> A boycott. Don't buy the stuff.
> But a literary agent doing the same at lightning speed is deferring moral judgement to the amorphous crowd
Is that not the same thing? Boycotts affect distributors, producers, agents, etc. Who wants to hire an agent that represents X, Y, or Z? That public radio station could leave his recordings online, and suffer the consequences of donors not donating. I can not-watch a show on Netflix that I don't like, or I can cancel my subscription.
These are the effects of a boycott.
See also Rand and William Hickman.
Re:Cruel and Unusual Punishment
by thanatropism on Friday February 01, 2019 @10:30AM
(#19054858)
Rand's heros are bullshit, yes. In reality nothing happens from isolated individualistic initiative, everything takes place in the space between people. Howard Roark is a fictional version of Martin Shkreli.
That said, her acute pessimism about mob human behavior appears to be dead-on.
A boycott. Don't buy the stuff.
Seriously, the core of the problem is not moral judgement (although that may be worthy discussing at a second, non-fire emergency, time.
The problem is automatic moral contagion. A publisher may make the approximate market or moral guess that it should suspend its relationship with an author. But a literary agent doing the same at lightning speed is deferring moral judgement to the amorphous crowd, the "They". And the "They" is structurally incapable of thought, let alone moral thought. The consequence is bookstores getting caught in the wave and erasing traces of the author's existence.
I never thought Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, which seemed so overwrought and sanctimonious ten years ago, had this much wisdom about human nature. Search wikiquote for some choice rambling about "second handers".
It's really badly written too, so it's a shame human behavior is making it more prescient and deeper than, say, 1984.