Author: Neil Mather

Liked It’s back! by Jonas VossJonas Voss (blog.voss.co)

At IWC in Dusseldorf in May, I managed to break my old website. I broke it, while I was trying to fix it, so that I could export all my old posts, and import them into Known that runs this site. Turns out updating a site with code written in 2003-6 from PHP 5.x to 7.2 can result in a number of thi…

Replied to https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2019/11/10988/ by Ton Zijlstra (zylstra.org)
That looked very intriguing – I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it.

Using speculative fiction as a means for exploring alternative economies, and then engaging economists with it as a reality check, would make for some great conversations.

I enjoyed Four Futures by Peter Frase as something that looked at the overlap of sci-fi and possible economic futures.

"For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind."

To Posterity, Bertolt Brecht

I quite like a bit of utopianism.

Yeah maybe you shouldn’t write recipes for the cookshops of the future, but it’s nice to think about all the lovely cakes that will be available.

This article postulates that the solidarity economy is not helpful, because it isn’t revolutionary:

The Real Movement: Against The Solidarity Economy

It was triggered by this article suggesting a change to Marxist theory to incorporate the solidarity economy: https://regenerationmag.org/marxism-and-the-solidarity-economy/ (only scanned this but seems a bit.. bold. Marx misunderstood his own system, ima fixit)

Smash capitalism or erode it? Not exactly a new point of ideological contention.. interesting though to see solidarity economy explicitly critiqued.