. Tomorrow my week resumes with another day of being tech support for the Vail Valley and all will once again be right with the world.