The other day I linked to an item about how some budding super geniuses in Milwaukee want to privatize water and sewer services. According to Mick, that’s already been done in Massachusetts with predictably disastrous consequences.

Several communities in the area of Central Mass where I used to live privatised their water and sewer systems in the late 90’s only to find 5 years later when the corporations pulled out of their contracts that they had no water system. The corporations that were supposed to maintain the reservoirs and pipe systems collected money from the cities for doing it and then didn’t. When they walked, they walked away from systems that were in such disrepair (as far as anybody could tell, not one single broken pipe or dysfunctional pumping station had been repaired in the whole 5 yrs) that large segments of various towns had to get their water by buying it or hauling it by hand in 10-gal plastic containers from nearby streams or from their neighbors who had their own wells.

It’s the media’s job to warn people about shit like this, but instead we have a media that calmly weighs the pros and cons, and then goes with the cons because they buy more advertising.

Business isn’t like you or me. The public sector doesn’t need a 3,379-word terms of use for Twitter accounts. The public sector doesn’t drown startups in a bathtub of greed for a quick one-time buck. The truth doesn’t change its brand to color coordinate with populist memes. Ownership isn’t about making digital content scarce.

In a free market, creativity reachs out with throwbacks, covers, and the accommodation of orphans every bit as much as new innovations, platforms and memes. The future builds on the past, which is why the future can be dumbed down by using patents and copyrights to retard access to what was.

It doesn’t help that our best and brightest can’t see any difference between a business model based on leverage versus a business model based on free. And it hurts that elected officials put their thumbs on the scale for ignorance and profit at the expense of our planet.

Mike Masnick did the math and based on the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case, a pirated copy of Guitar Hero should be subject to over $7 million in fines. That’s based on the fine Jammie got hit with, a fine of $80,000 per song. This new business math has led me to mentally reprice some of my favorite albums (plus one other). Here they are, as priced by the RIAA:

No longer in stock, $1,o40,000

Widely available, $1,920,000

Culturally ubiquitous, $1,360,000

An alt masterpiece, $800,000

A seminal work and a bargain at $480,000

Absolute garbage, $1,360,000

The science of business: Britney Spears’ Greatest Hits is worth three times more than Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue because it has three times more songs on it. I’m not sure how closely the playing times match, but at most there’s half again as many minutes of music on the Spears’ disc.

Such is the logic of the marketplace when government allows copyright to set prices in defiance of actual value. This is the same logic that lets politicians raffle off basic services to the low bidder while knowing full well they’re balancing the books with money borrowed from a future debacle.

The water concerns me, the music not so much. Schlubs like Jammie Thomas-Rasset who have jobs can be forced to overpay for their sins. Out of work bums like me with 70,068 songs in iTunes (I’ve been slacking), face no penalty because any attempt to take us to court would make the recording industry into a national laughingstock. Do the math: $80,000 x 70,068 = $5.6 billion dollars.

I’ve got about $50 in the bank right now, and about $25 in laundry change on the dresser. I guess the RIAA will just have to trust me for the rest. No clue how much I owe for illegally copying these album covers to my site but artists and photographers aren’t half the dicks the music people are.

I just hope the RIAA never finds out about the other 100,000 songs I haven’t loaded into iTunes yet….