Some Genuine Innovation, Some Tiresome Wariness
It seems that the music industry has finally struck upon a solution that could save it. I wrote previously that it was becoming increasingly difficult (and soon would become next to impossible) to sell information but I had imagined that the alternative would be people taking to paying instead for an experience. This would take the form of live music, which is not something that can be downloaded fully in MP3 format, a hypothesis hardly debunked for me by the glorious experience I had at Reading last weekend and would have found impossible to recreate using even the most powerful of domestic sonic equipment.
However this suggestion is something else entirely: rather than paying to encounter the musician and witness them recreate songs you encountered in file format for free you will instead fund the existence of those files being brought about. Not the approach which I had anticipated, but one which seems likely to succeed to me. I had previously considered the similarities between the previous system of artistic patronage that funded the great masters and the situation which a recording artist who’s produce could be claimed for free would find themselves in. But this seems a direct descendant, although accessible to almost any: no doubt musicians who appealed to poorer internet denizens could still ensure that their records were produced, so long as their allure was wide enough. In this fashion the “support” shown by fans is not simply emotional but also financial. Those artists who are capable of obtaining a fanbase (or at least interest) will be the one’s who obtain success, thus meaning that the music industry will be willing to take greater risks.
The use of priority tickets suggests that my emphasis on the importance of live performance was not entirely void and it is unlikely that the limited editions obtainable by investors/fans shall be notable for anything save rarity in a format that will prove impossible to upload.
As such I find the conduct of the company behind this far more pleasing than that of the government, which has backed away from windfall taxes.
Predictable as this should have been from a New Labour government it remains a great pity. The profit made by private companies has been simply phenomenal, yet this has been accompanied (and assisted) by substantial increases in the cost of utilities, crippling many poorer families. To tax their vast wealth and return the portion of it taken to those who suffered in order to produce it, forced to feed the cartel that supply their basic need of shelter, is entirely apt.
If this is deemed a “Raid” being “Legalised” then so be it. The impoverished were raided too and this retribution will bring about their salvation.
“The profit made by private companies has been simply phenomenal, yet this has been accompanied (and assisted) by substantial increases in the cost of utilities”
But the companies making the vast majoirty of the profit from high gas prices - Gazprom, Saudi Aramco, Statoil, etc - don’t operate in the UK, so our government can’t tax them. Meanwhile, the utilities - RWE, EON, EDF, etc - have seen their costs in buying gas on world markets to generate electricity rise even more than they’ve passed onto consumers…
Well surely they do operate in the UK, otherwise how would they extract such wealth from it? Are we entirely impotent to tax them?
If so, privatisation was a far worse policy than I had feared…
It’s got nothing to do with privatisation.
Companies like Gazprom, Aramco and Statoil pump gas out of the ground in Russia, Saudi Arabia and Norway respectively. Gazprom pays large royalties and taxes to the Russian state; Aramco and Statoil are state-owned to start with. They used to sell gas to foreigners who wanted to buy it for $6 per million BTU, now they charge up to $20.
So companies like RWE UK, EON UK and EDF UK are paying $20 instead of $6 to producers for the gas they supply you with for heating and burn in power stations to make electricity. They are seeing profits fall in UK retail, not rise. If utilities had remained in the public sector, then we’d be suffering from exactly the same energy cost problems we currently see, except it’d be the state rather than shareholders who were being squeezed by rising wholesale prices. Unless we invaded Norway and annexed its gas reserves… but I’m not sure that’s the finest of plans.
(the one exception is Centrica, which trades as British Gas, and itself owns a large gas field in the North Sea run separately from its retail gas operations. However, the UK government already claims well over 75% of the money Centrica makes from its gas field as tax, so I’m not sure they’re exactly failing to pay their share…)
So how much money did British Gas make last year, again?