I have lost count of the number of times over the last twelve years that I have been told that if only I was more reasonable I would be so much more successful.
And that if only I realised my arguments were wrong I could achieve so much more.
Big firms of accountants have told me that.
So have accounting and other institutes.
As have tax havens and their governments.
Let alone big businesses.
And countless commentators on this blog have said the same.
It's happened again this week. The trolls are out in force - from left and right - delivering such massages.
Despite which I'll continue to take the risk of being unreasonable. As George Bernard Shaw said (and I apologise for the gender-specific language):
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Which is precisely why I will continue to be unreasonable. Seeking to change the world to make it a more just place for those with little requires nothing less.
And that is also why, of course, those who would rather I did not progress beseech me to change my ways with the suggestion that I really should be a reasonable chap. That's not going to happen precisely because nothing would have happened if I was. And so those who do not like what I am seeking to do will continue to be upset. So be it.
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And we thank you for it! Information and honesty is in short supply so please keep up the good work.
I am also ‘unreasonable’. I don’t appear to be making any progress in my sphere. But I have great hopes that you will, in yours, for the sake of us all.
I think you’ll enjoy by extension Frans de Waal’s explanation of what being a true alpha human being means and not how most of the irresponsible mainstream media portrays them:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPsSKKL8N0s&feature=youtu.be
Fascinating
Worth watching
Thanks
Like Joyce and AJ – I’m with you and please do keep on with what you’re doing, despite the unpleasant trolling
Thanks for the reassurance, which is a huge relief. After all, it was Descartes who got us into this mess in the first place, wasn’t it 🙂
Yes 🙂
That sounds (un)reasonable enough to me.
Grievous Bodily Shaw knew a thing or two, so he’s probably a fair guide.
I would have quoted Shaw if you hadn’t. Thanks for your Shavian unreasonableness. I hope your kids don’t give you too hard a time in due course 🙂
They do!
Shaw and Richard have Irish ancestry. That may be a factor!
🙂
If I had a pound for every time someone had said- I agree with what you say but now is not the time to say it – I’d be more comfortably off than I am.
If you ain’t getting trolls you ain’t hittin’ the spot.
If you appear unreasonable that is only a reflection of how rotten the Overton window has become. Keep up the good fight.
Very little about what is happening in the political and financial world just now is ‘reasonable.’ You, on the other hand, are more than simply reasonable. You are the voice of sanity. And furthermore, you illuminate ways to get us all out of this mess and start afresh.
Of course the people who either gain from this chaos, or refuse to see it, would rather you just went away and developed another ‘hobby.’ We who don’t fall into either category but are not as astute about finance as you are continue to be very grateful for your input.
You will be proved right in the long run. Either on time, or too late …but the timetable is not something you can control.
Like that on my local railway line….
Keep on being “unreasonable”, I can take it!
Your in good company. Going against the grain is never the easy option. People throughout histiry have always struggled – Darwin, Mandela, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Mandela Martin Luther King and Malala Yousafzai to name but a few. Resistance is a duty when things are wrong
Your in good company. Going against the grain is never the easy option. People throughout history have always struggled – Darwin, Mandela, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Mandela Martin Luther King and Malala Yousafzai to name but a few. Resistance is a duty when things are wrong.
The distinction may be between Reasoning and Reasonable. Reasoning involves thinking through what you say and providing evidence. Reasonable means blowing in the wind.
if only more folk were as “unreasonable” as you.
We might get somewhere.
Thank you for setting such an inspirational example.
Always ask impertinent to get pertinent answers.
Being called unreasonable is better than being called an awkward cynic, believe me, I’ve had that experience at work when I questioned and refused dodgy authority-appeasing practices and compliance for the sake of personal promotion to the top tier.
What they call ‘reasonable’ is in fact ‘compliant’, or ‘amenable’.
So their use of language is wrong, or worse, manipulative.
See? You might have been reasonable all along Richard, sorry to break it to you 😉
Damn!
It is salutary to consider the roles we play and how we and others consider these choices.
For example, is it a wise person that converts their wealth into gold, stuffs it into drain pipes and buries this in their garden – as many “wealthy” did in the USA immediately before the turn of the century? Or is it a wise man that considers persecuting the many to line the pockets of the few a worthy cause?
