I work at a used book store. Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a great seller, one of the best selling titles we ever get in, in fact. As a result, we keep raising the resale price on the thing each time a new one comes in, and it keeps selling. I’ve never had to mark down a Communist Manifesto for sitting on the shelf for too long. It’s a textbook example of supply and demand in action… and I think that Karl would kind of hate that.
Adam Smith does pretty well. I’d say it’s Marxism, mushroom guides, and beekeeping that remain consistently at the top of the rankings. Then you’ve got whatever fiction is currently hot. For a while there it was Where the Crawdads Sing or Demon Copperhead. Sarah J. Maas is currently enjoying an extended streak of very strong sales. The Twilight series went through a bit of a low ebb for a while there but for some reason it’s been selling quite well again lately. Harry Potter used to be a rock solid seller, but one can see that J. K.'s attempts to alienate her fan base have been at least partially successful. It’s interesting to see the trends develop over time.
Isn’t Killer Mike one of those “black capitalism can save us” type guys anyway? Because that kind of tracks with him.
Maybe? I don’t know much about his personality or politics, but I would have said a lot of RTJ songs are fairly strongly anti-capitalist (“Ju$t,” “Report to Shareholders,” etc.). But maybe that’s just me projecting my own anti-capitalist beliefs on their lyrics.
Honestly at this point that’s how I feel about most artists in general.
Yeah, as my politics get more progressive/radical, it’s gotten to the point where I either have to listen to stuff that’s almost explicitly apolitical (mostly stoner/doom metal songs about death in battle, wizards, and weed work pretty well) or else I actively avoid reading about the artists so I can pretend they’re more progressive than they are.
I just accept that all humans are flawed and don’t allow myself to worship artists in any capacity. They’re no better or worse than the rest of us, and most of them are educated in music, not politics, theory, economics, etc.
If you go in expecting them to suck, it’s a lot less shitty to find out they suck.
Fair. I try to take that approach, too, but I still don’t like the cognitive dissonance of knowing someone I respect as an artist is a piece of shit. I can ignore it a bit if they evolved into an asshole over time (like I can still listen to early Kanye, barely), but I still don’t like it and it colors my appreciation of their work.
Oh yeah, there’s some stuff that’s just too far and too awful to be able to ignore. I’ve never really been able to enjoy any Louis CK or Dave Chappelle comedy for a long time now, for example. CK being a sex pest and Chappelle being an outright asshole to the trans community is just too much to swallow to even bother with em.
I work at a used book store. Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a great seller, one of the best selling titles we ever get in, in fact. As a result, we keep raising the resale price on the thing each time a new one comes in, and it keeps selling. I’ve never had to mark down a Communist Manifesto for sitting on the shelf for too long. It’s a textbook example of supply and demand in action… and I think that Karl would kind of hate that.
Okay but what about the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith? I doubt its comparable but id assume ya guys move some copies entirely because of EU4.
Adam Smith does pretty well. I’d say it’s Marxism, mushroom guides, and beekeeping that remain consistently at the top of the rankings. Then you’ve got whatever fiction is currently hot. For a while there it was Where the Crawdads Sing or Demon Copperhead. Sarah J. Maas is currently enjoying an extended streak of very strong sales. The Twilight series went through a bit of a low ebb for a while there but for some reason it’s been selling quite well again lately. Harry Potter used to be a rock solid seller, but one can see that J. K.'s attempts to alienate her fan base have been at least partially successful. It’s interesting to see the trends develop over time.
For the Twilight one there was a bit of a piss take renaissance on YouTube for a bit. Probably folks reading it to see how bad it is.
I was just thinking about this last weekend when I heard a Run The Jewels beat on a TurboTax ad during an NFL game.
Isn’t Killer Mike one of those “black capitalism can save us” type guys anyway? Because that kind of tracks with him.
Love his music, not so much a big fan of him personally or his politics.
Honestly at this point that’s how I feel about most artists in general.
Maybe? I don’t know much about his personality or politics, but I would have said a lot of RTJ songs are fairly strongly anti-capitalist (“Ju$t,” “Report to Shareholders,” etc.). But maybe that’s just me projecting my own anti-capitalist beliefs on their lyrics.
Yeah, as my politics get more progressive/radical, it’s gotten to the point where I either have to listen to stuff that’s almost explicitly apolitical (mostly stoner/doom metal songs about death in battle, wizards, and weed work pretty well) or else I actively avoid reading about the artists so I can pretend they’re more progressive than they are.
I just accept that all humans are flawed and don’t allow myself to worship artists in any capacity. They’re no better or worse than the rest of us, and most of them are educated in music, not politics, theory, economics, etc.
If you go in expecting them to suck, it’s a lot less shitty to find out they suck.
Fair. I try to take that approach, too, but I still don’t like the cognitive dissonance of knowing someone I respect as an artist is a piece of shit. I can ignore it a bit if they evolved into an asshole over time (like I can still listen to early Kanye, barely), but I still don’t like it and it colors my appreciation of their work.
Oh yeah, there’s some stuff that’s just too far and too awful to be able to ignore. I’ve never really been able to enjoy any Louis CK or Dave Chappelle comedy for a long time now, for example. CK being a sex pest and Chappelle being an outright asshole to the trans community is just too much to swallow to even bother with em.