SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY. IT IS ALL ABOUT RANKISM.

J.D. Phillips MSW LCSW

Recent interdisciplinary research lines up well with one of my lifelong suspicions. This research asserts that there is a subconscious fundamental philosophical divide that grounds most policy debates. People who value equality over all else come into conflict with people who hold that social status hierarchies and inequality are functionally justified. (Talcott Parsons anyone? In sociology we call it Functionalism vs. Power Conflict Theory)
When we approve of a social policy proposal, we like it because it seems to confirm our personal bias about social stratification; pecking orders. We evaluate policy proposals against how they strengthen or weaken our system of rank. The left favors national health care because it attenuates inequality. The right opposes it for the same reason. They fear that equality is dysfunctional because it might curb productivity by reducing rewards for achievement. Rankism is THE classic political divide.
Social Dominance Theory feels like common knowledge, but it’s more precise than that. Mountains of experiments confirm the hypothesis. How the individual voter values equality is the fundamental political divide. We subconsciously evaluate almost every political issue against our side of this controversy.
We think that we are arguing about taxes or the culture war, but we are either supporting or opposing our present system of social stratification. Some of us want more equality, and some of us want less. This political evaluation happens on a subconscious level. No Republican voter is going to tell you that they oppose equality. They don’t even know that they do. We all do, to some extent. Once they realize what Social Dominance Theory is showing us, they might be more immune to propaganda.
My motivation for this blog is to propose that high school and college educators should cover Social Dominance Theory as an efficient way to make progress on political literacy.
Social Dominance Theory draws from several social sciences, and (gulp), biology. Biology is the third rail for the left. There is no quicker way to lose a reader than to sound like the social Darwinists of the past. I’m on the left. I cursed biological evolutionary psychology in college, just like everyone else. It is only now that I have been able to integrate recent anthropological advances and modern evolutionary psychology into my world view. Since I know why I opposed evolutionary psychology in the past, I feel qualified to help others understand where we all got hung up on this very touchy subject.
Two things cause trouble for evolutionary psychologists: The Naturalistic Fallacy and the difference between using biological information to argue about humans as a species vs. using biological knowledge to theorize about differences between individual humans. Those are the two big mistakes that caused early and some modern evolutionary psychologists to get into hot water by saying things like black people are less intelligent. Saying that it’s natural and functional for men to dominate women was not a big hit either.
Arguments about human nature have always been oversimplified. Are humans brutes or not? The archaeological evidence has arrived. Both sides are right. Early humans were brutes, but we are evolving from a brutal species to an egalitarian species. A feminist should not be upset by this. There are biological causes of the domination of women but cue the naturalistic fallacy here. Just because something is “natural,” that doesn’t mean we have to support it. And evolution is about change. Change is natural too.
Evolution is not just about physical characteristics. Cultural values evolve too. Humans are rapidly moving away from a core philosophy that values competition to a core philosophy that values cooperation. The competitive philosophy that once served us well is now obsolete. The old core philosophy that drastic inequality is necessary for survival is no longer convincing if it ever was, but cultural evolution without a conscious intervention is slow.
We are in a period of surplus now. There is no need to scratch and claw each other over bread, but cultural evolution is slow when left to what we used to call natural selection. We can use social science to predict where we are going and skip the long waiting period for natural selection to get there. We know that we are becoming more cooperative. One in four hunter-gatherer humans was killed in a violent confrontation. Here is a graph of war casualties over time. Here comes my argument for progress.

The two world wars created a temporary philosophical pessimism that is only now beginning to pass. Progressives went underground in the 80s. It is necessary to zoom out on the timeline of history to see the tremendous progress that we have achieved in the last two hundred years. Two hundred years is nothing compared to how long modern humans have been alive. It was common before WWI for people to believe that war was morally positive.
Progress is about more than using the physical sciences to discover ways to make consumer goods cheaper. Moral development is even more valuable. Social science is gold, and we value the physical sciences for better reasons now. We value the physical sciences for what they can do to accelerate social progress with advancements in medicine, public health, and clean energy. We no longer favor concentrating the physical sciences on competitive motives like war and empire-building. We are evolving morally.
Women in the U.S. could not vote until 1920. U.S. Senators were not elected by the popular vote until the seventeenth amendment passed in 1913. Until then, state governors appointed them. Senate seats were openly bought and sold by wealthy oligarchs. Unlike now, popular opinion considered selling congressional offices to be reasonable and morally acceptable. Slavery was legal and thought morally acceptable less than two hundred years ago. I could go on and on with examples of real progress that we take for granted. Here is a partial list from one of our political parties: These are not in chronological order.

