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Bubblegum Crisis

Red vs Yellow: Why Democracy Doesn't Work

So some of you may have been watching the news and happen to come across a bunch of Thai people in yellow shirts ranting on microphones and blowing whistles. They are shouting mantras of “down with corruption”,and  "out with the government" etc, etc. And you probably, don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. 

At first glance this might seem, like a good thing. I mean generally speaking, when we think about protests; rebellions and people wanting to overthrow the government, we picture the down-trodden, the common-man, the masses, who despite all odds, rise up against the elites who are abusing and manipulating government institutions. And while normally that may be true, in this case things become a bit more complicated.

Where things get strange is that the current regime in charge is in fact representative of the class we normally associate with rebellion (i.e. the common-man). Or at least in so much as they were voted into power. The “rebels” on the other hand, are members of the elite, upper and middle class, who represent only a fraction of the total population. They are the ones taking to the streets and demanding the immediate dissolution of the Shinarwat (Red Shirt) administration. 

So what would drive these busy elites to bust out the bongo drums? Well it all comes down to corruption. Yes corruption, you know- bad shit. Okay, g?Now you’re on the side of the protesters.  

Well if that wasn’t enough for you, then maybe, “you no understand Thai politic.” But if you need more then so be it. The yellow shirt party has asserted that prime minister Yingluck is a puppet controlled by her exiled former prime minister brother, Thanksin, via skype connection in Dubai. And therefore, her main goal as prime minister has not been to initiate any form of independent agenda, but rather to remove the  charges against her brother so that he may come home and reclaim his fortune. 

Thanksin and his sister Yingluck

And while that may be true, and it may also be true that Thaksin is a, piece-of-shit sociopathic,megalomaniac- hellbent on manipulating Thai politics for his own gain: it is not, in any respect, unique. What is unique, however, is a country with such a ubiquitous taste of corruption to suddenly say “so and so” politician has somehow crossed the line. One has to wonder where is this line exactly, and perhaps more specifically: what exactly Thaksin has done to set himself apart from from a culture which seems to have conformed to the very principles he is being accused of. 

In terms of answers, the only responses have been vague, non-specific criticisms. Most recall only his record of criminality, or personal attacks such as declaring him worse than Hitler. As far as an articulated, specific, and well contextualized explanation as to what it means to be considered ‘corrupt’ in a society infused with corruption has yet to emerge.

But absence of an answer doesn’t necessarily leave the whole situation to be forever steeped in mystery. By contrast, the fact that there is no answer says a lot about what could be the real motives of the anti-government movement could be. How could those who are led by one of Thailand’s most corrupt politicians (Suthep), in corrupt way: killing police, blocking voting, and  illegally occupying public roads; possibly justify their quest against corruption? They aren’t, which is why what they are truly saying: is Thailand just isn’t ready for democracy. 

And this is not to be taken as reinforcement of the Yellow shirt ideology: that the red shirts are just to uneducated to make a logical political decision", but rather that Thailand is just too undeveloped for a democracy to function properly.

When we consider Thailand’s economy for example, we have to understand that it is still, in many ways, a feudal state with a very small number of people controlling a very large portion of the country. This makes for an extremely lopsided demographic and one that would make legislating for extremely difficult. With no middle ground, politicians must decide if they are to serve the masses, or the elites (each other). Just because the media throws around the word,  "middle class" in regards to who’s protesting,  doesn’t mean they are not referring to the “average class”. Because the “average class” in Thailand, is actually lower class, and the “middle” is the upper elite. And so with such a small number of people controlling such a large sector of the country, trying to institute policy which meets the demands of the masses and the elite is exceptionally difficult. 

A middle class Thai citizen at a yellow shirt protest. 

Historically,  however these imbalances were of no concern, as the monarchy relieved the country from the burdens of the differing opinions.  However, once power was transferred to civilian government, an onset of differing demands began to emerge. People wanted to see changes be made, changes that many of the traditional elites believed would come at a cost to themselves.

To make the situation worse, the tension between classes has been exacerbated by massive amount economic growth over the last two decades. New tycoons have born, eager to compete with the old guard; as well as a 'have not’ class that feels they haven’t got their fair share of the pie. 

