What's worth more than money?
Creative value under extractive capitalism + an urgent plea to reclaim sovereignty over your attention
My youngest daughter turned 10 this week, and we gave her an old-school iPod filled with her favourite songs. Since we’re avoiding phones as long as possible, this is a great way to let her experience the joy of personal music.
The first iPod came out in 2001 (are you feeling old yet?!).. It got me thinking about how we access and value music and how that’s changed - not just for music but for creativity as a whole. When I started my music journey, I saved up to buy tapes, then CDs, and I dubbed my favourite songs off the radio. It was a different time.
Now, we can stream endless music for less than the cost of a single CD each month. It’s a dream come true. All of the music, all of the time! This accessibility has been fantastic, and it’s blown open my kids’ music taste. Even the youngest eschews Top 40 hits in favour of a rich tapestry of genres, artists, and decades.
It would be easy to argue, Angry Boomer Shakes Fist At Sky style, that people won’t value music the same when it’s all at our fingertips. But when I watch the passion with which my children learn lyrics, follow artists, and curate their playlists, that’s hard to swallow. Our love for music hasn’t died, nor has the value it brings to our lives. More music is being made now than ever before. But all this availability raises bigger questions - not just about music, but about value.
The cost of creativity
Here’s what we know:
Artists are paid less than ever for their efforts
Original creative work is being replaced by generative slop
Music industry revenue is at a 20-year high - but fewer musicians can make a living.
That shift isn’t just about music. It’s part of a deeper story about how we value - and devalue - creative work in a system that prioritises profit, productivity, and scale. It raises the question: how do we individually and collectively decide what’s worth our time, money, and attention?
My partner Cam recently released an independent film called Ange & The Boss. It took seven years of volunteer effort to make, and thousands of people have now laughed, cried, and been moved by this story. On every measure of creative, emotional, and social value, it’s a huge win. But financially, it’s a different story.
As terminally self-employed creative people, this is a familiar paradox to us. The most original, labour-intensive or impactful work does not often make the most money. Unless Cam and I happen to be particularly untalented, this paradox is not unique to us. In fact, according to David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, the working world operates in a kind of Upside Down that rewards the appearance of productivity over real impact. He categories bullshit jobs into five key categories (flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters.) These jobs are often better paid, more stable, and more respected than work that sustains society - like caregiving, teaching, trades, utilities and, yes, art.
Value and virtue
This isn’t just economic. It’s cultural, even moral. In examining the Protestant work ethic, Max Weber argued that capitalism has made financial success a marker of virtue. Neoliberalism took that even further, convincing us that something is worthless if it doesn’t generate profit. And we’ve absorbed those ideas for ourselves deeply, personally.
We feel guilty spending our time on pursuits that don’t pay. We apply a purpose penalty to fulfilling work and expect people who work in NGOs, the arts, or caregiving to do it for the love of it. We hesitate to pay artists, but don’t question the increasing transfer of wealth to industries that produce nothing of tangible value like finance, insurance and real estate. We celebrate growth and output but overlook care, creativity, and contribution. We expect emotional and care labour to be free. We punch in thousands of hours at the email factory to pay the mortgage, squeezing out space and energy for our parenting, friendship, creative, aimless and social time.
Angela Garbes, in Essential Labor, reminds us that caregiving is society’s foundation - the work that makes all other work possible - yet it’s most underpaid, invisible labour. The same goes for the cultural and creative work. It’s not that art lacks value. It’s that capitalism doesn’t know how to see value unless it serves power.
Marx called this ‘commodity fetishism’: when the market ignores the labour behind what we consume. In creative work, that means we celebrate the product, but not the process. We determine a creative product’s success by how much money it makes for a faceless corporation, but overlook the labour, imagination and people that made it possible. And when creative work does make money, it’s often because it’s been platformed by tech giants who extract most of the value. YouTube, Spotify, Instagram and TikTok are not creator platforms. They’re attention platforms, designed to monetise consumption, not reward creation.
What you can do
Ask better questions
Start by asking better questions.
What do we really value - and why?
What are we paying for, sharing, consuming, and investing in?
And maybe a couple worth sitting with yourself:
Where do you add value - not just money, but meaning?
What truly adds value to your life - not just your bank account?
Take the power back
Beyond that, one of the most powerful things we can do is to reclaim sovereignty over our attention. Your attention is the most valuable commodity available, and tech platforms and media giants have learned to extract it with ruthless precision. Every scroll, every click, and every notification is designed to hijack your eyes and trigger you to buy more shit you don’t need. Despite the commodification, our attention is one of the few things we have direct control over in our lives. And, like the creators whose work is extracted for the benefit of large corporations, we are often unaware of the value we’re sacrificing in return for it.
Reclaiming sovereignty over your attention is vital. For your personal wellbeing, relationships, and mental health, but also to discover what truly matters to you and make better choices about what you make, value, and support. The work that nourishes your mind, soul, and community will never trump rage-bait and mindless slop on your feed, and it doesn’t always come with a price tag - but it’s no less valuable.
Take the power back. Be intentional about where your focus goes and how you engage with the world around you. Whether it’s protecting time for creative pursuits, spending undistracted time with the people you love, or supporting work that truly matters, your attention is worth defending.
And I reckon when you regain control of your eyes and mind, it will get a lot easier to answer those questions above about the value you add, the work that deserves your support, and the meaning you make in your life. If we all start asking those questions, the collective impact is worth reckoning with.
If you’re looking for something worth backing with your attention right now, I’d love you to support Cam’s film: Ange & The Boss. It’s a lovely piece of independent storytelling. If you’re in New Zealand or Australia, you can head into a cinema to watch it, otherwise you can like it on Instagram or Facebook, or tell someone about it - every bit helps!
If you’re in Wellington, I would love to see you in person at Thursday night’s screening (tomorrow!). Get your tickets here.
Til next week,
AM
Ange & The Boss: Puskás in Australia
Ange and The Boss tells the improbable story of all-time great Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskás, who found himself in Melbourne in the late 1980s, coaching the Greek NSL team South Melbourne Hellas.
Barely able to speak English and comedically overweight, he united and inspired the team to a dramatic championship win in 1991. Eating, drinking, and enjoying himself along the way. It’s a sports documentary, but it’s also a film about life in Australia. It’s about immigrant identity and belonging, gluttonous pasta consumption, and the broken window winder in Ange Postecoglou’s Datsun 200B.
Watch the trailer below.