Democrats Fought for Social Security (F.D.R.)
2) Democrats Fought for Medicare (L.B.J.)
3) Democrats Fought for Medicaid (L.B.J.)
4) Democrats Fought for Welfare Benefits (F.D.R.)
5) Democrats Fought for Civil Rights (L.B.J.)
6) Democrats Fought for Unemployment Insurance (F.D.R.)
7) Democrats Fought for National Labor Relations Board (F.D.R.)
8) Democrats Fought for 8 Hour Work Day-5 Day Work Week- Work Place Breaks & Overtime Pay (F.D.R.)
9) Democrats Fought for Workers Compensation (Woodrow Wilson)
10) Democrats Fought for Americans with Disability Act (101st Democratic Congress – over G.H.W. Bush veto)
11) Democrats Fought for Holiday Pay(F.D.R.)
12) Democrats Fought for Medical Leave Act (Bill Clinton)
13) Democrats Fought for Prevention of Child Labor (F.D.R.)
14) Democrats Fought for Minimum Wage Act (F.D.R.)
15) Democrats Fought for Work Place Safety (OSHA) *** (Nixon)
16) Democrats Fought for Affirmative Action as it relates to Racial Discrimination (J.F.K.)
17) Democrats Fought for Women’s Rights (L.B.J.)
18) Democrats Fought for Tax Fairness (Platform Issue)
19) Democrats Fought for Veterans Pay & Benefits (F.D.R.)
20) Democrats Fought for Consumer Protection / Consumer Bill of Rights (J.F.K.)
21) Democrats Fought for Gun Law’s / Background Checks to prevent felons from getting Weapons (L.B.J.) (B.Clinton)
22) Democrats Fought for Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights (Barack Obama)
23) Democrats Fought for Funding Our Schools (L.B.J.)
24) Democrats Fought for Grants for low-income people to attend college (L.B.J.)
25) Democrats Fought for Environmental Regulations – Clean Water Act / Clean Air Act (Dems Override Nixon Veto)
26) Democrats Fought for Financial Regulations keeping Wall Street Wizards Accountable (Dodd/Frank – Obama)
27) Democrats Fought for Affordable Health Care for Everyone (Obama Care)
28) Democrats Fought for Hate Crime Legislation (Matthew Shepard) (Barack Obama)
29) Democrats Fought for Children’s Health Legislation for 11 Million Children without Health Care (Barack Obama)
30) Democrats Fought for Voting Rights Act (L.B.J.)
31) Democrats Fought for National Voter Registration (Bill Clinton)
32) Democrats Fought for Largest Deficit Cutting Plan in History (Bill Clinton)
33) Democrats Fought for Clayton Anti-Trust Act (Woodrow Wilson)
34) Democrats Fought for Securities & Exchange Act (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
35) Democrats Fought for National School Lunch Program (Harry Truman)

