the most potent symbol of the year gone by

In Athens, the Greek web mag OUGH says, the supermarket cart was the iconic image of 2011. Not because people are out shopping, but because they're out recycling. An enterprising recycler can earn 20 to 30 Euros a day -- $25 to $38 -- and, as a colleague in Greece suggests, many folks with good jobs struggle to pull in much. It's hard work:

The hunt for scrap and the miles that these people walk every day to get it, is not shown in any economical transaction, no invoices are kept, no receipts are issued, just warm, black money is flowing not only to the lower levels of the system but also at the later stages of the reselling process.  For the smallest junkyard to the biggest, again no records are being kept, the paperwork is barely typical, while at the same time, there is a million-euro turnover that reaches up to the steel industry.  We are talking about huge sums of money, the material prices skyrocket from the time the collectors turn them over to the moment they reach the industrial melting pot to be further used again in constructions.  The story is not simple at all, and it bears no relation to what comes out as an image.

But it's also how people survive and thrive in hard times.

The Yippie Way of Ownership

The whole whoopee cushion of words over the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act got me thinking about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

Those two were the most pop-culture-savvy leaders of the group of agitprop rebels who promoted ‘free’ as a lifestyle a generation ago—the Yippies. But, even for them, it was not easy to say exactly what free meant.

Abbie’s first publication, a 1967 pamphlet called Fuck the System, proudly proclaimed the principle of free and open access: “Nothing in this manual is copyrighted. Anyone may reprint this information without permission. If you paid money for this manual you got screwed. It’s absolutely free because it’s yours. Think about it.” (Abbie later disclosed that, through a middleman, the government of New York City had actually paid the printing costs—proving that, then as now, ‘free’ sometimes requires that somebody else pick up the tab.)

In 1968, a year after Fuck the System came out, Abbie published Revolution for the Hell of it. He dedicated the book to “FREE.” He published the book under the pseudonym ‘Free.’ But the book wasn’t free: the hardcover price was $4.95 and the copyright was held by The Dial Press.

When Abbie published his 1971 primer on the art of getting stuff for free, he called it Steal This Book—but he didn’t really want readers to steal it. How do I know? Because he copyrighted Steal This Book in the name of Pirate Editions. Why copyright a book that tells you how to get things for free? Because Abbie was accused of piracy himself. His collaborator and all-around researcher, Izak Haber, called him out for stealing the work without compensation. (Though Haber is acknowledged in the book as a co-conspirator, he didn't feel that was enough, and you can read his account, “An American Dream: A True Yippie’s Sentimental Education or How Abbie Hoffman Won my Heart & Stole ‘Steal This Book,'” in Rolling Stone magazine of September 30, 1971.) Copyrighting the book in the name of Pirate Editions hid the fact that Hoffman had been forced to give Haber a cut of the profits.

Jerry, meanwhile, offered his own spin on ‘free.’ “Money is Shit,” he opined in his 1970 tome Do It! “Money is a drug, Amerika is a drug culture, a nation of crazy addicts….Burning money (and credit cards and banks and property) is an act of love, an act on behalf of humanity,” In Yippieland, he preached, “there will be no such crime as “stealing” because everything will be free.” Rubin acknowledged his collaborators on the title page, noting the book was “Yipped by Jim Retherford” and “Zapped by Nancy Kurshan.” Do It! was copyrighted, though, in the name of the Social Education Foundation—a non-profit. Who could possibly be against Social Education? The Internal Revenue Service, that’s who. One year after the book came out, the feds revoked the tax-free designation, asserting the only charitable work the foundation did was to funnel money to a single truly needy fellow named Jerry Rubin.

So how do Abbie and Jerry shed light on SOPA and PIPA? This way: Abbie and Jerry were right that free is a great and desirable and valuable thing. But they were also chameleons. They advocated ‘free’ when free suited them. And they advocated pay when pay was to their benefit.

This is one of the points that Jaron Lanier made in a New York Times Op-Ed on Thursday. Lanier suggested that we’ve become linear in thinking about these issues rather than acknowledging that copyright and copyleft are both a mixed bag. Addiction to copyright puts big bucks in the hands of big corporations like the ones that make and distribute movies. But copyleft—which offers free usage—puts the big bucks in the hands of big companies that assemble private data and aggregate eyeballs to sell advertising. It’s the bad guys fighting the bad guys. “We in Silicon Valley undermined copyright to make commerce more about services than content—more about our code than their files,” Lanier wrote. “The inevitable endgame was always that we would lose control of our own personal content, our own files.” Translation: we're all fucked.

But, as the money being spent on this battle shows, there are some who aren't fucked. A lot of people say the web is like a commons. Maybe. But it’s a commons where a select cadre of companies are making tons of money.

