Writers with begging bowls on the street

“I’m a pilgrim from a far-off land, sir. Can you spare some change so I can eat?”

In the old days, a writer would try to land a low-level job with a newspaper or magazine and work his way up to being a reporter.

Once the Internet went public, it was a new day. For a little while.

The writer, knowing he could be his own publisher, anticipated this would somehow result in money. He soon realized there was a new meme in town:

All information should be free.

I’ve mentioned this several times. The people promoting that idea never stopped to think about who would be supplying the information: the writer.

He would sacrifice himself for the greater good. He’d research to find the information, make it effective by WRITING, publish it, and wait.

And wait. As he noticed nothing was coming back to him.

Something about this equation didn’t work. He was the fall guy. He was left holding the bag. And the bag was empty.

Nobody but the writer thought about that.

Everyone else was busy drinking in all the new information on the Internet.

Occasionally, the writer might publish a short statement “shaking the can,” to (hopefully) pull in a few bucks.

Eventually, he quit and went into selling used cars or insurance. Or possibly, he accepted his role under the long-standing label: starving writer. It had a few shreds of honor attached to it. Until he actually began starving.

Alongside this wretched state of affairs, there was a new economic sheriff in town: socialism. What that meant was many people no longer grasped the exchange of value for value, which was free market capitalism:

The writer wrote, people paid him to read. This seemed odd. “You write articles and I what, subscribe with dollars? Actual dollars?”

Yup. Exactly.

“But you’re just writing.”

“Try it yourself sometime. Try not putting people to sleep or coming off like a first-class doofus or an intellectual faker. Try digging and discovering vital information the people in charge of a country are covering up.”

I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve known many starving writers. Some of them were confused about being a rebel and making money. They thought the first fact should negate the second. Until they starved too long.

I’m talking about men and women with no money who could really WRITE. Not “content providers.” I know many of those, too. They just think they’re writers, because they learned grammar and they can use semicolons. They often back up a few miles from what they really want to get across and give you 15 opening paragraphs, clearing their throats, before they deliver the point they trying to make. It’s as if you hired a crew to build a house and they spent the first month planting a garden.

None of this matters to the financiers, corporations, government agents, and tech heads who rule the Internet, because they can’t WRITE. They wouldn’t recognize WRITING if it bit their ears and drew blood and punched them in the mouth. They’re married to DATA. Data may as well be spooled out by an AI. Which is already happening. And will continue to build rapidly.

REAL writers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your begging bowl and tattered underwear. Let your readers know you’re making a living—just like they are. Let them know you can do two things at once: write, and earn.

Let them know you’re no longer forwarding the archetype of the pilgrim with the begging bowl, no matter how glorious it may seem to the clueless.

Go all the way and tell them you’re for the free market. If you rattle some cages, explain that sucking all one’s income from government isn’t a brilliant revolution. He who writes the checks calls the shots. Many of your readers will wake up, because their boss, the guy they work for, does both. And it feels like a tight collar around their necks. One the reasons you’re writing is to blow collars to smithereens.

You’re a WRITER. You’re the man or woman who kicks the shit out of limits and incursions.

You threw off fear a long time ago. Or if you didn’t, you’re going all in and all the way anyway.

Crinkling your eyes to look sad and pleading and holding out that begging bowl is the grotesque reversal of what you ARE.

By the way, if this article were behind a paywall, you’d be paying nineteen cents for it. As a yearly subscriber.

A dime, a nickel, and four pennies. And I wouldn’t have compromised an inch in what I had to say. In order to rake in that $.19.

It can be done.

-- Jon Rappoport