Social progress is real. The physical sciences advanced faster than the social sciences because the physical sciences are more straightforward than the social sciences. (Cue the philosophy of science of Thomas Kuhn) Math never changes. A sociological theory is harder to test than the theory of relativity.
The social sciences are also held back by a dominant, wealthy class of oligarchs who fear social sciences progress. They can slow it down but not reverse it. The needs of the many will win out in the long run.
Back to the central thesis: When people argue about contemporary social policy issues, they are subconsciously serving and confirming their beliefs about social stratification. If a voter believes that a society stratified by a stable pecking order and not a lot of upward mobility is a good thing, that will drive all of their votes on all of the other issues. If you believe that too much equality will weaken a nation, then you will vote against affirmative action and find another rationalization as an excuse. If you think that a highly stratified society is dysfunctional, you will vote for affirmative action and use some other rationalization besides rankism to justify your vote because the process is subconscious.
Social Dominance Theory describes the problem. The solution is political education that includes Social Dominance Theory and political psychology to expose the core philosophical dispute and address it directly. Once a politically literate voter knows that it’s all about rankism, political arguments can focus on the fundamental philosophical divide instead of dancing around wedge issues with blunt rhetorical force and political spin that involves deception.
When confronting a voter about an issue, ask them to think about what they believe about social rank. When the contradictions emerge, you know what to do. Plant that little seed that will grow in the future after they have processed the cognitive dissonance. They will never agree with you on the spot, but the seed will germinate. It takes time.
Where does rankism originate? Social scientists disagree, but they all agree that it is a powerful force. Most agree that it is evolving away. Most social scientists are egalitarian. The others commit the naturalistic fallacy of believing that just because something is “natural,`” it must be good. Rankism is natural, but it is evolving away. Rankism is primitive, just like slavery.
“Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put on this earth to rise above.” That is a quote from “The African Queen” and my favorite image of the naturalistic fallacy. Hepburn told Bogart to stop drinking whiskey. Bogart said drinking is natural. You can’t mess with Katharine Hepburn.
My opinion is that the drive for social stratification used to be hard-wired and is now soft-wired. It comes solely from the drive to reproduce and throw our genes into the future at the expense of other people’s genes. Natural selection. Genetic competition on a subconscious level. Being natural does not make that right or even a good idea. Even the things that used to be necessary for the health of the species have changed.
We still select mates for physical characteristics that make good hunter/gatherers. We will soon pick compassionate mates, not ruthless money chasing sociopathic males and cold women with large breasts. We will not be attracted to people who hoard wealth that they will never need because we will understand that such primitive behavior comes from insecurity. A modern society with a strong safety net reduces fear and uncertainty. Hoarding no longer feels necessary. After Capitalism, excessive competitive behavior and hoarding will result in a referral to a psychiatrist.
We have a long way to go. An excellent strategy is to teach political literacy and include Social Dominance Theory. You can graduate from H.S. without social science proficiency, but you can’t graduate without a lot of other mandatory stuff that is less important. More social science is needed. Physical science does not have to suffer.
J.D. Phillips MSW LCSW 2020

For more information on S.D.T., read “Social Dominance Theory,” by Jim Sidanius.

The Origins of the Build a Wall Trick.

All political education should start with the hard fact that there is an adversarial relationship between labor and capital. It’s so easy to prove. You can do it with history or statistics, but you can also do it with a simple Socratic question. Ask any worker is they believe that corporate profits and employee wages go up at the same time? Workers know that higher salaries cut into profits. That’s an adversarial relationship. Point out how management behaves. If management believed that workers and owners were in the same boat, they would raise wages as high as possible and expect soaring profits. People know that the relationship is adversarial. They have been smothered with so much propaganda about a rising tide lifting all boats that they ignore what they already know. We don’t go into a salary negotiation expecting the employer to persuade us to accept more money. We know the truth.
When republicans play the fear of immigrant labor card, Democrats need to have the guts to say that the adversarial relationship exists. After that is established, it’s easy to channel the anger away from globalized labor and onto globalized capital, where it belongs. Republican spin doctors have convinced the Democratic leadership that the adversarial relationship is the third rail of progressive politics. Until the Democratic leadership has the guts to say that recognizing the adversarial relationship does not make you a communist, the Republican spin machine will continue to laugh and push us to the extreme right.
The blind spot around the adversarial relationship was how Republican leaders were able to outflank Hillary Clinton on the left. Working-class voters heard populist talk from Trump and went for it. Trump could not have done that if working-class Democrats knew that there is an adversarial relationship between Wall Street and Main Street. To understand the history, the opposition of Republican vs. Democratic platforms, a voter has to understand the adversarial relationship. All Republican tactics fail after that.
Why do you think Republican strategists deny the adversarial relationship so vigorously? All they have to do is say, “Marx said that” and Democratic strategists run for cover. Point out that corporate executives believe that Marx was right about the adversarial relationship. Look at what they do, not what they say. Companies pay the lowest wages that they can, not the highest. They don’t invest in their employees. They squeeze every bit of labor out of them for the smallest possible wage and benefit package.
Democratic strategists get fooled into haggling over single issues when they should be going after the Achilles Heel of the Republican Party: The adversarial relationship. Republican strategists are evil geniuses. They make up controversial issues that they have no interest in at all as a trick to deplete Democratic resources with diversionary tactics. People read the morning news, see something ridiculous, and say, “OMG! They can’t do that.” Then they spend valuable organizational resources chasing after a wedge issue like a dog chasing a tennis ball. There are only so many hours in a week. We can’t put all of these fires out while neglecting the primary source of the fire, the adversarial relationship between labor and capital. Please DNC, stop listing to “professional strategists” and lobbyists who have no real interest in exposing the source of the problem.
https://firewalleconomics.com/my-book-firewall-economics-political-literacy-for-democrats/

The real reason that far more college graduates become Democrats.