 Up and coming entrepreneurs like Thaksin recognized the lack of representation among the rural poor and knew that he could utilize them as a base. These people were the largest demographic of Thailand yet their needs had been ignored by the ruling elite. Therefore if he was to win an election he only needed to provide a few basic populist policies to get them on board. And so he gave them subsidies on their rice farms, cheap health insurance and Thailand’s first minimum wage. And again, not because he cared about them, but because these traditionally neglected people were key to him passing the old guard.

The old Thai elite.

So Thaksin gets into power, he starts making new deals with new people, and all those guys you might see in the Thai version of Boardwalk Empire are left out in the cold.Coincidentally they decide to point out that corruption is now illegal. And so a few protests and a coup later- he’s gone. Except the game doesn’t end there . Thaksin may have been run out of town, but the people who elected him haven’t. And they are still demanding some form of representation, be it Thaksin, or someone else. 

And so the situation is doomed to repeat itself. Because nothing has changed. The vast majority are still working poor and  still demand representation. On the other side, the old guard still retains influence over property, the army, and institutions. As long as this social architecture remains intact, so will the cycle of election-rebellion-coup. The masses will vote for the politician they think best reflects their needs, the old guard will perceive this as detrimental, and then will use their power to have that leader removed and replaced with a more “suitable” one. An election will then follow where the elite will lose- as perhaps only to inevitable consequence of being elite and the exclusivity that very title implies,  and then they will be replaced with a populist leader again. 

Yingluck, knowing full-well that she retains support of the largest demographic, has agreed to dissolve her parliament and hold elections again. Of course she’s done so knowing full well that she will win the election. The Yellow shirt party has of course recognized this too and declared it “unacceptable” as the election will be “mired in corruption” (vote buying) even though many have reported the yellow shirts bought more votes than the red shirts in the last election. And instead have posited that the new prime minister be chosen by a group of un-elected elites via shady-ass privy council. 

If the election goes through there is a strong possibility of the army intervening and forcefully kicking out the regime. This will probably be met with perhaps even crazier resistance from the Red shirt party. Buildings could get burned down, and more people will inevitably be killed. The cycle will then repeat itself again as the next election will undoubtedly reach the same conclusion.  

The reason such an democratic tragedy is occurring in Thailand, and  not other countries, say perhaps the the United States, is because the United States has strong institutions and a high median income. Although the wealth gap may actually be greater in the United States than in Thailand, the difference in standard of living is not. Policies designed for middle class Americans are not that far from the elite making for overlapping interests more possible. However with the American middle class eroding, the new middle class could be lower class, and we might find ourselves in a similar situation. 

Americans currently enjoy a relatively large middle class, however if levels continue to drop, America could also find itself destabilized. 

Other countries like China just said “fuck it” completely and don’t even have elections. Well they have elections, but only if you like voting for different people with the same platforms. Much in the same, the sensitivity surrounding the relationship between the urban elite and the agricultural poor is something better left unexplored.  If the agricultural poor had true access to democracy, the amount of changes they would demand would shake up to the entire system. One can’t imagine 1.1 billion people being happy living on $5-10 per day.  So it is much better for the elites to keep the people wrapped up in an authoritarian fist so that current conditions can continue. 

Thailand, unfortunately, with its weak institutions and uneven standard of living is not in a position to execute democracy to any desired effect. As long as oligarchs retain the ability to transform the state the very word “democracy”:  "demo" meaning “people” and “cracy” meaning to rule, will continue to be inapplicable. The system will instead be reduced to historically feudal rule with an increasingly demanding lower class.These people will look for help anywhere they can find it, and perhaps like many of the of the have-nots in the world, it won’t come from the most moral of characters. 

Five Things You May Not Know About Thailand

1. Straws: Thai people get straws with every purchase of a beverage. I have even been given a straw with a beer. Very strange. 

2. No dance floors: Yes there are dance floors, but not that many. Considering the plethora of bars and nightclubs, there are really only a few places with legitimate dance floors. Most Thai clubs are a collection of tables where people stand around drinking. 

3. Surprisingly courteous about smoking: Thai people are very courteous about bothering people with their cigarette smoke. Just because you’re outside doesn’t mean it’s ok to smoke anywhere in Thailand. Thai people will often walk quite far from groups of people to stand by themselves when they want to enjoy a cigarette. 

4.“Did you eat yet?” For whatever reason, this is a common question in Thailand. It’s completely meaningless and holds as much value as a question as “how’s the weather; it’s completely small talk. Westerners may often mistake this question as a lead up to an invitation for a meal, but remember, it’s not. 

