[Fmpro] Letter to the Editor Local 47

[Rick Blanc]

The following is a 'letter to the editor' that I sent to AFM Local 47 a month ago.  So far it has not been published but perhaps in the next issue of the Overture.  At any rate here it is unedited.
To the Editor:

Why do people who generally think of themselves as 'progressive' cling to a sclerotic, backwardlooking status quo, and insist on its preservation? 

Because they are invested in the status quo, regardless of its downside.

Partisan considerations notwithstanding, Americans -- excluding socialists and communists -- agree that market economies engaged in relatively free trade (the original definition of liberalism) seem to provide the best solutions to the challenges faced by populations everywhere. The mobility of the marketplace is the key principle.

Regulatory and interventionist regimes are common components of markets. Careful scrutiny as to their efficacy is required and these regimes must evolve as circumstances and context evolve. 

The Musician's Union practices and promulgates an out-of-date philosophy of market intervention, in this writer's opinion, and is, as a result, ineffective in today's marketplace. The AFM seems to be quite effective organizing labor in Seattle and Prague, but less so among its own members.

Producers will work wherever they choose and no amount of union posturing or selective enforcement will change that.

Actual progress for working musicians, which would put food on more musician's tables and shoes on their kid's feet, will require actual change: primarily the restructuring or demolition of the power structure. Union reform is not possible, in my opinion, because steps toward reform would systematically dismantle union power. The alternative to union reform is dissolution, which I believe is already underway and inevitable. 

The current union structure is beneficial only to a limited number of members, while making political drones of the rest of the rank-and-file. Those enjoying the benefits have a strong incentive to preserve the benefits they enjoy, a dynamic typical of power structures. So why the loyalty of those not benefiting from the current cosmology? Why not step up utilization of local recording capacity, for example, without union interference? 

We may be musicians and artists, but some of us are also nationals, capitalists, patriots, autonomous and fair-minded individuals, who won't be dictated to by a politburo that is either unwilling or incapable of modernizing itself.

The AFM announced it would no longer tolerate union members engaging in nonunion production. Rots o' Ruck! The AFM is racing to the precipice, waiting for the next generation to ask the only relevant question: "Who needs these guys anyway?"

Rick Blanc

Member, Local 47