Come on, Carl. Neither one is completely ideal; we've learned that again and again. Ideal society needs a balance between the two. In a perfect society each individual is completely self-actualized and at the same time no individual's needs are ignored. To borrow from C.S. Lewis, nobody owns anything because everybody owns everything. There are no laws b/c there is no need for them. But of course, that doesn't happen on Planet Earth.

As I mentioned in the post, Weezer, bad songs aside, is untouchable as an indie icon. They probably weren't the first band fronting the geek-rock ethos, but certainly the most visible in the past 15 or so years. (I really don't know who their competition would be, maybe Lisa Loeb? Or probably somebody I haven't heard of...) So no rock critic is going to bad-mouth them. To give you a little hint of "what the kids are sayin'", most people say "The blue album is awesome, everything else is sort of so-so". Each of their albums is a self-title with a different color as a cover art background. If you want to do some research, I'd start with the ones I mentioned, "Say it ain't so," "Buddy Holly," "Sweater Song" from the blue album. "Beverly Hills" and "Hash Pipe" are both pretty fun, the former being a smartly written self-reflection on the geek ethos. Their new one, "Pork and Beans," is a NOT smartly written self-reflection on the geek ethos. I'd stay away from that one but at least give it a listen to prove that I'm right.