5. The popularity of the Cranberry’s song "Zombie”.

I have no idea why this song is so popular. You can hear it everywhere, karayoke bars, night clubs, all my students seem to know it. Out of all the grunge rock songs, our out of all the western songs, many of which are far more popular than this one, why do they know it? 

Asian Economics: The Goldilocks Zone

                              

          We have all heard the story of Goldilocks; the blonde little girl who sneaks into the home of hyper intelligent bears and tries their porridge. And we all know how good bear porridge is. So over the course of her meal she finds one to be too hot, one too cold and the last is just right. The story leaves us with a sense that the best things in life are always somewhere in the middle.

This concept of success being rooted in the middle of two extremes is quite common. Astronomers often refer Earth as being in the “Goldilocks Zone” of the galaxy, in that it’s not too far and not too close to the sun.  Buddhism as well shares in this idea with its philosophy of “The Middle Way”, which states that there is something to be gained from staying in the middle of two extremes. 

Whether it was intentional or not much of Asia seems to be benefiting from this principle at the moment. The continent has seen massive advancements in the last few decades, much of which has come in the form infrastructure and urban development. However, in spite of such growth, many Asian nations have yet to fully bloom into full fledged “first world” societies. 

China still has the vast majority of its population living in poverty with 71% of its people living on less that $5 per day. For those unwilling to  do the math that is $150 per month, 1,800$ per year. The glamorous life in Shanghai is certainly the exception, not the rule. 

Similarly can be said for Thailand, one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing economy of the last ten years. Buildings have gone up, airports have been made, high speed metro lines installed but the country as a whole still remains in an overall state of poverty.

An image of the Bangkok Transit System in downtown Bangkok.

This is what is so interesting at the present time.  We know that the eastern economies are rapidly growing, but they have yet to transform into fully developed nations. Western economies, on the other hand, are in a deep recession, but have yet to fully collapse into a state similar to that of an undeveloped country. It almost seems as if both regions are currently locked into a state of flux, a purgatorial phase in the economic Samsara of birth- bubble- crash. Their ascent and decent seemingly locked  in place, as if each were tethered to the other, preventing the counterparts growth and collapse.  

If we were to analyze how we got into this position, it might be fair to say that Western economies are a victim of their own success. As their economies’ grew, so did the requirements to sustain them. Western societies require the support giant armies to secure their nation’s economic interests,corporate monsters, and massive welfare states. Over the years, these systems have become convoluted, lethargic, and  bureaucratic. 

Ergo the inevitable cycle of life and role of evolution. Things get older,  they get disorderly, and ultimately, they fall apart. What comes after is something simpler, younger and more efficient; less bogged down by burdens life inevitably tacks on its creations. 

So according to the capitalist ecosystem, poverty is the soil of the future. It’s fresh soil, meaning its simple and without preconditions. It has no red tape, no strings attached. It is freer and more ready to act, there are fewer rules, fewer bureaucrats and lower taxes. It is, in many ways reaping the benefits of neglect. The western world is a thick forest of activity, where any new life is forced to grow up in the shadow those that came before it. This makes for the growth of new life difficult. How can something reap the energy it needs to grow when the soil has been drained of nutrients and the sun is blocked by all the older, larger life. New life requires open space, fresh soil and access to the sun. Things that you will not find in developed societies, but can in undeveloped ones.  

It can be seen in this picture that the while the forest canopy is thriving, life on the ground is relatively barren. 

So what exactly are the great conditions these third-world eastern societies possess? The first and foremost would be cheap labor. If you’re going to pay someone a job that anyone can do, you might as well do it at the lowest cost. In Thailand, it is still possible to pay workers less than a dollar an hour. This makes for an attractive location for manufacturing industry. Why would Toyota pay a Japanese worker, $15 an hour and provide comprehensive benefits when he can pay a guy 50 cents an hour in Thailand and provide no benefits. 

This treatment also extends into workers rights. Anyone who has ever seen a construction project in Asia knows that there a plethora of safety violations. That’s because safety equipment is expensive and procedures slow down work. So why do we do it in the west? Not because we are nicer people, but because we will be sued out-the-ass a worker gets hurt on the job.  In Asia, there is ultimately no repercussion if an employee is injured or killed on the job. In Thailand, the families of workers killed in construction projects are routinely offered between $800 and $2000 dollars per death. 

