When I was in middle school, downloading MP3s on Napster was the hip thing to do, and in response to that phenomenon, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich was quick to engage in battle, spitting out doomsday prophecies faster than AOL was mailing free floppies.

We’ve come a long way in the decades since, yet even now, when innovation has finally discovered several legal avenues for that sort of mass, bottom-up distribution, folks like Taylor Swift are quick to pen melancholy elegies, complaining about the plight of the struggling artist and the imperialism of our digital overlords.

Such concerns have their merits, but in addition to not recognizing the creative progress we’ve seen over the last few decades, they usually come prepackaged with clumsy critiques of capitalism and “artistic consumerism.” Who can we blame but the capitalists, drooling only for money, caring nothing for beauty, and so on? This is all more than a little ironic, particularly when spouted by the fans of artist-industrialists such as Swift.