I promised myself a thinking week, but my posts yesterday generated well over 100 comments, one or two of which implied irritation at my delay in getting to them. That was because I was doing other things.
I have shared some thoughts and have appreciated the feedback this week but might post less over the next few days to allow more time for the task in hand.
Meanwhile if I do take time to moderate comments please do understand that this blog really is a very long way from being all that I do and that other things sometimes have priority. I can multitask, but there are limits to my ability to do so.
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Take it easy Richard. Sometimes less is better.
Indeed
If there’s one thing that needs doing it’s absorbing the implications of what Abby Innes says in her book “Late Soviet Britain” before you write. It’s definitely one of the great “ideology de-bunking” books!
@Schofield: Following your recommendation, I started reading Innes’s book on a 12 hour journey yesterday. Totally absorbing and more than a little worrying. Thanks.
@ Gareth John
Thanks. Sometimes a little hard going because often her arguments flow thick and fast but always stimulating of further thought. Clearly a book worth reading again because you are bound to have missed an angle.
You may be able to make efficiency savings by thinking faster, thus improving productivity and increasing your headline per capita Gross Deliberation Product numbers.
Good luck with that one….
You have my sympathy, Richard. I fear many of us regular readers of your blog have come to see you not only as a beacon of sanity in an increasingly schizophrenigenic world, but also as a rallying point for those who are desperate for change. I wish we could be more than just a part of your problem.
You’re not
But without radically changing the blog I am but sure how to manage it sometimes
Is there room for a moderating assistant? Someone who could clear the obviously acceptable posts and flag up the potentially dodgy or complicated ones for you to consider? Or would that simply add to your workload?
My fear is that would increase workload.
But I have begun video/ podcasts discussions to save me time this week
Although I’ve repeatedly recommended Abby Innes’s book “Late Soviet Britain” in posts on Richard’s blog as thought provoking ironically she has provoked me to think her choice of descriptive words to support her thesis aren’t quite right. This is evident on the front cover of the book in the subtitle “Why Materialist Utopias Fail.” The use of the word “materialist” misdirects us. It’s far better to coin the word “marketism” and say it’s “no moral marketism and statism” which fails to deliver “equitable demand” for a significant number of people in the UK. By this I mean sufficient goods and services so that everyone, whether in work or retired, can afford a sufficiently basic level of these for their well-being. The “no morals” refers to the lack of accountability in “marketism” and “statism” and this in turn relates to the anthropologist Christopher Boehm’s concept that human societies naturally seek to use “Reverse Dominance” to function optimally.
https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/boehm.pdf
Cast in these terms the failure of “no morals marketism and statism” provides lots of direction and content for a book along with MMT concepts concerning money creation added in.
Even the choice of the phrases “no moral/s marketism and statism” can be refined to “low accountability marketism and statism” both in terms of the quality of some/many goods and services delivered in the UK but also as part of the affordability of these items for a significant number of people at a basic level for well-being. Certainly a central theme for your articles Richard and those who comment on them is the low level and often lack of accountability for the above processes.