In a recent blogpost, economist Brank Milanovic riffs on a theme from the end of his book, Capitalism, Alone. Capitalism facilitates (and arguably even requires) the progressive commercialization of activities and relationships that, before, happened as part of general social interaction, e.g., within or between families, and between friends.
In this post, he focuses specifically on the arts. The advantage of capitalism, Branko says, is that you can only make a profit if you satisfy someone else’s need: this aligns, as if by an invisible hand, the profit goal of a producer with the personal needs of their customer. This is fine and dandy when it concerns reproducible goods like shoes: someone who correctly predicts the need for shoes will make money, and a lot of shoe-wearers happy with exactly the shoes they want. But it is not so fine when it concerns the production of art: an inherent, essential quality of art is its uniqueness, its individualism, and its authenticity. An artist who correctly predicts the public’s preference in literature, films or paintings will, just like the successful cobbler, become wealthy, but there will be no authenticity in her art.
He contrasts the films made by Steven Spielberg, various possible endings of which were tested with different audiences to establish the most popular ones with Franz Kafka’s diaries…