SOPA and PIPA are apparently no longer being fast-tracked, but the brouhaha is still simmering. The New York Times reports that the Motion Picture Association of America—one of the most ardent supporters of the bills—now wants to sit down with the tech companies, perhaps at the White House. At the same time, the government has upped the stakes by taking down Megaupload, one of the ‘locker services’ that allows users to upload unrestricted content (interestingly, Megaupload recently settled a copyright infringement lawsuit brought against it by the porn studio Perfect 10—though the terms of the settlement were not revealed.) The feds claimed that Megaupload was profiting massively from its position as a drop box for piracy and asserted in the indictment that the firm and its owners and subsidiaries had more than $175 million in cash stashed in 64 accounts in banks around the world. (BTW: can anyone tell me how the government has the standing to bring a case of copyright infringement? And how the government can shutter megaupload without having proved that the company’s done something wrong?)

I confess. Stealth of Nations has a small c in a circle with my name next to it on the back side of the title page. This may seem odd in a book that extols certain kinds of piracy. Indeed, I once owned a well-thumbed copy of Steal this Book—until a friend borrowed it for good. And when Yipster Times, the Yippie paper, published the calling card numbers of various federal agencies and massive corporations, I sometimes used them to make cross-country calls. Charging it to The Man. At the time, nothing felt freer.

Still, I’m glad that that little symbol is in my book. Not because it prevents piracy. Rather, I see it as a printed reminder of a labor of love that consumed years of my life. I trust that people will honor that--that other publishers won’t use my words without my permission and will include my name when they cite stuff I reported. Yes, I want people to buy my book. But the truth is that I can only wish that Stealth of Nations gets pirated and winds up on a site like Megaupload. That would mean it was a success, that it had reached a truly wide audience--and, since nothing will get pirated if there isn't demand for it, that I had made enough money on it that I didn’t need to worry about the lost revenue.

SOPA and PIPA are ugly blunt instruments that will limit free speech and have impacts far beyond the realm of copyright. But we can’t trust Google or Wikipedia to fight this battle either. Indeed, just thinking about Chris Dodd and Sergey Brin sitting down in a room with Obama’s Chief of Staff Jacob Lew and banging out a deal is bone-chilling.

Is there a lesson in all this? Perhaps it’s this: Don’t trust anyone under 40. Don’t trust anyone over 40. And don’t mess with Mr. In-between. Or, as Frank Mankiewicz told Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72: “Keep your own counsel. Don’t draw any conclusions from anything you see or hear.”

Yippie!

identity economics

Kate Meagher, in her 2010 book Identity Economics chronicles the recent history of the informal garment and shoe manufacturing clusters in Nigeria's Igboland. It's a fairly pessimistic look at the possibilities for these merchants.

She writes, "If the travails of Igbo informal producers have revealed anything, it is that even the most dynamic and well established informal enterprise networks lack the ability to assert their productive interests against the distruptive agendas of local officials, let alone to defy national or global economic and political interests." Meagher calls for strengthening the capacity of informal operators while leaning on the government to find ways to work with informal merchants -- thus allowing them an opening to turn the identity economics of tribal social networks into something that can develop across regions and transcend traditional divisions.

But, in a short epilogue, she adds a bleak new prognostication: locally funded criminal networks and state neglect/persecution are conspiring to drain the life from this hope. "Despite claims to promote informal enterprise, the devil's deal of state neglect and clientalism continues to triumph over any genuine commitment to productive support and political voice within the informal economy. This reckless policy neglect is rapidly squandering the valuable informal institutional resources that could offer a path out of the unemployment, disaffection and criminality engulfing the Nigerian south-east."

When mere survival is a revolutionary act

Zimbabwean street vendors reflects on the battle to survive in this article from the UN's Inter Press Service. Though perhaps 90 percent of working-age Zimbabweans are unemployed, the article notes that "police and council officials move around the city in trucks arresting vendors who sell goods without a licence and confiscating their merchandise. The raids are often violent as the vendors have now organised themselves and are fighting back. On Jan. 11 the Harare city centre came to a standstill as the police and vendors fought, with vendors throwing stones at the police."


As Tafadzwa Nyamupfachitu, a 27-year-old mother of six-year-old triplets who earns a living for her family by selling fruit, cigarettes and cell phone airtime, told IPS, "We fight the police because they are the ones who started attacking us. They took our goods to eat or sell at their houses when we also looking to survive. We are angered by this because we also want to survive. We must enjoy ourselves in our country of birth freely. If we don’t survive that way there is no life for us because we cannot become criminals or turn to prostitution for a living."

