JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Brian Austin Whitney Blog Friday, January 12th, 2007

Herbie,

I don't agree that everyone's money should be divided up equally. Why reward people who can't be bothered? And why take away the carrot for people to be innovative and driven? If we don't have the motivation to be able to one day make a lot of money and get a cool car or house or keyboard/guitar or to be able to raise our kids with lots of toys or travel or whatever it is that someone might want to do as a reward for hard work, then most will simply not do anything (especially those jobs that no one would naturally want to do). That's always been the downfall of the communist nations. Sure.. some people will work no matter what. I've been doing it free for 9 years. BUT... when you rely on a tiny number to do ALL the work (and let's face it.. I enjoy what I do.. I wouldn't show up if I were digging ditches or ringing a register etc..) while enough of everyone else doesn't bother doing their less rewarding jobs because they get paid no matter what, society collapses and no one gets paid. In poor nations, the process is so unlikely that anyone can financially succeed that most folks just don't bother at all. Not because they're not ABLE to if given a chance (because I believe almost all humans are capable of doing almost anything if given hope and opportunity), but without that potential of success, there's little hope at all. For a system like ours to work, you must have a small number of mega successful people. And the reason that a few make sick amounts is that those around them are hoping to succeed on their coat-tails. Since they'll never have that talent, they hope to "buy" that talent and go along for the ride. But we all know that as often as not, mega deals flop and those looking for the easy way out fail hard. That opens up opportunity for everyone else to step in.

As for numbers of songs.. ironically I've already heard all the 50,000 tracks I have, but unlike the music awards stuff, I did it over many years. A lot of it is stuff from my old Record, Tape and CD collections. Some is from work I've done for some media companies and others are just from stuff I've bought on line to date. I am not even counting the JPF tracks. I will likely start listening to that stuff again in a few months. (I need a break from it to get a fresh perspective). The fun thing about a big music collection is they are like little markers for your life. It's nice to be able to pull something from any era you've had and instantly get an audio assist to recall that time. = )

Brian