RIAA Watch
The New Morality™ of Capitalism

Agribusiness, apparently, is learning some marketing strategy from the RIAA. Decimate agribusiness? Hell, since corporate farms moved into Missouri just 10 years ago, sixty per cent of all family farmers in our state have been run out of business. That's not a typo. Six out of ten! In just one decade. Almost all the survivors are under contract to large conglomerates, working for slave wages well below the minimum hourly wage "enjoyed" in such professions as French fry specialist and dish washer. Hourly wages don't apply to farmers. They are subcontractors. As one former cattle farmer told me, "I used to make $50 on one steer. When it got to the point where I made $50 on the whole herd, I gave up."

Deborah and I live in a farming community. Deborah is in the unique position of having a husband (me) who used to earn a living retailing music and being surrounded by neighbors who used to earn a living farming. She's not buying into "this asshole's" version of morality.

Family farmers aren't the only thing vanishing from the landscape. There are 1300 fewer independent record stores this year than there were last year. This has nothing to do with copyright infringement anymore than farms failing because they don't pay royalties to some conglomerate that has a monopoly on a hybrid seed. In fact, it is corporate control of intellectual property that is the cause of all this misery.
[more]