Monday, March 09, 2015

Life is Unfair at Creative industries


Postal utopia. Early in the 20th century, three thinkers – Twain, Lenin, Weber – shared a model of paradise: the German post office

pop songs life on the pop charts is short, even brutish. Maybe that’s why a strain of sadness has long run through the Songbook



Creative industries are becoming a key driver of economic growth globally. In the US, value added for arts and culture accounted for $698 billion (4.3%) of GDP and employed people in 4.7 million jobs in 2012, according to a report by the Department of Commerce. In the UK, the creative industries helped the economy by contributing an all-time high of $76.9 billion (5%) in 2013, according to a report by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
On a slightly different scale, the New Zealand creative industry contributes more than $3.6 billion annually to the local economy. The biggest employer is the film and television sector, likely helped by the fact that The Hobbit was in production when the statistics were collected in 2011.
The thing about the creative industry is that it sits at the crossroads of the arts, culture, business and technology; it provides product, export capability, employment and national recognition, which are all things that lead to greater investment; and its products have the ability to improve the quality of our lives from a very human perspective. The development of the creative industry relies on the generating of new ideas, innovation and the tenacity to bring things to life, and in my opinion, if the creative industry is growing, that’s a good sign of human progress.

Patricia Marino is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo. She works in ethics, epistemology, the philosophy of sex and love, and the philosophy of economics. She also has a blog, The Kramer is Now, full of amusing and insightful thoughts about philosophy, culture, economics, politics, and various aspects of life The Kramer is now