There is also an authoritarian iron fist which has the ability to smash through bureaucratic red-tape and conflicting interests. If China wants to build a hydro-electric dam in the place of a village, it merely sends out a government ordinance commanding all local people leave, and then demolishes the village. There are no lawsuits, no historical protections or regard to rights violations. It is merely the interest of the centralized government. When it wants to do something, it does something, swiftly and without resistance. 

This image depicts the aftermath of forced evictions.

This contrasts greatly with the United States where any change is met with a variety of restraints. For a building to go up a myriad of safety standards are to be met, local residents interests are to be taken into consideration, environmental standards are to be applied.

Borimor explains the complexity of American development. 

 It instead must go through the lengthy process of trying to please all the people all the time. Washington, D.C has been talking about extending its orange metro line one stop for ten years and China is set to build the tallest building in the world in three months. 

But it can’t be all bad right? There has to be some reason we have all these road blocks and paper work. Yeah it slows down down growth, but it is meant to control it, right? As should be known, that the definition of uncontrolled growth is cancer.

The idea of what growth means has divided human thought down the line for centuries. That perspective being that we are a community first, and a business second. We are the United States of America , not the United States of America Inc. We see each other as neighbors and friends first, than customers and clients.

And it is for this reason that we attempted to harness the growth of our nation during the early industrial age. We put in laws eliminating child labor and unacceptable work conditions. We instituted minimum wage and organized labor. We decided to interfere with the natural forces of economics in order to improve the lives of people living within our community. 

What came later was both a blessing and a curse. As Marx predicted, many of our industries packed up and moved to “greener pastures”. Limits on the methods of productivity incurred lower profits thus causing the mass exodus of much of the nations manufacturing industry. In order to maintain the profits, similar conditions would also need to be maintained. Industries required places where you could still make people work 16 hours a day with no overtime, where you could make them sleep in a dorm room inside the company, or keep people in a mental state of such unhappiness that they required suicide nets to keep those fed up with the conditions from killing themselves and bringing unwanted attention to the company.

Image of ‘suicide nets’ at Foxxcon factory in China

So we sacrificed. We gave up our manufacturing industry because the growth it was bringing wasn’t worth it. It was soul-stealing, much in the same way that slavery was.  We gave it up because we knew growth like that would end up killing us as a society, and as i mentioned  before, if you believe in the principle, we are a society first and a business second. 

Enter the East  a place where much of life is a throw-back to the early 20th century. And in the current time, it pays to be like the past. Or at least at 8-9% per year. While the West in struggling to find solid ground in its own white paper economy, the east over there actually making shit. And it doesn’t get lost and funneled away in an intangible mist of stock exchanges. It goes into the workers hands every month. Real money, made from making real shit. Not service induced money sitting printed off of a pile of debt. The people of undeveloped world are not in debt because they live in poverty, because they go home and sleep in rickety houses with large extended families. Because they don’t all own cars and big houses with HD TV’s. It stays in their hands and out of credit cards. 

And doesn’t life like that sound kind of shitty? Well according to the modern consumerist perspective it certainly does. And there used to be a worse trade-off than that. It used to be that countries which had access to the manufacturing sector were denied access to the luxuries and infrastructure provided by the educated western class. However this is beginning to change. 

Enter the Goldilocks Zone, and what I believe is the driving force behind Asian growth at the moment. Asia is currently in a position where they have enough money to gain access to the Western Educated class while at the same time having access to cheap labor and authoritative control. This means they are in a position where they have the best of both worlds, right in the middle, where conditions are just right for growth. 

An example of this can be seen in the Thai metro rail system, or what is referred to as the BTS (Bangkok Transport System). The BTS was constructed using technology completely independent of Thailand. Thailand did not require a highly efficient education system which could produce engineers capable of designing such a project. All it needed was enough capital to contract those who did. In this case a Canadian engineering company. Then with the pain of a third-world country trying pay a first-world price out of the way, Thailand could go on to supplement the costs with its cheap labor and authoritative control. This would in-effect, make the project proportionately affordable in comparison to what it would in a western state. And as the current rate of development shows, it seems quite a bit more affordable.

So the affordability (cheap labor) of these projects attracts investors, which then initiates the rapid growth, but how long will the porridge stay hot? When these projects get built they will require a host of white collar positions to manage the operations. Meaning that every industry dependent on low wage labor, is by virtue of its own growth, creating a class of higher paid educated people to inhabit the country. People who will raise the standard of living, forcing those currently living below that standard into a welfare state, thus eliminating the poverty rich soil which gave birth to such development. 