It's not just the Mugabe reign-of-terror. All over the Africa--from Zimbabwe to South Africa to Liberia to Nigeria to Tunisia to Egypt--and almost all the countries in between, street vendors are being harassed and threatened. Why is daring to make a living such a revolutionary act?

show me the money

Oddly, the most sensible declaration has come from an academic: "A really determined effort to stamp out corruption would itself be massively destabilising," Stephen Ellis, a historian at the Africa Studies Center at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Reuters about the general strike that has paralyzed Nigeria in the week since the oil subsidy was ended. "It can only be done gradually."

The free market absolutists at The Economist magazine may have been in favor of lifting the subsidy immediately. But this showed absolute ignorance of the mechanics of the subsidy. As Alexandra Gillies, of the Revenue Watch Institute, writing in the Huffington Post, noted, the oil subsidy was itself a form of official corruption:

In 2011, the subsidy on gasoline cost the government over $9 billion, more than the entire federal government capital budget and about double the subsidy's cost in 2010. Global fuel prices did not, of course, double during this time period. Nigeria's tab skyrocketed thanks to the costly, corrupt system by which the country produces and imports gasoline, as well as rising interest charges and insurance premiums as government failed to pay fuel importers on time. By the end of 2011, Nigeria owed importers over $4 billion. Relying on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the national oil company, the government devised complex, opaque methods for covering import costs, including swap deals where crude oil was awarded to commodity traders in exchange for gasoline and other refined products.

Nigeria's Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), has asserted that the fuel subsidy was hidden from the budget:  "While 250 billion naira was allocated for fuel ‘subsidy in 2011, by the end of October 2011, over 1.3 trillion naira has been spent. We have information to the effect that the subsidy claim rose to 1.5 trillion naira by December 2011... Having found that no supplementary appropriation was submitted to the National Assembly by President Goodluck Jonathan, we would be grateful for information on who authorised the release of the sum 1.26 trillion naira, which was paid by the Central Bank of Nigeria.”

Gillies wants the subsidy to end, but pointed out a conundrum: "High oil prices and increased production should have made 2010-2011 the most profitable years yet for the Nigeria. However, the country's economic health worsened. Budget deficit estimates exceeded $8 billion in 2011 and, over the last three years, foreign reserves dropped by 40 percent and public debt doubled." She said this "paradox of robust revenue potential and declining fortunes" could only be solved through comprehensive reforms.

But, in simple political terms, you can't ask the people to suffer in order to pay the big corporations (Well, I guess you can -- we did it in the U.S. in order to bail out the "too big to fail" banks -- but it hasn't made people's lives any better.) The Nigerian government contends that gradual lifting of the oil subsidy won't work because "investors will be discouraged" and "smuggling and rent-seeking behavior will continue." But the profiteering's going on anyway and the so-called investors are the companies who've been profiting from this clandestine system for years. A friend in Enugu tells me that some petrol there is going for 300 naira per litre -- double what the supposedly free market price is.

If there is to be a comprehensive solution--as Gillies wants--everything has to be transparent. How are all the deals currently working? Who's making the most money? How much has corruption siphoned off from the federal treasury (Nigeria's former government anti-corruption crusader Nuhu Ribadu has estimated that boodling cost the country $7.6 billion a year for the past 50 years and a recent report in Nigeria's Vanguard Newspaper asserted that the country's congressmen and senators are being paid more than $1.5 million a year--an amazingly high amount.)

Until all the dirty financial linen is aired out in public, it's no wonder the people are skeptical. The strike shouldn't stop till the cronies come clean.

invest in life

You, too, can invest in something infinitely more valuable than profits. It's a strange new commodity called life.

As The New York Times reports, Copenhagen's Christiania squatters, famed for their anti-free market ways, are selling shares in their community so they can buy it from the government. What do you get for your investment: "a symbolic sense of ownership in Christiania and the promise of an invitation to a planned annual shareholder party." As one squatter calls it, "ownership in an abstract form."


According to the Copenhagen Post, after striking a deal with the state this summer, Christiania residents now need to raise 76.2 million kroner (almost $13 million) to buy the majority of the area’s properties and an additional six million kroner to rent adjoining green spaces. The first 43 million kroner (or approximately $8 million) is due on 15 April 2012. Several prominent people have purchased Christiania Shares, including Margrethe Vestager, minister of the economy and interior, and Mogens Lykketoft, president of parliament. The shares are available for purchase online at www.christianiafolkeaktie.dk.

no line gets a $50 fine

That's the policy towards food trucks in the nation's capital, as described by Forbes magazine. "Over the past week, District officials have been visiting food trucks and telling them that beginning on Jan 13, 2012, they will be ticketing food trucks that don’t have a line formed in front of them." And this in a city where the profusion of wide avenues, monumental federal buildings, and vast landscaped malls conspire to ensure that there's no commercial frontage on many blocks--so the mobile vendors are often the only place to get your lunch.

Ah, but DC is just following in the footsteps of the municipalities that were ticketing kids with lemonade stands.