One Size Doesn't Fit All

My problem with politics is the same as my problem with music. It's the same; whether we're talking about government agendas or industry standards, hipster pretention or neocon moral pretention, it doesn't matter. Everyone is always so certain that if something works for them, it must in fact work for everyone. It's this "one size fits all" mentality that has destroyed both the economy and image of pop music.

Let me break it down. I'm not an objectivist libertarian. I firmly believe in the power of the individual, and I think everyone has his or her own idea of what society should be, of what ideal music is, of what's moral and immoral. To me, the only things that are decidedly moral are what is private to oneself and what is consensual between persons. The rest is up for debate. Abortion? Good luck finding any universals there. I think it's an individual issue. Others think it's murder. The death penalty? I think the justice system leaves too much room for error and the government needn't make life or death decisions regarding citizens. Others (oddly the same group that feels that abortion is murder) think it's justified. Violence? I think it's only justified in self-defense. Others (usually the same group that feels that abortion is murder and the death penalty is not) think it can be used to promote a greater good.

Okay, those are the landmark left vs. right issues. On these issues, I side with the left. What about the trickier issues? What about things like welfare, health care, the War On Drugs? Many will argue (on either side of the aisle) that these issues are too touchy, too impersonal, too widespread to be left to the individual.  Penn Jillette, magician of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! fame says it nicely.

Penn might come off as a dick, and he's obviously biased and relying on a few ad hominems, but he's right. I'm not talking about fringe safety net welfare here to help the select few that are on the streets (partially because of the government, but that's another thing). But saying health care is a right means taking away a different right from a laborer. Health care isn't free, and doctors go to school, work long hours, and take a lot of risks. Saying health care is a right implies obligations on the part of others to provide it. And if health care, something extremely expensive, is a right, then why not food and water? Where do you draw the line? A government that intervenes so far as to say "food and water is a universal right and we can provide it" is preposterous and the result would be disastrous (and Soviet-esque). The truth is, you can't know everything about everyone. You can't assume what works for you will work for everyone, and you can't assume what should work will work. Systems are more complicated than anyone can understand from their own personal standpoint, as Penn points out. The problem with health care is that there is no one universal set problem-and-answer. We can't know what everyone needs, what will work for 350,000,000 people simultaneously. Laws can't and will never make everyone happy. So don't make them. Fair doesn't exist, because everything is completely subjective and open-ended. Affirmative action becomes just as one-sided as the racism it fights. Feminism becomes so extreme that it too is sexist. We understand what works for ourselves and sometimes what works for our closest friends and family. But no one is better at spending my money than me, and no one is seemingly worse at spending my money than the government. Look at the government. They're in mountains of debt. When they've clearly mismanaged public money to this extent, why would anyone want to give them more? Universal health care sounds so nice and benevolent. But leave it to the individual. And those willing to work for others who cannot support themselves do exist, and they will help.

One might wonder, how does this even apply to music? Easily. Turn on pop radio and 90% of it sounds the same. You can align certain songs on the Top 40 and they will progress simultaneously. Not only that, but their tones and timbres are the same too! And yet I meet very few people who love Top 40. Most people love pop, whether it's indie pop or pop punk or baroque pop or noise pop. But try and compare those 4 subgenres and you'll find some overlap in structure but monumental differences in tone, timbre, character, substance, instrumentation, etc. Some people like angsty pop. Some people like experimental instrumental pop. Some people like ambient pop. The problem with the music industry is it sets itself up on something that is, in their eyes, seemingly universal. It's not, and they were doomed to fail! The Internet opens up individualism and democratization in music and now whole new genres are popping up all the time. It's stupid to be pretentious about music taste; everyone likes something different. Your taste is not better than my taste, and vice versa. And I certainly don't want to hear music that's manufactured to try to satisfy as many peoples' tastes as possible. You end up alienating everyone. But hey, if you do like Top 40, that's cool too.

JUST LEAVE IT TO THE INDIVIDUAL.