Thailand’s prime minister, Yingluck, has already taken action instituting Thailand’s first minimum wage, A hefty ten dollars per day. One would expect this trend to continue as Thailand slowly follows the path of other developed nations. How this will affect the Thai economy , however, is not completely known. One can be sure that the minimum wage requirement is now an added cost to the manufactures, who will now, rightly or not, raise the price of their products.

One can already see the effects of such legislation in Thailand’s pork industry. As the costs of doing business are increased so does the cost of the product. The government then, faced with this rising cost, is then forced to answer an uncomfortable question, “Is the raised cost of pork in accordance with the standard of living as a whole?” According the Thai government, it was not, therefore prompting them to make the decision to buy  from the heavily subsidized corporate farms of the United States. This then enrages the pig farmers as they are unable to sell back to their own people and will soon to be without jobs.  

Thai pig farmers protest US pork imports.

This could be a sign that in the future, the porridge might begin to cool down . As a nation develops and it’s poverty begins to shrink, as does the benefits that poverty brings to the economy. Capitalism will always view poverty as a “good deal”, so when the poverty goes away, the good deal will too. 

So what will these once poor countries do without the paradoxically advantageous conditions? Well the West handled it by utilizing education as a means for training high-end service based economies. However, as of late, we’ve seen many of these “high-end” services become diversified and outsourced for much lower wages. Technical positions such as graphic design, web design, software engineering can now be replicated at a much lower cost in other countries. The big innovative ideas of Silicon Valley hold strong, but for how long? And what about the future of these service based jobs in Western economies. With advances foreign education countries, now basic level service jobs in the technical fields can be supplied at much lower costs, thus dragging down western wages. Add to that a population of people who are accustom to a much lower standard of living than their western counter parts. 

So could it be that the destiny of the East and the West is to in fact pull each other inward, closer to some middle ground; a flat world? A place between the hot and the cold. And if that is in fact the case, we must then ask, is such an evolution even be a good thing? On the one hand you have a large group of people who are now lifted out of poverty, but are unable to achieve traditional western standard of living; and on the other, you have a generation of people who have in the past achieved a high quality of life now suddenly finding their livelihood’s diluted and their standard of living dropping. From the macro point of view the latter would seem more attractive, but you’d have to ask yourself- as an individual, what you would be willing to give up. 

That maybe the case, or it may not. It may be that Asia is only experiencing a fleeing rush of success. And that instead of continual growth causing a shifting of the world world scales, the growth is merely washing over them like a wave on the beach. And like a wave, the benefits they are experiencing will eventually flow back into the ocean from which they came. 

The wave itself is coming in the form of modernity, and supported by, the principle that the smallest numbers are always easiest to double.  And upon hearing that you might think, “hey, Sherman Newbalance, owner and creator of Newbalance shoes, what the fuck are you talking about?” Well what I mean is, If I gave you an apple, one apple, and I said go double the amount of apples  it would be quite easy. Unless you live in some appleless universe, in which case I feel quite sorry for you. And if you were to continue doing this, it would remain quite easy until the numbers eventually get quite high. Doubling 200 apples will not be so easy, and so forth.

So if we were to equate this in forms of development we might look at a village in rural China. The village is without any major infrastructure and only has minimum modern conveniences such as running water and electricity. If you build a highway, a train station or run a pipeline through it, you may have effectively doubled the size of that village’s GDP. However, if you wanted to continue doubling the size, the efforts would become increasingly difficult, as the projects would require exponentially more resources.

So when the IMF make prophesizes about a countries growth based on their current growth rates it is not exactly to be trusted. Extrapolation based on a microcosm of information should not be applied so broadly regarding the future of a state. It’s the same as a doctor predicting  the growth of a human based on how it appears in it’s infancy. If people did that they would have said you’d be 20 feet tall by the time you turned ten. 

The image displays the rapid growth of humans during their infancy and the drop off as the child matures. If one were to project the child’s growth based on the first two years, they would be giants by the time their 20. 

So after the low hanging fruit is picked, after the untouched resources have been molested what will be left over?  Well perhaps a state similar to that of the West. Except unlike the West, Eastern states like China and India, have 1.3 billion people.For the effects of deindustrialization to take place in populations this large, the consequences could be devastating. Unemployment equals uprising. 

