I may not agree with all of Kurt Loder’s libertarian views, but I’ll be damned if I don’t 100% agree with this snippet of his February 2008 interview with Reason Online.

Reason: Do you worry about the fragmentation of culture? Some critics worry about what’s lost from the time when we all had to listen to the same stuff or see the same stuff.

Loder: I think one reason that things are so fragmented is that there’s no talent that can unify the world like the Beatles did. The Beatles appealed to everybody, even old people. Nowadays, you can talk about bands where they are always compared to something else. “It’s like nu-metal, but it’s death metal with touches of ska”—that sort of thing.

But as long as you don’t have this monolithic critical culture defining what things are, you’re going to have to go and seek out music for yourself. Things will be a little splintered until something comes around that is unifying. We’re still waiting for that day, but in the meantime there’s still lots of good music around. But you have to go look for it. It’s not just going to be force-fed to you, although God knows people will try to do that.