[Fmpro] Economics

[Rick Blanc]

Mark,

Your description of conditions at ASCAP paints a dramatically bleak scenario.  Musicians and artists sometimes get into these situations by virtue of their own sort of good-natured trusting impulses, and they are taken advantage of.   Similar problem with unions.

I don't presume to know how to solve it, but it seems like there are really only two avenues: 1) the membership itself, and whatever organizing might be possible among it, and 2) government, at various levels.  I know government has been approached before apparently without success, but that doesn't mean efforts in that direction shouldn't continue.  A political solution may take time and sustained effort but what other recourse is there?

Unfortunately confrontation with power often means exposure to personal risk, as you said.  Ultimately if power is not challenged it continues by default.  I suppose revolutionary change can occur by evolution but it would be very slow and the exception.  A champion in Washington would be huge.

RB