I hope the day finds you well, and happy.
Category: Administrative Page 30 of 35
Yesterday was a travel day and one of those cases where a four and a half hour itinerary turned into a 16 hour trip, to be topped off by someone doing some sort of machine work outside the window of my new place during the day. I’m operating on about seven hours sleep for the past three days.
Airbus sure knew what they were doing. Air travel really has become like traveling on a Greyhound, but with the extra joy of intrusive security checks.
Hope y’all are having a better beginning to your weeks!
We raised $5,246.64 in one time donations and $539 in recurring donations (recurring includes people who already had a subscription). That puts us solidly in the five articles a week, average, bracket. I’ll start up that schedule as of April 1st. If I get seriously ill and can’t do it for a week or some such, I’ll extend the duration.
THANK YOU very much, everyone who donated. This will make a large difference.
I do keep track of donations after the fundraiser and it does affect how much I write, so if you didn’t give and still want to, rest assured it isn’t wasted.
Again, my thanks.
We have raised $464 in subscriptions, and $3,718.64 in one-time donations. Multiplying the subscriptions by 3, we’re at $5,125.64, $874.36 from the 5 articles a week level. I’m very grateful to those who have given, and I’ll hold open the fundraiser for a few more days to see if we can make it.
If you haven’t read them already, there are new articles up on what intellectual judgment is, and on California’s drought.
In the first week of fundraising we’ve raised $334 in recurring donations, and $2,808 in one-time donations. Multiplying the recurring donations by three puts the total raised to $3,810, which is over the $3,000 needed for two articles a week for three months.
The next threshold is $6,000 for 5 articles a week—$2,190 away. If you haven’t already given, and you value my writing, I hope you will consider doing so.
If you haven’t read it already, there’s a new article on the problems with non-fiction today, and I’ve kicked my most popular, ever, article, on the difference between ethics and morals to the front page. That might seem like an esoteric topic, but the difference is the difference between a good society to live in, and a lousy one.
Since Monday we’ve raised $1,397 in one-time donations, and $305 in recurring donations. Multiplying the recurring by 3, we’re at 2,312, about three-quarters of the way to the first goal of $3,000 and 2 articles a week. And we’re about a third of the way to the second tier, of 5 articles a week.
I am vastly appreciative of everyone who has donated. We did well last year, but I’m always unsure about such things.
If you haven’t read them, I have also put up a new article on the influence of geography on society, as well as an article on why the world is trending towards negative real interest rates on bonds.
The simplest economic principle is this: people do more of what they’re rewarded for. Right now, I can no longer justify writing at this frequency and level for free.
Over the past year I’ve written on ideology, inequality,and austerity. I’ve discussed fundamental questions like what an economy is, the value of human life and the rage of political betrayal. And I’ve covered the effects of current events like the Ukrainian crisis, the rise of ISIS and much more.
As with last year, I need to determine how much actual demand there is for these articles, and how much time I should spend writing them, so I’m asking you to donate if you find them valuable (and you can afford to; please never donate if you’re having trouble paying for food, housing or healthcare).
I’ll fund-raise for two weeks at least. At the end, I’ll add up the subscriptions, divide the one-time donations by three, and use the amount to determine how much I write for the next three months, or more, if we do very well.
$0-$999 —I’ll write when the whim strikes. In the past that has meant that sometimes weeks have gone by between articles, and months between significant pieces.
$1000-$1999 I’ll average two significant pieces a week for three months: articles on important issues like how we came to this, how the world actually works, and how we can change the world for the better.
$2000-$2999 Five articles a week, minimum, for three months, barring unforseen circumstances like illness, accident, or unplanned travel.
$3000+ As the previous level, but I’ll do it for five months.
$More If we do very well, I’ll keep adding months.
I’ve maintained these paces for years in the past, at BOPnews, The Agonist, and Firedoglake, while also being managing editor of the second two.
For individuals, I’ll mention two other donation levels. If you subscribe, when your monthly donations reach this level, they’ll apply:
$100 – Give me the ok, and I’ll dedicate an article to you, or to your designee, within reason (aka. no, no matter how much you give, I’m not dedicating an article to neo-Nazis or Goldman Sachs).
$500 – Email me and I’ll write an article on a subject we determine. I won’t write on anything, I have to have something useful to say, and you don’t get to determine what I write about a subject, but I’ll work with you. (This isn’t the same as commissioning a piece, if you want to do that, email me).
If you value what I write, and can afford to, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
On Wednesday I posted a video on revolution by Timster.
It turns out Timster is a noted anti-semite.
Mea-culpa. I was wrong to post it without doing proper due-diligence (aka. about 2 minutes of research) and those who are criticizing me for it are correct to do so.
Let’s discuss, briefly, what I liked about the video.
Education hasn’t worked. The population is wet wood, they will not light on fire. The crimes are clear: from Iraq to the financial crisis to austerity to multiple foreign interventions which have made the world worse to an escalating police and surveillance state, the people who run the developed world have proven to be monsters responsible for the death of millions and the impoverishment of hundreds of millions.
This shouldn’t be controversial. I’m not even sure that it is controversial. And yet, not only are they still in power in most cases, there is no reasonable prospect of them standing trial for what were, by any reasonable standard of justice and in many cases under the law as it stood at the time, crimes: often crimes of mass murder.
Now I say this as someone who has spent the last 13 years explaining what is wrong, why and often, how to fix it. But that hasn’t worked. It simply has not
Given that the crimes of our leadership are well understood, the inertness of the population in doing anything about those crimes is striking.
This leads us to the next question, which is simply this: is revolution ever justified. The video calls for violent revolution. Is that ever justified?
When you think on this question ask yourself whether or not, say, the American revolution, was justified. Or the Haitian slave revolution? Or whatever you think the hardest case is. Then ask yourself this, how many people have to die or be impoverished before revolution is justified “here”?
I’m not saying that it is: frankly, I’m not sure it is, because I don’t believe that the non-revolution options have been exhausted, and by exhausted I don’t mean “every corner case hasn’t been tried.”
What I mean goes back to the first point, that citizens can know, now, if they want, about the crimes of their leaders, and still haven’t done much. (Yes, there are exceptions: right now those exceptions are Greece and Iceland.)
Think back to Occupy. I’ve got my issues with Occupy, which I won’t go into here, but Occupy got out thousands of people at most.
The left loves Gandhi (and ignores his complete inability to deal with real evil, like Hitler.) But Gandhian non-violence requires a ton of feet on the ground. It requires enough people to shut down entire regions of a country. Hundreds of thousands, minimum. Millions. And those people don’t just march, they shut the country down.
Those people do not, in most Western countries, yet exist. The huge rallies in Spain indicate that may be changing, but that is not yet clear. What we will see, in Greece and soon in Spain and Italy, is whether peaceful modification of the system thru the ballot box is possible. But the numbers necessary are only beginning to be seen in a few (forgive me, PIIGS) fairly marginal European countries.
I make no predictions on this, I do not know what will come. We will see. Syriza is playing a very bad hand, very very well. But Greece is very looted, and even with substantial debt-forgiveness I wonder how well Greece will do, though it will surely do better than under austerity if they do receive that debt-forgiveness.
So, revolution? Wet wood? Peaceful change thru the ballot box or non-violent Gandhian protest?
We will see. In the meantime, mea culpa again on posting that video without due diligence. And when will we be ready to revolt, thru the ballot box, Gandhian resistance, or, indeed violence?