Starting Over (Will Wilkinson & Kurt Andersen)

[Bloggingheads]

[thprop]

I gave up after twelve minutes or so. I went ahead to listen to the keys to renewal. My head was about to explode. Why waste Will's time with such a piece of pablum. Moral decadence. Renewal. Greatness. Moving beyond. Renew. Community. Self-sacrifice.

This is the liberal equivalent of family values. A secular religion. Human history has not been pleasant - zero economic growth until 1800. (According to Gregory Clark in "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World" - read the first chapter online). In the past two or three hundred years we have been stumbling ahead - two step forward, one back, a couple to each side. We don't need great prescriptions. Just make sure we can keep stumbling in a general forward direction.

[ogieogie]

Originally Posted by thprop

I gave up after twelve minutes or so. I went ahead to listen to the keys to renewal. My head was about to explode. Why waste Will's time with such a piece of pablum. Moral decadence. Renewal. Greatness. Moving beyond. Renew. Community. Self-sacrifice.

This is the liberal equivalent of family values. A secular religion. Human history has not been pleasant - zero economic growth until 1800. (According to Gregory Clark in "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World" - read the first chapter online). In the past two or three hundred years we have been stumbling ahead - two step forward, one back, a couple to each side. We don't need great prescriptions. Just make sure we can keep stumbling in a general forward direction.

Those damn liberals with their damn economic growth! Poppycock! If stagnation was good enough for Herbert Hoover it's good enough period!

i thought this was pretty good. what was so ideological about it? pretty much is a longer version of this really simple one the Economist gave today:
http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_...=features_box4

i only watched half but it seemed pretty decent to me.

[Gravy]

The uneven delivery of both participants makes it very difficult to listen to. We can't expect Churchill on every diavlog, but Wilkinson is on often enough that he should be improving and he isn't. I don't think he cares to, which is his valid choice, but it is also a comment on what he thinks about this audience. Andersen is pretty brutal, too.

[Namazu]

I'm really looking forward to not reading this guy's book. Financial bubbles have been around since the dawn of finance, accompanied by social manifestations that are remarkably familiar each time. The one unique feature of the most recent one is its magnitude--a result of globalization and high-tech financial engineeering. But of course, when a baby boomer farts for the first time, he thinks he's invented the fart. I urge hungry minds out there to ignore this brain fart and go directly to Kindleberger or Galbraith, for example.

[mmacklem]

Did I say that or think that?

And which Party would that be?

An image I'd like out of my head

Don't let Mickey see this!

[mmacklem]

bhtv experiments with non-English programming

bhtv ringtone: contemporary America edition

[claymisher]

Originally Posted by mmacklem

Did I say that or think that?

Oh Will, don't kid yourself, you'd be lost without the wingnut welfare.

[Namazu]

Come to think of it, is there someone at bhtv hq assigning these book interviews, and if so, could they be a little more discriminating? This doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would interest Will--nor does he seem to be terribly interested, despite his best efforts. The same thought occurred to me when Ann Althouse was interviewing the Snuggie(TM) guy. http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/20664

[a Duoist]

"Renewal"? Oh, dear. The 'renewal' frames the enduring influence of Calvinism in Bible Belt America, and is the whipping influence of Hitler's Nazism and today's Salafism and jihadism. The greatest proponent of 'renewal' in the world today is Osama bin Laden, now that Khomeini is no longer preaching his particular brand of "renewal."

The call for 'renewal' represents a psychology soured on existing reality, and so looks back over its shoulder into the distant past to find some feature of a long-lost 'golden age' to be resurrected in the future. In Hayekian terms, the renewalist, the revivalist, is not forward-looking; to the palingenetic, the future is mortgaged to the past, bereft of new ideas.

The 'renewal' is a step toward intellectual stagnation, not toward anabolic life.

[rfrobison]

Originally Posted by a Duoist

"Renewal"? Oh, dear. The 'renewal' frames the enduring influence of Calvinism in Bible Belt America, and is the whipping influence of Hitler's Nazism and today's Salafism and jihadism. The greatest proponent of 'renewal' in the world today is Osama bin Laden, now that Khomeini is no longer preaching his particular brand of "renewal."

The call for 'renewal' represents a psychology soured on existing reality, and so looks back over its shoulder into the distant past to find some feature of a long-lost 'golden age' to be resurrected in the future. In Hayekian terms, the renewalist, the revivalist, is not forward-looking; to the palingenetic, the future is mortgaged to the past, bereft of new ideas.

The 'renewal' is a step toward intellectual stagnation, not toward anabolic life.

No "grand renewal opening" sales for you, I guess. What do you mean by "anabolic life," by the way? My online dictionary says something about metabolism...And of course I've heard of anabolic steroids. Are you saying I'll never hit like Mark McGwire unless I give up my quest for renewal?