Much of the problem being identified here is not a matter of waste, but rather a question of taste. I read a very good biography of Kafka by Reiner Stach that described how dominant literary culture was in Prague at the time. Writing seemed closer to contemporary athletics. Bankers, businesspeople, and upwardly mobile people often encouraged their kids to be writers first, and practical secondarily. The endpoint for sports is more obvious than the endpoint of writing, or music, and even especially game design, but a culture-wide appreciation and perception of the medium in question could better triage candidates for cultural survival. Does the author of this newsletter also think there are too many pick-up basketball games vis a vis potholes? I agree with others that have made the point that this has more to do with the lower barrier of entry to market.
Our culture is dominated by those entities that can make massive capital investments and industrialize culture. For a variety of complicated reasons, I would point this out as the issue. It is rather the successful entities, and not the apparent failures, that produce the problem of over saturation. I am forgetting the name of the movement, but contemporaneous with Schubert's lifetime, there was a kind of at home arts movement. The bourgeois were still not spending their free time filling potholes, but no one was aspiring to a salaried post in the grand facade of entities with immense capital reserves and an industrialized capacity to influence culture. If we were less atomized and a greater appreciation of our cultural expression was common, I believe it would be easier to come to grips with talent, or our lack thereof. It is no sin to lack talent. It only makes talent all the more incredible.
Our culture is dominated by those entities that can make massive capital investments and industrialize culture. For a variety of complicated reasons, I would point this out as the issue. It is rather the successful entities, and not the apparent failures, that produce the problem of over saturation. I am forgetting the name of the movement, but contemporaneous with Schubert's lifetime, there was a kind of at home arts movement. The bourgeois were still not spending their free time filling potholes, but no one was aspiring to a salaried post in the grand facade of entities with immense capital reserves and an industrialized capacity to influence culture. If we were less atomized and a greater appreciation of our cultural expression was common, I believe it would be easier to come to grips with talent, or our lack thereof. It is no sin to lack talent. It only makes talent all the more incredible.