As more and more people go to college, they become politically literate. They vote with the Democrats because the Democrats historically defend the moral high ground. That is a good thing. We want our new graduates to hold the door open for more upwardly mobile people who will come after them. Democrats vote for laws that help working-class people get an education. Republicans do the opposite.
The more education that the voter has, the more likely the voter is to vote with the Democrats. That is true. Republican spin doctors have used this statistic to paint the Democrats as the party of the elite. It works. What Republicans do not do is distinguish between educational achievement and economic achievement. There are many measures of upward mobility.
Point number two: Teaching real political literacy in HS is taboo, but not in college. College is about making decisions rationally, not emotionally. Weak Republican spin does not work on people who can do that. Educated people read history. They know that the Republican Party has never been the party of working people. Educated people don’t fall for trickle-down economics. They don’t fall for appeals to racism and fear of immigrants. They know that Republicans use wedge issues and identity politics to get working-class voters to vote against their own political and economic self-interest. They understand that a universal public safety net helps everyone, workers, and owners.
You don’t have to go to college to become politically literate. Libraries are free. Here is my free book on political literacy. It has 100,000 hits. Change is here. We can do this.

Blue Collar Firewall Economics-Political Literacy for Democrats-Click the link.

The real reason that far more college graduates become Democrats.

As more and more people go to college, they become politically literate. They vote with the Democrats because the Democrats historically defend the moral high ground. That is a good thing. We want our new graduates to hold the door open for more upwardly mobile people who will come after them. Democrats vote for laws that help working-class people get an education. Republicans do the opposite.
The more education that the voter has, the more likely the voter is to vote with the Democrats. That is true. Republican spin doctors have used this statistic to paint the Democrats as the party of the elite. It works. What Republicans do not do is distinguish between educational achievement and economic achievement. There are many measures of upward mobility.
Point number two: Teaching real political literacy in HS is taboo, but not in college. College is about making decisions rationally, not emotionally. Weak Republican spin does not work on people who can do that. Educated people read history. They know that the Republican Party has never been the party of working people. Educated people don’t fall for trickle-down economics. They don’t fall for appeals to racism and fear of immigrants. They know that Republicans use wedge issues and identity politics to get working-class voters to vote against their own political and economic self-interest. They understand that a universal public safety net helps everyone, workers, and owners.
You don’t have to go to college to become politically literate. Libraries are free. Here is my free book on political literacy. It has 100,000 hits. Change is here. We can do this.

Blue Collar Firewall Economics-Political Literacy for Democrats-Click the link.

Click the blue link at the bottom for the full-text PDF file or just read it here. Leave a comment below.

How can we call our party the Democratic Party when we can’t elect the party leadership? Hang on. This one is tricky.

