I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually.
Bono.
As a scifi fan, I naturally believe that the route out of extreme poverty is letting machines do the work. Powered by good old fossil fuels.
But since I’ve also been a bureaucrat, I must agree that having the state run everything just doesn’t work.
When I first started reading SciFi as an early teen, I couldn’t understand why so many plots were: X struggling to get permission to research Y. Why the hell ask anybody’s permission, just do it. It seems to be an all-pervasive thread regardless of author that in the future, The Government would control and distribute permissions to think. It struck me that it didn’t seem to be plot-relevant or a warning of dystopia, but an automatic background assumption by the authors that that was how the world operated.
It struck me how highly ingrained this is 25 years ago, when I brought back from the printers a set of reference manuals for some software I’d written. Upon proudly showing them to my lodger she asked: don’t you need permission to do that? Yerwot???? The very concept of “needing permission” to sit in front of a computer and let flow your creative juices seemed so bizaire that I couldn’t grasp the concept that somebody would have the background underlying mental processes that assumed that was how the world worked.
《It is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous people in voluntary isolation who have defended, often by force, their protected isolation from the outside world. Wikipedia》
Rsm
Intriguing question? I think he might get an arrow to the head – or shot up by an Indian patrol boat as the Indian navy bar all access to the Island…
The urge to ask permission does tend to get ingrained in us bureaucrats jgh.
I still remember thinking I was overdoing it a bit going out to the little nook where we made coffee so often. But a little bit of paper toweling did absorb the gunge from my mouth ulcer and stop it hurting.
or shot up by an Indian patrol boat as the Indian navy bar all access to the Island…
We need some of that – do they accept outside commissions, I wonder.
“I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually.”
Globalisation often being defined rather narrowly as a rubber dinghy ride to a land of riches and free fanny.
Do people really refer to him as Nobo?
“When I first started reading SciFi as an early teen, I couldn’t understand why so many plots were: X struggling to get permission to research Y. ”
Well presumably someone was paying their wages so if they wanted to pursue their hobby on somebody else’s buck one would would bloody well hope they needed permission.
But that’s academics isn’t it? People who think they should be paid to pursue their hobbies. And the cost of pursuing them. I’m not saying it’s all valueless. Some of it produces returns far above its cost. OK. A lot of it’s serendipitous. The things you don’t know you don’t know. But there’s avenues that obviously aren’t going to improve the lot of the common man. It’s just knowledge for knowledge sake. But every bit of it costs with the sweat of somebody’s brow.
“I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa,”
Nice to know his carbon footprint is so large & he’s doing his bit for gerbil worming. Go for it Bono! Buy yourself a Hummer to do your shopping in.
“The joy that is in Heaven for one sinner that repenteth”
Watch him get cancelled sharpish…
‘ When I first started reading SciFi as an early teen, I couldn’t understand why so many plots were: X struggling to get permission to research Y. ’
They are not struggling to get permission to research, but to get their grubby hands on the grant money.
People like Michael Faraday – apprentice book binder – asked nobody’s permission, nor got grants. Thanks to him, among other things, we have electric generation and electric motors and… climate change.
I used to have two colleagues of the same age. One decided to get National Service over and done with before he went to university. The other deferred for his first degree and then again for his PhD. By the time he finished that, National Service had been abolished.
Indeed dearieme. Draft dodging was never just a USian thing.
Shouldn’t the correct response to Bono and the rest be something like:
“ We Told You So, You Fucking Fools”?
Delivered by a very big cluebat.
A man slaughter charge might also be appropriate given their policies exacerbated the problems.
“Shouldn’t the correct response to Bono and the rest be something like:
“ We Told You So, You Fucking Fools”?”
I prefer the “rejoicing in heaven for the one who has seen the light” or however it goes.
Also, I like Bono. I saw a programme about him and how much money he spent and invested around Dublin. He seemed like a generous guy.
“I love you” I said to my wife.
“I love you too” she said. Or I thought she said.
The next day she ran off with Bono.
Dearie Me
“Do people really refer to him as Nobo?”
Back in the late 80s, when I still sat with my Dad at football, Brighton and Hove Albion were sponsored by “Nobo”…my Dads response on seeing the shirt was “That c*** out of U2 is f****** everywhere”
There were perhaps early glimmerings of Nobo’s conversion to things capitalistic when the U2 media empire moved to The Netherlands to enjoy its zero-tax-on-royalties legislation, way back in 2006.
@bis, October 27, 2022 at 10:49 am
People who Are paid to pursue their hobbies
Astromoners. Anything beyond moon is irrelevant