This was posted as a comment on the blog last night by someone using the name Dambrill. I thought the name was apt. And so I am sharing it:
I am an introvert.
I am not a pathology, a diagnosis, a weakness, an incapacity, a challenge, a victim — in short I am not a problem and do not need fixing
I am not the same as shy or sensitive or socially anxious or on the spectrum.
(I can be any of these things but they do not make me an introvert)
I am not better nor am I worse. I am different.
I do not need a different workplace environment because I am a snowflake who can't cope.
I want a different workplace because I want to give my best.
This is true whatever environment I work in, whatever job I do.
This is more than reason enough to make changes but let me go further
Look at the problems we all face.
Not just in this country but across the world and as a species.
If we are to rise to the challenges we face, if we are to make the changes necessary to stave off disaster then we cannot squander the abilities of any group when what we need is everyone at their best. This means embracing introverts and working to provide them with an environment where they can thrive. This applies equally to person or group that is prevented from thriving by any sort institutional bias whether intended or not.
The problems facing us will require radical change and they will require our best.
The answers will not come from business as usual, they will not come from billionaires putting all the money they don't need into their charitable foundations, they will not come in an app or from having a carrier (with or without planes) with which to project force overseas, and they will not result from groupthink or be found by following the herd.
The answers will come from all of us, we will all have our parts to play.
They will come from diversity, not pc tokenism but a true diversity of people and their diversity in thinking, in problem solving, in ideas. The answers will come from lone geniuses and large teams, from experts and amateurs, from new technology and traditional indigenous knowledge, the answers will be shouted out and they will be whispered.
We must be prepared to let go of what we think we know and be willing to try something new.
We should consider what democracy means to us and how we want it to work (some form of PR and sortition), whether forcing people into ultimately unproductive, as regards the threats we face, work simply so that they can survive is an effective use of a human life (UBI), whether the creation of money should be shrouded in myth and its benefits accruing to a few or should be out in the open and used for societies benefit (MMT) and lastly whether we want to pretend that there is no problem or to make a start with some of the answers that we have right now (GND)
There's a lot to be done but let's start with something easy.
Be aware of who you work with, be aware that one size doesn't fit all, be prepared to ask them what they need, understand that confidence is not competence and that the loudest voice is not necessarily right. Be prepared to invest some time in researching and understanding extroverts and introverts, this applies whether you are an extrovert or introvert, and then see what you can do to help people achieve their potential.
It's a start.
I don't think in straight lines.
I am an Introvert.
I am a part of the solution.
Thanks for reading this post.
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“…. understand that confidence is not competence and that the loudest voice is not necessarily right.”
Oh dear, you have just ‘blown’ the foundational principle of the British State.
Supporting the interests of introverts (which I support) supporting a greener society (which I support) but the policy prescription of MMT (print and tax) I absolutely don’t believe will work and I don’t want a return of state intervention on anything like the scale you prescribe..anyway they are three unrelated issues.
I regret to say they are not unrelated
They may all be very closely related
Ben says:
“…… but the policy prescription of MMT (print and tax) I absolutely don’t believe will work and I don’t want a return of state intervention on anything like the scale you prescribe..anyway they are three unrelated issues.”
I think you are missing the point, Ben.
MMT isn’t a policy prescription. It describes the money system we have NOW. And it does work. It’s the politics which guides the economy which is flawed.
I disagree totally that the issues are unrelated. If we don’t understand the way in which a national (currency issuing) economy works we can not control outcomes nor make rational choices. By which I mean our elected, representative government cannot make rational choices.
There is nothing inherently wrong with government controlling the economy, it what government is supposed to do. Where it has gone wrong, and badly wrong is in allowing the legitimate functions of government to be taken over by over-powerful (over-wealthy) vested interests.
The ‘small government’ trope supports the interests of a very few. It sounds nice, but unless you happen to be one of the select, elite few it is against your best interests. And more to the point mine aswell, which is why I resent your trotting it out as if it represented some considered and reasoned wisdom.
Good post but it’s one helluva problem to solve. Our elected representatives come from the extrovert end of the spectrum so are probably incapable of seeing the problem let alone identifying a solution. I’m sure we’ve all been to meetings where the discussion is mainly dominated by a few. I was on a committee on which one guy never said a word but he was one of the brightest guys there. I got to know him very well both business wise and socially and made a point of talking to him during coffee breaks and over the phone afterwards. Generally his views eventually got aired and the committee was richer for it. The point is we are all different and fit into a broad spectrum. How to get the most from that broad spectrum is a problem but a good start would be for the chairman of such a grouping to spend his time talking to all members between meetings so he/she is aware of the diversity of opinions and talents of the members. The chairman can then direct discussions so that the diversity is best utilised. It doesn’t happen often but when it does the results can be startling. Just one thought and there must be many more ways of getting the best from a team.