The party leadership has enormous power, and we can’t remove them when they promote Corporate Democrats. The potential for corruption is frightening. It’s probably not even illegal for Republicans to throw money at the DNC. Both political parties are private organizations, and party insiders can help or hinder individual candidates. Party leaders are gatekeepers who are not elected. They can’t make a president all by themselves, but they can stop a popular candidate from getting the Democratic nomination.
The DNC locked out Bernie Sanders in the last election. Who has the authority to investigate ballot stuffing and dirty tricks in primary elections? The DNC is a private club. I remember waiting all night on the results from a state primary race where Bernie and Hillary were just a few votes apart. At 3AM, Hillary suddenly got a few thousand votes and “won.” There was a lot of trickery in that primary.
The DNC runs the primary debates. They just announced that Elizabeth Warren doesn’t get to go head to head with the other front-runners in the first debate of 2019. Think of the power of that authority. The DNC is appointed by insiders. They can set the agenda. They can make sure that Democratic candidates don’t argue about Wall Street. They can focus on wedge issues like the Republicans do when they want to divert attention away from economic policy.
Over half of the Democrats in Congress are Corporate Democrats. All of the Republicans and half of the Democrats take dark corporate money. The Democratic Party can’t cleanse itself until the corporate wing is removed from the Democratic leadership. Public opinion has moved to the left of the Republican Party AND the Corporate Democrats. 75% of the voting public is locked out. The Republican Party is imploding into Fascism, but we can’t get real Democrats elected. The DNC is still blocking FDR Progressives like it’s 1980 when anything to the left of Reagan felt risky.
This is all just a rusty truckload of more proof that real Democracy has yet to evolve. It’s coming, but there are lots of important political decisions that are still shielded from public opinion by representative Democracy.
You can’t really vote against going to war. You can’t vote directly on who runs the Federal Reserve. You can’t vote directly against the appointment of a supreme court judge. If your wrong voting senator has 6 more years left before his/her next election, all will be forgotten by then. You can’t vote on who gets to run for president in a primary. That’s decided in back rooms by political professionals.
Even in a primary election, we can only vote for pre-selected candidates. We have to choose from the menu presented to us. 23 Democrats are running right now. Many of them are unknown. The DNC has the power to manipulate the situation to help Corporate Democrats, and we can’t change the leadership of the DNC, no matter what they do.
Many of those 23 Democratic candidates are probably secretly funded by Wall Street. That’s what I would do if I were a corporate billionaire. With no more enforceable limits on campaign contributions, the Koch Brothers can slip millions under the table to dozens of phony candidates. That chips away at the base of a legitimate front-runner.
If a Progressive like Bernie Sanders is running a close race with a Corporate Democrat like Joe Biden, 6 long shot candidates with 2% of the vote can sink the legitimate Progressive candidate in a hurry when the phony Progressives sound authentic. 6 x 2%=12%. Unknown candidates can talk the Progressive talk, strip votes away from a real Progressive, lose, and melt away. We would never know if they were Progressive or not.
Only proven known candidates with a progressive voting record deserve our trust. It’s easy for an unknown candidate to declare themselves “The global warming candidate.” A slick unknown candidate could strip away a fraction of the Progressive base, lose, and retire with a big bag of cash from Republican donors. I think several obscure Democratic candidates are trying to do that right now.
The only way that the Democratic Party can defend against this big money strategy is to allow the Democratic leadership to be elected by individual party members, not by insider appointments. Don’t even get me started on superdelegates.
I anticipate the criticism that open elections would allow Republicans to register as Democrats and vote Corporate Democrats into the DNC. That’s a problem for sure, and if we don’t find a way to stop that, we’re doomed to slow incremental progress.
First of all, we already have Corporate Democrats running the DNC. To do nothing locks that in. Second, we could hold off until Republican leaders allow Republican voters to elect the Republican Party Leadership directly. The crossover would go both ways after that, but don’t hold your breath on the Republican Party embracing Democracy.
Although the Republicans did dump their superdelegates before the Democrats and that helped Trump. The Democrats still have superdelegates with limited power, but failing to block Trump with superdelegates is not an argument for keeping superdelegates in the DNC. We are the Democratic Party. Democracy is good.
So what can we do right now to get the Democratic Party leadership to stop selling out to dark corporate money and let the real Democratic base, the center-left, compete on a fair and even playing field in the Democratic primary?
I’m not a fan of third party campaigns. This is a two party system, and voting for a third party candidate throws your vote away. But we need to show the DNC that we refuse to be taken for granted while they pander to Republican voters. The ideal strategy is to bang the drums for a Progressive candidate until the last primary vote is counted. If a Corporate Democrat wins, then we hold our nose and vote against the Republican in the general election. That takes discipline that many voters don’t have. Lots of Bernie Sanders voters were so angry with the DNC for obstructing their candidate that they couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton.
But even if every center-left Democrat has the discipline to do the “hold your nose and switch after the primary” strategy, the DNC can still see that coming. If they know the votes will be there anyway, they don’t need to make concessions.
The third party people make a good argument here. Maybe we need to see further ahead than one election at a time. I had to gulp to say that. We’re so predictable. It feels like we’re on The Price is Right. We bid $3.50 and the next guy bids $3.51. Maybe we need to dig in a shock the DNC by refusing to hold our noses for several hard elections. Republicans would win and do more damage, but the Progressive political philosophy would grow faster that way, just as it did under Trump.
I’m so frustrated. We have the popular vote to get real Democrats elected right now. Part of me wants to stay the course and wait for the DNC to move to the left gradually. The other part of me wants to shock the DNC into action by refusing to vote for Corporate Democrats entirely. For me, for now, it’s all about convincing the DNC to stop begging Republicans for votes.
The DNC can solve the problem all by themselves. How could a Progressive administration hurt them? A solid Progressive FDR style Democratic Party would be so strong. How could the current DNC leadership not want to be a part of that?
Many Corporate Democrats don’t even want to take dark money. They’re defensive. They only play the game because their Republican opponent does. With Progressives in power, Democrats would no longer need to match billionaire Republican donors. A Progressive Democratic Party would legislate dark money out of the system and implement publicly funded elections.
Write to Congress. The country is ready for what real Democrats have always wanted, an FDR style Democratic Party. We have the popular vote. Tell the DNC that all they have to do is declare victory and come home.

