What do Courtney Love and Astrid Lindgren have in common?

On a first look, they seem to be diametrical opposites: The former is a rock/punk musician with a history of drug use and a criminal record; the latter was an idealistic writer of children’s book—and, at least in Sweden, was considered a third grand-mother in many families.

However, during my readings on issues relating to Internet anonymity (cf. my previous entry), I stumbled on a speech by Courtney Love criticising the music industry^e. Written ten years ago, her piece has likely been encountered by some of the readers already; but few non-Swedes will be aware of Astrid Lindgren’s 1976 story Pomperipossa in Monismania^w, which allegorically tells of how she found herself confronted with marginal taxes so high that more-or-less everything she earned went to the Swedish government—while her own after-taxes income was reduced to almost nothing.

This, interestingly, is almost exactly the story Courtney Love tells about a hypothetical group of musicians—except that the bad guys are not the 1970s Swedish Social-Democratic government, but the modern day US music-industry. They even use the same enormous-seeming figure of two millions to reach an eventual net of approximately zero (in 1976 SEK and 2000 USD, respectively).

Some claim that Lindgren’s story was instrumental in removing the Social-Democrats from power for the first time in almost half a century (the pen can be mighty indeed!). Alas, Love’s speech has not had the same impact: The unholy alliance of record industry and politicians, against consumers and artists, still has the upper hand. Even so, there is considerable hope: With the spread of the Internet and alternate channels of distribution, the old system of exploitative middle-men becomes harder and harder to justify, and is accepted to a lesser and lesser degree.

Now that the original question has been answered, I leave it to the reader to answer the next question: What do the US music-industry of today and the Swedish Social-Democrats of 1976 have in common?

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