Introvision = greener society = MMT , i am sorry i don’t see the link.
Andy, i understand a fiat currency can’t default and from the minute the earth existed some form of money creation and spending existed before taxation. I don’t think that is in doubt. Where we are now does money creation come before tax etc, i think is semantics and not relevant. I personally want to see market failure corrected through regulation. I see the risk a populist Government caving into too many demands & printing to spend where eventually taxation isn’t sufficient to contain inflation – and ultimately a Government taxing aggressively will eventually be voted out of office so we risk boom/bust or stagflation or variants of it. Alongside all of this is how the currency will react to a populist Government printing / probably crowding out the private sector etc. I personally feel it will weaken and we risk importing inflation. Finally why do i want a Government with more control? Politicians are low quality and i wouldn’t trust them.
Just my opinion but probably shared by many.
The link is a willingness to embrace reality that has been denied
I think you are still doing that
@ben
“I personally want to see market failure corrected through regulation.” How do you hope to regulate a system based on fantasy ? The system has to be rational in the first place to be subject to regulation.
” semantics and not relevant….” maybe it is a matter of semantics; semantics is to do with meaning. That’s not in any way trivial or to be casually dismissed.
” I see the risk a populist Government caving into too many demands & printing to spend …..” Like bailing out a collapsing banking sector for example ? and then doing bugger-all to prevent something exactly similar happening a decade later ?….because it keeps the financial industry and party donors happy ? You think perhaps a government might seek to ‘bribe’ voters with giveaways ? So what’s new. They do that anyway, they always have except when they required no consent to govern.
And why is only a ‘populist’ government a subject of concern. How is that going to be worse than the elitist government we have now ?
I said in my previous comment, I think you are missing the point.
The point, by my reckoning, is that we need to organise our society differently and we are able to do that if we understand the mechanisms which enable us to do so, rather than relying on tired and worn-out, discredited cliches. Some of which, although appearing to espouse ‘common sense’ do nothing of the sort and merely bamboozle a gullible public from which we recruit a benighted polity.
I’m afraid you sound defeated.
We don’t need less government we need better government; and to get that we need to understand what government is able to do and hold the buggers to account when they don’t do it, instead of putting up with their whining excuses that it’s somebody else’s fault. The oil price….the EU…. the economy…. the weather…
Ben
We all of us have our agendas, we have our points of view, we have our opinions.
I have frequented this blog for a couple of years now and I have noticed that in the main people are respected when they are straightforward and I have seen many quite vigorous discussions. However there is less patience for those who, for example nitpick over details and ignore the core content or restate the same argument again and again and seem to pay very little attention to the replies.
I’m afraid my hidden agenda alarm went off the moment I saw your references to a ‘populist government’.
I could have taken your concerns more seriously if they included the potential dangers of say an elitist government caving into the demands of the financial sector, or perhaps an elitist minority government who deep into years of austerity bribes an small extremist party so it can form a government, then there is the elitist government that offers to bribe deprived areas of the country to try and get its historically unpopular legislation passed, the elitist government that seems strangely disinterested in collecting tax from large corporations and lastly the elitist government that contains a sizeable minority seeking the most economically damaging brexit imaginable so that the country can be sold off on the cheap and turned into low tax, low regulation neoliberal fantasyland. Printing and taxing (or not taxing ) in these situations seems to be of no concern whilst some undefined future populist government (perhaps one headed by a bearded ‘radical leftist’ who’s major policy positions would fail to raise an eyebrow in a scandinavian legislature) is a cause for such massive concern that the idea of MMT (print and tax) must be removed as an tool for (the wrong kind of) government
oops! your bias is showing
It seems to me that your concerns have little to do with MMT but more that the key to the secret garden where the magic money tree grows and its fruit is harvested should only be held by the right people (pun intended), those who can be trusted to use it to support the financial and power interests of a narrow elite.
Thanks
Agreed
@dambrill
Yes. Well put.
That covers much of what I was trying to say and did it rather better. 🙂
@ Ben
” … a populist Government printing / probably crowding out the private sector etc.”
Contrary to popular economic belief there is no evidence that central government fiscal stimulus (investment) crowds out the private sector. In fact it is more likely to be the opposite – ‘crowding in’.
https://modernmoney.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/the-myth-of-crowding-out/
https://mythfighter.com/2016/07/01/the-myths-of-crowding-out/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-21/modern-monetary-theory-is-not-a-recipe-for-doom.