https://firewalleconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Elect-the-DNC-Blog-6-14-19-1.pdf

In 1980 the Republican party constructed “conservative” think tanks to promote the Reagan Trickle Down Revolution. They were successful because they played the long game. They turned up the heat slowly on the boiling frog. We suffered through “conservative” rule across four decades. But now, their every move is desperate and double down. They know it’s over. We are in a position now to make fantastic gains against the right. We will finally win a modern social infrastructure. Republican power brokers know that. They are just trying to stall as long as possible. Their plan is to get corporate Democrats elected over Progressive Democrats. That strategy will only work on older voters. The bad news is that my social work profession was pinned down through my entire career.

REPUBLICAN MEDIA SPIN. WEDGE ISSUES.

Republican spin doctors use WEDGE ISSUES to divide Democratic voters and divert attention away from what the election should really be about: Wall Street Oligarchs blocking Democracy. Here are some wedge headlines from today’s paper. You won’t see many stories about bank fraud.

Now understand: It doesn’t matter what side the story takes. The idea is to simply remind both sides that they are divided on that issue. Get them talking about XYZ, not things that are actually a danger to the 1%. (Money, fair taxes, spending on the social infrastructure etc.) The Republican owned media sets the agenda for debate. Today’s headlines below. (Most people only read the headlines, not the text. The headline image is everything)

-“How the white male presidential candidates are trying to prove their racial bona fides” (Designed to pit Men against Women and Black/Minorities against White)

-“Several of Biden’s 2020 rivals are quick to highlight his reversal on federal funding for abortions. (Catholic vs Protestant, Men vs Women, Pro Choice vs anti-Abortion)

-“Democrats on the defensive as abortion foes ask if party tolerates their views.” (Defensive word implies that democrats are wrong about something. Divides Catholic vs Protestant, Men vs Women, Pro Choice vs anti-Abortion)

-”Border apprehensions are up more than 1,000 percent since April 2017.” (Fear mongering. Designed to divide Democrats on Immigration. Racism here too. But this one rubs Catholic voters the wrong way too. Not a good move.)

-”A Sikh airman petitioned the Air Force to let him wear a turban and a beard. He just won.” (Racism Racism Racism. Immigration etc. See how it’s worded to incite?)

-”Wrong, plain and simple’: 50 years after Stonewall raid, New York City’s police commissioner apologizes.” (Gay vs Straight. Remember, it doesn’t matter what side the story takes, the idea is to keep the debate around issues that are supposed to divide us.)

-”It’s LGBT pride month, but three guys in Boston want a permit for a ‘Straight Pride’ parade.” (Blatant provocation. Gay vs, Straight.)

Learn about wedge issues and ignore them when you vote. And beware of single-issue candidates. https://firewalleconomics.com/my-book-firewall-economics-political-literacy-for-democrats/

Here is a link to a story about the Cuban National Circus. http:// https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/lifestyle/magazine/amp-stories/cuban-national-circus/

The Public Sector has a long history of bringing art to the public. Without the profit motive, the quality of art improves. In this digital age where art and intellectual “property” can be copied and shared, the question arises: How do artists get paid. Musicians can’t sell CDs anymore. I write books. I put them online and give them away. I don’t need to be paid but other writers and musicians and artists do. The answer is for the Public Sector to pay artists a stipend in exchange for making the product free to the public. Give artists and creators financial security so that art and all information can be free.