Good New Podcast

From Matt Miller at KCRW.

His last two guests are Jared Laneir and George Packer, both guys with interesting-sounding new books about the end of the American middle class.  Lanier talks about how the internet destroyed the middle class and Packer does a more broad social history type of book about how American institutions are crumbling in front of our eyes and how uncertainty and anxiety reign all around the country.

The more I read and think about these things, this notion that "information wants to be free" is actually one of the great heists in the 21st century -- Google and Facebook seizing and aggregating private (and valuable) information -- and essentially stealing the future from working Americans.  To begin, look at musicians, porn stars, journalists, filmmakers, and all those who work in surrounding support positions to those jobs -- and you'll notice the same trend -- jobs disappear while everyone steals the fruits of the labor over the internet.  And the quality is slowly dying as the experts get old and retire and there is no one to nurture those who show promise or enough gatekeepers to wade through the crappy material to select the good from the bad.