Etc. Etc.
As Steve Keen has explained using an auto ‘skid correction’ example, a complete understanding of how a modern sovereign monetary system ‘works’ requires a certain level of counter-intuition, which inevitably is an obstacle to general acceptance even within the academic community.
Of course GIGO always applies to any policy making. You can’t legislate for ignorance & stupidity, even though it prevails at the highest levels of political life. PR would to some degree mitigate against the systemic incompetence we are burdened with. But in the end, until ordinary people understand how our sovereign modern fiat monetary system actually works, and has done for 40 years, there will continue to be dangerous and undemocratic outcomes for the nation.
80 years ago Ezra Pound wrote: “In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.” His insight is even more relevant today than it was then.
Thanks
Wasn’t quite sure where to place this comment, as it fits with many of the posts. However, here goes. This is the “motto” of the American Monetary Institute (see https://monetary.org/) coined by its late founder, Stephen Zarlenga.
“Over time, whoever controls the money system, controls the nation.”
– Stephen Zarlenga (1941 — 2017)
Money is profoundly political, indeed, it’s the product of “politics”, even if only the “politics” of the group dynamics of a small group operating a barter system, and is certainly true of a fiat currency, as was understood by Aristotle who said “Money exists not by nature but by law” (Ethics 113)
I have heard it said, but not confirmed, that Frank Baum wrote “The Wizard of Oz” as a parable for the (political!) operations of the money system, and in particular for the way in which the finance sector deliberately mystified the operations of money, its creation and deployment.
In that reading, the Emerald Palace is just Wall Street and the City and other such markets, hedged about with great flummery and pomp, when in reality they are really largely the equivalent of a little old man behind a curtain, feverishly operating a One-Armed Bandit in the hope of hitting the jackpot, with little real connection to the real economy, represented by Dorothy and her companions, and the world they come from.
And that brings us to the point implied in several contributions, not just on this post, but on others on this Blog, of the need for both education, and democratisation of the money system – capture, for example, in Richard’s campaign to see accounts that are prepared not just for the operators of a One-Armed Bandit – aka investors – but for stakeholders and the wider community. The quote from Ezra Pound about “financial illiteracy” is spot on.
If we don’t take control of what Stephen Zarlenga called “the fourth limb of the Constitution” – or words to that effect, after the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, then we will continue to be the three-legged (and probably actually hobbled) beast we currently are.
With power to control the creation of money – which Governments can, and do, create, but without sufficient oversight – we might then have had the power to stop Theresa May from providing a bung to the DUP to prop up her Government after it fell at Beecher’s Brook in the 2017 GE, when she simply hopped up on the back of the DUP nag, to scamper home over the finishing line!
Hear, hear
For the benefit of anyone who has an hour to spend being entertained and educated I recommend the following documentary about Frank Baum his ‘Wizard of Oz’.
And I thought it was a children’s story. !! It is indeed a parable, and I think worthy of unravelling its meaning. Within the first few minutes we see how Hollywood missed, or skirted, the point by introducing a simple costume change to Dorothy’s slippers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOdYGU6CCUc
@Ben Inflation is always a great bogeyman especially for those who have a stock of money. Not so much for those that have to work to acquire it.
Hyperinflation is always supposed to be a rapid next stage. Yet between 1795 and 2012 there were 56 examples of hyperinflation (when defined as starting when there is a month in which the price level increases by at least 50%. When the monthly inflation rate drops below 50% and stays there for at least one year, the episode is said to end).
http://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/debunking-hyperinflation-and-challenging-inflation
50% !! Think we need to have a stronger definition beyond hyper to describe inflation. Inflation beyond a moderate level and by that I mean is low digits. The more inflation the more the tax rise (in the print/spend/tax camp). Also as you say you can’t counter stupidity/being a soft touch call it what you like but you print for green why not print for education then the NHS then defence?? The list goes on.. it has boom bust written all over it. In anticipation of this the currency gets smashed and we import inflation.
Anyway life is about opinions and this is mine. You don’t have to agree jus as I don’t have to agree with yours or Richards.
Ben
Every single pound we spend now is printed
We have never had a hyperinflation
And the ballot box more than ensures we will not
I really think you need to stop hyperventilating and show a little trust in humanity, and even care for it
Right now you are only evidencing contempt that helps no one
If you carry on posting like this I will delete your comments as they are not useful as they stand
Richard
Wow so if someone doesn’t sing 100% from your hymn sheet it causes offence!!.. bit authoritarian but it’s your space I suppose, anyway no big deal from my perspective.