The rich fear the loss of this inequality and the poor sink into despair – the are no winners.
And, therefore, what we need, are voices crying in the wilderness, that say “the King has no clothes” that current beliefs have no traction, that there may be an alternative, more just way to proceed.
Entrance, stage left, the unreasonable man.
I’m sure they mean “unpleasant” not “unreasonable”, Richard. You might have achieved more if you weren’t so unpleasant. People won’t work with you, people won’t deal with you, people don’t want to interact with you. That makes it harder for you to achieve as much as you might otherwise have done.
Sean
I am entirely confident you are a troll
Precisely the sort of person who, then, always makes such comments
Please don’t call again
Not least because you might have noticed that what you have said is not true
Richard
Hi Richard,
If bringing to People’s attention the ineptness of government departments and others is being unreasonable, then I beg you to keep it up! You have highlighted the bullshit that’s is GERS & probably GERW by the fact that both involve treasury figures. I’m deeply grateful for that.
I am surprised you’ve been attacked by the ‘Left’! My thought on that is they are probably those weirdos who go so far to the extreme of the imaginary political circle that they end up on the right! Somewhere near fascism. Rather like Stalin, Mao, et al! That’s not Socialism!
Many thanks, Diolch yn Fawr!
Richard
Richard
Thanks
Thank you for your total unreasonability….
Please continue…….
I will
Keep up the quest for it must succeed or the greatest con of my life will continue. I have come to it very late and from the reaction of folk I talk to find the news very strange but they are polite. The conversation normally just moves on quickly. Thank you for the efforts.
Keep it up Richard. As Eric Hoffer said “In times of change, learners inherit the earth; whilst the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Why are so few willing to learn?
Shaw also said most people, if they think at all, only think a few times a year
Thinking is hard
Love your unreasonableness; may it long continue.
Cogito ergo sum.
I blame Descartes for a quite a lot
I find your unreasonableness very reasonable and useful. Thanks.
Thank you
Amen to that!
If you don’t know it, Richard, try Cornford’s “Microcosmographia Academica” for ironic solace. Aimed at the Edwardian unreasonable, young academic in a hurry to get things done at the start of his career, it contains almost every argument/tactic employed by the reasonably immovable friends of reaction you have ever encountered/will ever encounter. I think ‘Sir Humphrey’ imbibed it at his nanny’s knee – and, in my experience, it rather sadly still holds today. Meanwhile – non illegitimis!
Thanks 🙂
Will look it out
Thanks for this comment, and for your blog, and especially for your ‘unreasonableness’.
I’m a mere self-employed shopkeeper, struggling to continue earning a basic living from long hours of dedicated work – With no education in economics, like the 99.9% of the rest of us.
The sea of self-interested conformity and misinformation out there is vast. Your blog is a daily injection of ‘light’ and stimulation for me, which helps to boost that hope for a better and fairer future for us all. I share your blogs frequently on Facebook, clearly helping to open the eyes of others, from their reactions (and their further sharing).
Please keep up the good work.
Thanks Michael
Appreciated
I will echo your sentiment by saying that I have never known a time in my life time where cowardice is so profitable than it is now.
There was a time that one might sacrifice money and even family time or the odd holiday for getting things done and getting on. But now you have to sacrifice your soul and your principles for success. And they will pay you handsomely for it too.
It makes me laugh that those who advocate public choice theory are happy to over pay (bribe?) people in order for them to forget who they are and say and do outrageous things. In other words there really is often no choice.
Well said
We rely on you being unreasonable, dammit!
Don’t you dare change your ways.
Not that I imagine there’s much chance of that.
And thank you for it.
I’m too old to do that!
And too young to want to
Delighted to hear that!
I find you frustratingly reasonable in the intransigence we face. My patience is shredded in areas you still make sense of.
🙂
“A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.” (Marcus Aurelius).
Your trolls are ambitious Richard.
🙂
Seems more and more are singing your song
https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/pfi-privatisation-national-accounting-rules-encourage-destructive-decisions-time-change/
Edmund Burke “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
A longer version includes “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
You (and others) provide a way to associate. I value your writing and comments from others.
Challenging times.
Thank you