Not Gough in his heyday 

J ust (sorry) Sir Roger thinks IT’S TIME to refer back to the recent squabble about certain t-shirts and heap some shit on those who assert ownership of the commonly used English phrase “It’s time”.

Universities once — in all the centuries up to, but not including, this one — were laboratories for learning and thinking, experiencing and exploring. They fostered the free flow and sharing of ideas. They created possibilities. They were machines, hothouses, for ideas, rather than being mainly and merely commercial employment factories basing their teaching on the (safe) theories of the past. (Better the devil you know than the one you might unearth with your damnable curiosity and cause all sorts of uncertainty and, worse, discomfort.)

So when an entity, especially a university, or a “controlled entity” of a university, indulges in trademarks, copyrights and any “intellectual” properties it can get its hands on, what does that do? Well, it prohibits the free flow and sharing of ideas.

It smothers possibilities. And so it steals from a nation.

What is that? wondered Sir Roger, that lives off the rental or hoarding of ideas and goods, or off other people’s work?

By chance he came across a term which describes, or once described, such a person or “entity” — the rentier.

A rentier is a person or entity that receives income derived from economic rents, which can include income from patents, copyrights, brand loyalty, real estate, interest or profits.

Rentier is a term currently used to describe economic practices of parasitic monopolization of access to any (physical, financial, intellectual, etc.) kind of property and gaining significant amount of profit without contribution to society.

The rentier was the ultimate bourgeois, like Helen and Allison.

But then, aren’t we all, or don’t we all aspire to be, rentier capitalists?

At least if we write a book and live off the royalties and movie rights we did the work. But a second, third, fourth, investment property? The profession of such people is idleness. 

Sir Roger thinks rentier capitalism is not a core value that one associates with Gough in his heyday. Not even after they turned his marbles into a bust and stuck him on a plinth. In fact ever.

Perhaps that’s why we voted for him.