But you did not have an argument Ben
Diatribe is not argument…..
Just in case you did not know
I’m interested here. Are you actually suggesting we legislate for discrimination on the basis that some people are more introverted than others, or is this a spoof?
How do you define “introverted”? Do you have to clinically diagnose it, or is it OK to simply self-define as introverted. Because if you can self-define, it is totally meaningless – because it is not objective. It is subjective.
I note that you have no actual evidence to show or prove that there is discrimination against introverted people. You’ve taken a couple of cases (where being introverted is the self-defined reason for failure, rather than the objective reason) and then applied it to the whole spectrum of people. There are plenty of highly successful introverts out there.
I’m guessing being introverted is on a sliding scale as well – some are more than others. Are you going to try and adjust people’s outcomes based on a subjective sliding scale?
Then, what would you do if someone is indeed introverted? Give them some form of advantage? At which point everyone will simply self-define, and then claim other people are not introverted to get ahead. Rendering the whole thing utterly meaningless – more than it is already.
Where does it end after being introverted? I’m quite short. Maybe I should claim I am being discriminated against because of that, because there are some jobs I’ll never be able to do. It’s a fact of life that some people are more intelligent than others. Is it discrimination that employers for many roles want the smartest and most talented people to fill their jobs? Or should discrimination on the basis of intelligence and ability also be outlawed, and jobs be filled simply out of the draw of a hat – or more likely by some government or political appointee making a decision.
What you are doing here – apart from being mindless – is trying to add to the already overburdened culture of victimhood. If you can’t do something, it’s far easier to point the finger at someone else and say you are being discriminated against rather than look at yourself and ask what you could have done better. It’s an abdication of personal responsibility.
You do realise that gender is not an absolute?
Nor is sexual orientation
And even race has been subject to legal dispute?
And you are saying being on a spectrum excludes discrimination?
Really?
You really are very unwise
Apart from not answering my question with anything other than rhetoric, you have utterly failed to see the point I’m making.
I am well aware most things exist on a spectrum. Nor do I think that some discrimination does not exist.
What you are doing though is making broad, sweeping statements which help nobody, and lead to truly terrible policy. I ask again – what policy would you implement to stop discrimination against introverts, for example?
My guess is you can’t answer that question, because the policy would have to be so intrusive too every aspect of life and basic freedoms to “correct” for the perceived discrimination that it would be totally unworkable – and would still get things wrong ALL the time.
You are trying to correct for equality of outcome. Which is impossible because we are all different in our abilities and desires. Trying to force this is not only pointless but actually quite morally wrong. Are you going to take something away from someone because they happen to be white? Or give something to someone because they happen to be black?
Trying to improve the equality of opportunity is a very different thing, and admirable, but you are not doing that. You are aiming for a post-fact re-alignment.
What you are doing is putting everyone into a grouping, then ranking those groupings based on perceived victimhood – both by the person and the well-meaning (but quite wrong) social justice warriors themselves. Are you saying all introverts have been discriminated against? I’d hazard a guess Bill Gates doesn’t feel too bad about life, and he is an introvert. This pyramid of victimhood means you inevitably see anyone as just a pastiche of their gender/race/sexuality, when the real world is simply more complicated than that.
Which is why I specifically mentioned personal responsibility. You have to look at cases on an individual basis, judged on their merits. Not by assuming that one case can be extrapolated to all individuals within the same manufactured grouping.
Let’s take racism. If you show me a racist, I’ll stand with you against them. But by making sweeping statements about a large group of people, you are helping nobody and are more likely than not slandering many. Do you think all white men are racists? Or do you think all black people are poor and helpless because they have been discriminated against?
Let me ask you a simple question:
You are hiring for a position, and two candidates apply. Both have exactly the same grades at school and university, and exactly the same work experience. Both give excellent interviews and there is nothing on paper to chose between them.
One is a white male and one is a black male. Which should you hire?
Both
I have always hired good people
You can always use them
You ask stupid questions because you think the world is binary
It isn’t
Which is why solutions are beyond you but stupid questions aren’t
You will not get on here again
And for the record, read the threads: the answers to all your questions are in them
Firstly, I am not the same Ben as the one earlier. There you go again – claiming all people with a similarity are the same. Maybe you are discriminating against me because I am Jewish, by threatening to block my responses.
You aren’t doing a very good job of answering questions – and are actually making my case for me. How do you know that I think the “world is binary”? Are you inside my head or able to read my thoughts?
