{The Middle Classes [continued]}[23rd August 1990]

[Redbook7:227-228][19900823:1142b]{The Middle Classes [continued]}[23rd August 1990]

19900823.1142

[continued]

This problem* actually seems to be getting worse, not better: Mrs Thatcher’s** insistence on financially profitable market-led Science is paralleled by the Murdoch/Reed type of insistence on financially profitable market-led Publishing.

The problem is that the Market cannot, of itself, invent anything new: it can only buy and sell things that exist, in actuality or at least within its own knowledge and experience. *** In order to develop in quality, not just in quantity, it needs to have a continual stream of new things presented to it directly, for its choice. 

Intermediaries are not good enough: they tend to lead to the distortions of selection outlined in the current series of articles by Geraldine Norman and Edward Lucie-Smith in the Independent Weekend on Saturdays.**** In effect, such intermediaries act as censors: this is so whether their motivations are primarily academic or financial. They become rationers of quality: not because they limit its height, but because they reduce its breadth, and therefore reduce the choice available to the market.

*[See last previous entry]

**[UK Prime Minister 1979-1990]

***!

****ref: Geraldine Norman & Edward Lucie-Smith, the Independent Weekend, Saturdays 19900804; 11; 18: {?} 44{; 25: 43,}

04: ‘The good, the Bad & the Pollocks’;

11: ‘If it sells it must be good’;

18: ‘The powers of the taste makers’.

{25: ‘Artists create, Dealers decide, People purchase’}.

[continued]

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