I suggested that if we had 20 ideas just as good, we would change the world.
Techno argued that ET should be about challenging the popular consensus and giving policymakers the tools to make alternate decisions - and that going to demos shouting save mother earth etc. shouldn't be the height of our ambitions, or even the core of what we are about. An alternative think tank, if you will, although I hate that term.
I started trying to articulate one such core idea when I wrote my blog on the The Negotiation Process but it didn't seem to resonate here, so I am developing that theme for another forum. I'm sure others have core themes/ideas which they would like to articulate and which might be taken up by the ET community as a joint project. I would find it useful if we did have a "project list" of working topics which might come to define/encapsulate a lot of what ET is about for an external audience.
I appreciate that is partly what you have been trying to do with your occasional series and it is also something we could build into the design of ET 2.0 by allowing tagging and categorisation of blogs - a bit like Booman has a regional sub-menu - we could have a thematic one.
PS speaking of ET 2.0 - any chance of including commonly used code sequences like "<...a href="http://www.eurotrib.com">The European Tribune</a...>" along with the allowed HTML at the bottom of the "post comment page"? I always end up having to do a copy and paste job from the new user guide section. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
If you have specific requests for macros just make them.
by macros do you mean the right click options provided by tribex? The list of code sequences given in the new new user guide would be a good start - although there are a couple of errors (unclosed tags) in some of the sample code there. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
Didn't know these macros existed - is there a list? "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
I don't think there are many bigger ideas than
(a) "Bank Debt is Obsolete"; and
(b) "here's how the replacements work".
Which is what I observe, and what I'm doing. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Those who do, join in, those who don't, keep on doing what they are doing, which is their privilege.
I've already had two investment banks contact me - one at the weekend who read it in ET - in respect of the "Peak Credit" article (one at "global head of strategy" level), both of them big names, and both with a cartload of sub prime US shit to deal with.
The logic of the Internet is that intermediation is unnecessary: why are credit intermediaries aka banks any different? "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Where we differ is in relation to the causes and the cures. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Class is possibly the strongest determinant. People are either on top, desperately trying to get on top, or being screwed by those on top. Capitalism turns this into a rather psychotic artform, but it's not possible for a culture to function intelligently as long as there are these kinds of horizontal fault-lines running through the population.
Change is only going to come by distracting people from their silly class-based games and creating a sense of personal participation which is actively exciting. People desperately want to feel a part of something which is more fulfilling than office politics and a useless and irrelevant right to vote.
The Right does well because it makes politics personal - not abstract, or issue based, but directly participatory. The sense of participation is a lie, but in politics people seem to want that feeling more than almost anything.
Which is why it's not enough to critique the Anglo Disease - there has to be an alternative which is easy to understand, easy to get involved with, and which has both personal and political influence.
