Which about sums it up. If writing becomes a folk art, with writers funded only by patronage and good wishes from their fans, good work will become rarer, and great work scarce as hen's teeth.
Damn.
Meantime, for paper books in the USA, I recommend powells.com, which is highly unionized.
Charlie, of the big ebook distributors, which one offers writers the best deal? Are there any good deals?
]]>Charlie worries about markets in dark things. Me, I worry about (to misquote myself) an economy like a climate system, with arbitrary and unpredictable weather, vast storms, freezes, burns, droughts. This isn't a maybe thing; we know that without fiscal and monetary policy that is what we will get. And the very wealthy can work that system in their favor, so that only they will be able to save. And that is one possible future, and it ends with our civilization drowned.
Seriously, libertarians, wtf?
]]>It's troll's gold—a curse to the holder, and to those who desire it. It's deflationary, which means it's an inherently poor currency to do business in; it comes with a built-in sales tax. It provides an incentive for employers and debtors to delay payment as long as possible. It's money that comes with a built-in discouragement to exchange, and half the work of money is as a medium of exchange.
Science fiction writer Charlie Stross brought this up on his blog, and the post jumped the science fiction ghetto wall—it got cited on /., and David Atkins over at Hullabaloo picked it up.
And, yes, Bitcoin could become a problem. It was intended, after all to implement both the crypto-anarchist and goldbug agenda. But, really, isn't this what the biggest global banks have already done? Finance, beyond the control of the most powerful governments, and corrupting those governments. I do not think Bitcoin could make matters much worse, in that regard. Yet…
There's a dark side to Keynesian economics. Keynes-Hicks models provide tools which hold out the promise of an economy without booms and busts, without bubbles and depressions, without a 1%. Conversely, though, Keynesian management can be used to enable an aristocracy, to insure that money will only be a store of value who are connected with the people who run the system. A new tool of class oppression, in other words.
But there's a deeper darkness. Without the "somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment" that Keynesian economic management requires, a money economy is like a climate system, with arbitrary and unpredictable weather, vast storms, freezes, booms and busts. And that is what crypto-anarchists want to make a permanent condition.
Well. I do not think that is too likely. But a new aristocracy? Is that not what a faction of the world's very wealthy are working to create?
]]>"Accelerationism is the notion that rather than halting the onslaught of capital, it is best to exacerbate its processes to bring forth its inner contradictions and thereby hasten its destruction."
"Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."—perhaps Keynes
So I don't think accelerationism makes a lot of sense.
...but what are sane politics?
]]>Hey, it's Heritage.
]]>There are probably, literally, 100 times more poor neighborhoods than rich. The count of neighborhoods is, for some reason, inexplicable I'm sure, omitted from the original article.
"Figures don't lie, but liars sure can figure."
]]>There are many more poor neighborhoods than rich. Therefore many more people from poor families than rich families in the US military. You dun bin hornswoggled by Heritage.
]]>I think part of the motivation for all the bellicosity we are seeing from the very wealthy is that they think they will be able to win and rule in vast dislocations that will come in this century, as climate change makes itself felt.
]]>http://www.jamierubin.net/2013/03/24/writing-with-the-google-chromebook/
Oh the humanity!
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