My point of course is that the world is NOT binary, and that people should be judged on their individual merits. What you and other SJWs are doing is making the world binary. By introducing discrimination laws you are forcing people into one binary group or not. Introverts or extroverts – a binary and totally arbitrary grouping, which you are then forced to rank against the other half and against every other grouping with any perceived discrimination in a totally subjective way.
Which is simply impossible to do in a fair manner – blowing equality of outcomes out of the water before you even start.
I’m sure some introverts are discriminated against in their individual workplaces. I’m sure also that some extroverts are discriminated against in theirs. How do adjust for that with blanket legislation? And then where does it end? Taking it to extremes, 95% of people in prison are men. Should me equalise that outcome as well and jail more women till it’s representative of the population as a whole?
You don’t do a great job answering my hiring question either. Other than trying to avoid it.
Back in the real world, you could hire both. But there isn’t always the work to fill both their time. Would you give them half jobs? Nor is there always the money to pay both of them. Would you pay each one half of what they were going to get paid?
So which ONE would you hire?
In the real world we have to make choices. They are not always easy, and they are almost always subjective. That means the outcomes are not always “fair”. One guy will get the job and one won’t.
What SJWs do is try and force equality of outcomes. This in itself is inherently unfair – by doing so you are favoring one group over another. Which is discrimination. It also means some other body – typically government – has to encroach on our freedoms.
More importantly, it encourages the infantilisation of entire groups of people. Why bother when well meaning SJWs tell you that the world is against you, and you can only suceed with their (legislative) help to correct it. It gives people who don’t work hard and fail an easy excuse, and those who do succeed will always have a question mark over their heads saying they are only where they are because of their minority grouping, breeding resentment from those who don’t receive the same treatment. Neither is good. Honestly, positive discrimination can often be the best way to foster discrimination in the first place.
Legislation is a hammer. Discrimination, especially based on self defined and fluid ideas is not only not a nut, it’s a jellyfish.
And there you are trying to go fishing with a hammer.
I do not engage with those who make up arguments including that I am being anti-Semitic when I have no idea who you are
With respect, your approach is not one I will engage with because it typifies trolling
“You ask stupid questions because you think the world is binary”
Hmmmm…. like should we leave or remain in the EU ? 🙁
I must have missed the bit in your posting and replies where you demanded that introversion was a problem and there ‘ought to be a law about it’…..
I know you hate censorship, but one of the delights of this space is that it is mostly free of inchoate rantings.
🙂
The ideas should be what is debated on their merits and their weaknesses.
Solving a problem by applying the same solutions and ideas that got you there is not a solution.
The advantage of different viewpoints is when the environment and circumstances change.
Human beings brains work through routines, and have various standard brain shortcuts to save effort. This is very useful in a steady state environment with similar problems.
However when the world changes, technologically (shale oil, AI, internet, containerisation, jet engines, robotics), politically (recession/depressions/Chinas 800 familys), economically (manufacturing exported to a vast country China, state protection and recycling debt) and socially (Facebook, internet, mobile phone, internet banking, cheap secure travel, EEC to EU) the human being tendancy is to do what worked before. Summarised by the book ‘Who moved my cheese?’. Group think and age increase this normal bias.
Including all types to the team gives room for the radical ideas, the self made entrepreneur, the “plant” to sow a new seed, the Alan Turings of the world. Lecturers also have an advantage as they have to repeat the logic and when the circumstances change gain an insight from the explaining the new circumstances and insights. I know I have done it.
As for dambrill ‘the idea of MMT (print and tax)’ the point of MMT is where you place the money. Like the bible parable on the brothers given gold and one burying the gold in the ground for a year, money is useless unless used. Where extra ‘created money’ is directed and used is the key to MMT. dambrill putting your ‘gold’ into the ground or buying a different fixed commodity e.g. silver, a diamond, a built property, a traded share is the same nil result. The item remains the unchanged. Direct the money elsewhere and just as the parable the gold was put to good use and is a parable showing MMT&Practice (MMTP).
Please start using the acronym MMTP from on as ‘it does what is says on the tin’.
I wish we could use MMTP
But MMT has stuck
And I fear we have to use it as a result
Something may appear stuck until it moves!
Add the second MMTP as the new version of MMT and then keep on using it. Adding the new title to wikipedia pages will also show that the original theory has now upgraded from theory to practice.
I like that lady in the BBC Question time audience who exploded the stupidity of calling Daesh – ‘Islamic state’ with “then I could call myself a zebra it doesn’t mean that I am one!”
Persistance of the new message over time like all marketing eventually crowds out the old. Take heart you have changed parts of the world Richard! Every change begins with an idea and committed people.
Noted!