Last Didactic post, I promise

It’s not a pleasant thought that you might only get one original idea every ten years, but the concept of entropy has been forcing itself on me with horrible regularity recently. A propos the continuing lamenting about audio-visual proliferation, and the fragments of lesser evil which it engenders. I wondered if the subject matter of these micro-niche, narrowcast ‘shows’ will not inevitably tend to the highest levels of entropy. By which I mean, in order to make capital circulate faster and faster, the gain control will have to turned up past 10, accelerating (downhill) as the segments get cheaper, shabbier and more pervasive. And I do mean necessarily, not accidentally. That is, there would be no way to subvert any of these genres by introducing high level content. It would not fit.
And, if I want to follow the train of thought to its logically absurd end, what are the two human activities which are the most entropic? Violence and drugs. Seen as commodities. The smaller step from this is to take violence and drug use to their ultimate forms – war and addiction. Can there be any co-incidence, then, that as crime grows, it escalates precisely to (gang) war and providing for addictions. Creating and not quite satisfying them.
As a person’s basic needs can be met quite easily, new needs must be constantly fabricated, whether this is in the almost benign form of fashion (clothing, style or music) or more damaging forms like ‘lifestyle’.
It came to me last night that the wholly approved and above board science of marketing is of the same ilk. Recently I worked on a recording for a marketing company, and learnt about ‘lifetime value’ of a customer. The concept being that it is no longer enough to sell any one object to any one customer. You must factor in the cost and publicity of your product against the total lifetime ‘utility’ of any one customer to your company. Now, this is not ‘customer loyalty’, and even, if necessary, the company could totally change its products. What we have here is an exact replica of an efficient parasite adapting to its host. Look at cars. Any American adult can be expected to purchase a car at some time in his or her life. That may represent a ‘profit’ of $5,000 to $10,000 to GM or Toyota. But that same adult will probably buy, rent, lease of otherwise consume 15 to 20 cars in a lifetime, ideally going further and further upmarket each time. That’s the aim. So, assuming you can hook an individual, you are looking at almost a quarter of a million dollars ‘lifetime value’ to your company. For that, you can indeed throw in some 0% financing and silver wheel trims. Not so sinister? Now, apply this ideology to pharmaceutical companies. What’s the value of a lifetime addicted customer then?
The next obvious detail is that merchandise which lasts can fit into this system. Things must of necessity fall apart and need to be replaced. Obsolesence.

So, a root cause of all this, I have been asked to help out with a project which involves old rock stars and ex-addicts giving ‘don’t do it’ speeches to teenagers at risk. I’ve always found such things unbearably sanctimonious and ineffective. Then I thought, why not get some of those rockers still actively abusing substances to openly endorse them? A kind of ‘kids get smashed’ campaign. I thinkthe utter lameness of these rich slobs would put more people off drugs than any well-thinking campaign. The wife says I’m wrong, but it’s just a thought. I cite Sid Vicious’ ‘interview’ while on heroin in ‘The Filth & The Fury’ as prima facie evidence in my case. Your Honour.