And Asia seems to be quite aware of this fact as a mind-blowing amount of over-employment can be seen all over the place. You can walk into any 7-11 and routinely see 5 workers standing around with one cashier. Restaurants often have twenty employees standing around one or two tables. 

As the minimum wage increases, as technology downsizes the need for human labor; Asia, with it’s large populations and uncomfortable levels of poverty seems particularly vulnerable to these effects. What will these countries do when it’s too expensive to hire 20 waitresses to stand around at a restaurant? What will these countries do when it’s cheaper to buy automated checkout machines than pay cashiers? Unemployment is the root of rebellion and the ability for many of these regimes to stay in power is anchored to their citizens ability to stay busy.  

So with such large numbers of people being brought into a market place that seems increasingly less dependent on a human work force, societies will have to tread lightly to ensure that progress does not necessarily devolve into mere, change. Ahead lie many challenges brought about by the seemingly positive demographic shifts. The once ignorant, peasant societies of feudal Asia have now become educated and integrated into the global system. They have allowed their manufacturing base to serve as a catalyst into the service based industry creating a middle class. However, it is not yet known whether this growth will continue or whether it’s even permanent. 

Hipsters

Some people say hipsterism is a sign of a  cultural Apocalypse. It shows that absolutely every artistic avenue has been explored and there is nowhere left to turn for originality. Every idea has been industrialized marketed and sold back to you for twice the price.

This idea may be a bit harsh but there is certainly evidence for it when you consider places like Urban Outfitters or other boutiques. These stores are designed around the concept of a New York thrift store, except instead of you going around rummaging through tons of bullshit to find one good shirt, they do. This way you don’t have to worry about maintaining a certain cultural sensibility or curiosity to find a cool shirt. Being hip is as easy as walking into your local shopping mall with a fat wallet. 

But some people do go to the thrift store to buy clothes. What does this mean? Are they cool? Does buying a shirt at a discarded cloth item store mean anything other than exactly what it is? That you are able to recognize a cool shirt amidst hundreds of dumb ones? Does that make you cool? What is so great about looking cool?

Some people would say that looking the part is all that matters these days. Young people born into a world devoid of new culture are left unable to create an identity for themselves. Therefore the only way to distinguish themselves from the crowd is to be trendy; to make sure they are always doing something when it’s “In” and be sure to have dropped it when it gets “old.” As soon as it appears their creative statement is no longer separating them from the herd, it must be dropped and replaced with something newer. 

There is certainly evidence of this too, as there is no set hipster look. It's appearance is one of constant change, constantly borrowing from other cultures; skating, surfing, punk, prep, hippies, Rastafarians, gays and era’s like the 80’s 90’s, 70’s etc. There is no set statement but fusion of different subcultures combined into trendiness.

But in the end does this really mean anything? Is this hatred of hipsters merely the the product of the hipsters own recognition of itself? That it is a hipsters natural instinct to hate anything that can be put in a box, including itself. Or could it be that there are just people out there who like tho listen to different music and be fashionable, and that we are all over-thinking the entire concept? 

I think to understand this concept we must go back to see where it came from. The hipster was created in the 60’s when a split began as to what was “hip” and what was mainstream; hence the term “hippies”. This led to the creation of lifestyles and art that wasn’t understood by mainstream society. And it was the lack of understanding by the mainstream that made the art so pure. The Beatles were just awesome. That’s all there was to it. They didn’t need to be marketed or produced in any particular way, they just were a band, they formed and they played music and people loved it. Nobody new how to make the Beatles because The Beatles were the first of their kind. 

It was only after years of seeing these cool new artists on TV and magazines did people began to understand what it was about them that made them so popular. They looked so cool on the cover of those magazines, singing on stage, sitting on couches half paying attention while eager journalists who just don’t seem to under them nervously ask questions about what they think. About everything.

But after awhile Record companies did start to understand them. And through that they began to control the concept of rock n roll. They knew which artists were selling and which ones weren’t. “So you want to be a star? Where are your cool clothes? Where are your tattoos? Where’s your ‘fuck the man’ attitude?" 

Soon looking like an artist seemed to be almost more important than the art itself. And i think here is where much of the hatred for hipsters comes from. Many of them are merely a victim of marketing. They grew up idolizing the rock stars, seeing them in magazines, music videos etc,  and from this exposure they began to think, ” Hey, I don’t need to actually do any hard work and produce cool artwork that is unique and new, I just need to dress like one. That way everyone will respect in they same way my