The right wing blogosphere got very upset last month when this blog toppled Tim Worstall and became the number 1 economics blog in the UK.
Now Wikio tell me I kept the top spot in April.
No, it doesn't matter much in the overall scheme of things. But it's still amusing.
For the record, the new listing is:
Good to see Duncan Wheldon moving up a spot too. I strongly recommend following him.
PS I expect to lose top spot next month as in the blog upgrade it seems some archiving on Google was lost and traffic is down as a result.
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Well done, that man, even if from time to time I have a different angle. Personally, I believe that the old “Left” and “Right” distinctions are without meaning at this stage in the 21st Century and that the adherence of people to them are part of the problem.
And another thing, have you seen this one from a Right Wing blog on the subject of Centrica shutting down a Morecambe Bay gas field claiming high taxes as the reason? He suggests there are being more than economical with the truth.
http://cityunslicker.blogspot.com/2011/05/centrica-bllshttng-again.html
Does Centrica do a lot of finance offshore?
@Demetrius: “Personally, I believe that the old “Left” and “Right” distinctions are without meaning at this stage in the 21st Century”. Disagree. I think the boundaries are becoming ever clearer after a long period of drift, thanks to the Labour Party. Pity though, that the Party don’t seem to recognise this and will jump on the bandwagon when it’s too late to get any respect for doing so.
@Carol: “Disagree”.
So where do you suppose the Left and Right distinctions came from, Carol? Are you familiar with Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State (the original Hayek misrepresented)? In that he argues that, go too far in either direction and you end up in the same place: with neither, but with totalitarianism.
Given alternatives, one has a choice not just of one or the other, but also of neither or both. Given Left and Right sides of our heads providing for verbal and visual ways of thinking, The Outline of Sanity, argued Belloc’s friend G K Chesterton, is to make use of both (in local democracy, where one can see what’s going on), and not, says Belloc, The Party System (run centrally by totalitarians). In party politics, since three quarters of us are verbal, doctrine from whichever side is “first past the post” inevitably triumphs over the quarter prepared to look at reality, with even that dominated by those who – ignorant of the past and of what science has shown is possible for the future – see only what we have now.
Remember Plato? “There will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers”. Even then we should have the problem of our children wanting to be independent, thus having to learn from their own mistakes.
@David Taylor, no I haven’t read Belloc’s piece but I have read the original Hayek, which is of its time and no more. The essence of the left philosophy is surely common ownership of the means of production (including land) – far removed from the objectives of the rightwing capitalists. The search for policies which can accomplish this and then their promotion to achieve democratic change, is still on, but I believe they will emerge. Indeed such a project is in progress right now.
@ Carol (with congratulations to Richard, apologies @ PSG and for a mistyped ):
Unlike Hayek’s, the logic and psychology of Belloc and Chesterton are of permanent significance; they have been well justified in computer programming/Myers-Briggs’ research of Jungian psychology, and are back in print.
I appreciate your argument, Carol, and agree “the essence of the Left philosophy is surely common ownership”. But where did that doctrine come from if not from a visual/verbal thinker (Christ long before Marx, c.f. Acts 2:44-5) who saw and articulated what was there to be seen? Lenin and Stalin were as doctrinaire as Hayek and Thatcher. The Distributist point missed by the doctrinaire Left is that there is all the difference in the world between common ownership of and by a State or Business Conglomerate (with their unseeing bureaucracies), and common ownership in a family or local/specialised cooperative.
David, I hardly think you can use the bible, OT or NT, as an authority on economic justice when the former clearly endorses slavery and the latter does so tacitly.
Carol
I really do think it is possible to differentiate message from the context of time
I respect your right to differ
But millions of Christians do succeed in that differentiation every day
As millions of Marxists disown so-called Marxists like Stalin
Richard
Thanks, Richard.
Carol, I’ll take your reaction as expressing a genuine query, which I’m answering from first hand experience of the Christian community’s acknowledgement of the paradox at its heart.
The apparent pointlessness of Christ’s death makes more sense when you’ve heard the story of a priest who swapped places with the family man chosen to be made an example of by the Nazis. Similarly, the OT is all about enslavement and rescue from it, while apparent NT acceptance of slavery is in the context of — being stuck with it — how best to live with it (more or less Keynes’ position on wage slavery). The medieval economic theory was that the king held all land in trust from God and was responsible for granting use of it justly (i.e. not equally, but “to each according to his need”. That, incidentally, is still the Christian position on tax – government having a job to do – as against compulsory insurance). Feudal economics was a step up from slavery in that even the serfs had rights to their own time, an allotment and use of common land.
David, if the bible was divinely inspired I think it would present an ideal for economic justice not try to tinker with the status quo – it doesn’t compromise on the spiritual side of life.
And so far as Richard’s comment on Marxists disowning Stalin is concerned, I think this is not a valid comparison. Marx’s Capital is a work of analysis rather than prescription – quite unlike the bible.
Richard, there seems to be no point in us presenting arguments to Caril Wilcox, but perhaps I ought to counter her insinuations about the bible as a whole. Sure its genre is illustration rather than analysis, yet the NT is not prescription but an invitation (Good News) – accompanied by the advice to walk way from those who won’t accept it. Acts 2:44-5 was about NOT tinkering with (but sidelining) the then financial status quo, as in our own time is the Mondragon Cooperative featured in Race Matthews’ book. Whether or not these are Christian, they do represent a now significant strategic option: sideline the international bankers by using internal credit.
Well done Richard — Truly well deserved recognition. Although the PSG is sometimes becomes lost in the “philosophical arguments” that increasingly appear as “comments”.
The problem is simple: If revenue lost through tax evasion and avoidance (often via the Isle of Man Jersey and Guernsey) can be recovered and re-invested in sensible government spending the proposed Tory/Lib cuts can be mostly avoided. And as an added benefit country-by-country reporting will result in poorer countries benefiting by receiving an improved tax take.
Can’t see anything too difficult in this — so let’s get on with it!
Is it not the case that many of your hits come from Worstall “fisking” your posts?
Well, I searched the sources of all traffic over the weekend.
One person looks to have come from Worstall.
When he’s really busy maybe 20 a day do.
And direct hits on the site run to thousands a day.
So I think that, as usual, you guts are just a little deluded as to a) your numbers b) your significance
Rightly so – its been an education reading your blog. Keep up the good work!
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