The current changes are sadly caused by politics and the religion known as "the free market". We live in a world infected with the Global Commerce virus, where the big fish eat the smaller fish and make no apologies for it. The Economic climate of today is all about growth, super profits and satisfying shareholders. Gone are the days of the Mom and Pop stores where building long lasting customer relationships and giving service were important. Gone are the days when corporations were founded to take on large projects for the good of society.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70466\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
This whole discussion seems to me to be a good example of the smaller fish eating the bigger fish.
As far as markets go, everything is a market -- even in non-market societies; things are just arranged differently. In the old Soviet Union, the leaders had their dachas; in Maoist China, the sons of the influential did well and got rich.
Most of the American economy, and most job creation, could be attributed to what might loosely be called "mom and pop" organizations.
Corporations were never formed to take on large projects for the good of society. They were always about profits. That creates no problem, as long as everybody keeps it clearly in mind.
I've always thought some aspects of high-end photography were absurd. Do you really need to pay somebody $50,000 to take a picture of a Buick? It occurred to me any number of times when I was working as a reporter, and I'd see a big photo shoot somewhere, that (as a longtime amateur photogapher) I could do something that would be 90 percent as good, for 10 percent of the money, and that 99 percent of the people who viewed the resulting ad would never be the wiser...Some of the newspaper pros I worked with were as good as any high-priced custom pro I ever encountered, but preferred the newspaper life (and security)...
Anyway, those over-priced chickens are now coming home to roost. People will still pay for exceptional talent, so we don't have to worried too much about the talented. The ones who will get squeezed are those in the middle; those who generally do average-to-mediocre custom work. The people at the lower levels of professional work -- wedding photogaphers, portrait photographers -- don't have to worry for the same reason that waiters don't have to worry about their jobs being outsourced to China. That is, the work has to be done here; a micro-stock agency isn't going to take away somebody's wedding work.
On the whole, I think the change will be for the better. There'll be a lot of new photography out there that'll be judged on the basis of quality, rather than the basis of connections or who-you-know in the industry, and may give some real talent, that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day, a chance.
JC