It's never just the money, honey
Jan. 8th, 2005 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhSo Wednesday night I stayed up a little too late because I'd forgot that I had a very early doctor's appt, so I didn't get enough sleep and then I stayed up again Thursday night so last night I understandably punked out. zzzz
Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in Economics partly due to his theories on famine; he says it's less about poverty or lack of food and more about distribution, which means politics. Which makes this all the more disappointing and yet typical, as are the ongoing problems in Banda Ache. Meanwhile Doctors Without Borders are pleading with everyone not to forget the Sudan.
When I was in college I took as my economics requirement a course on the history of development and underdevelopment taught by David Landes and based on ideas that he would later write in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. I learned mostly that the tropics are a tough place to have a developed nation and that no one's hands are clean until everyone's hands are clean. (I wish the folks who made such a big deal about Arafat investing in Bowl-Mor lanes had read that one.)
About the buyout of LJ, I have a parable. When BET was purchased by Viacom some years back, there was the usual hysteria about a black-owned, black-targeted channel becoming part of a corporate behemoth. But in the industry it was welcomed, mostly because BET's back office operations were such a mess that no one ever got a correct invoice from them. Their programming really hasn't changed much (except the firing of Tavis Smiley but I think he's better suited to his new home on NPR and PBS anyway, and gives a much-needed boost of color to those two institutions), their ad revenue is way up which gives them more resources to make programming even better. I suppose what I'm saying is, we live in a capitalist system and it's easier to protect what you have if you know how to play the game. Make money at what you are doing and everyone will leave you the fuck alone.
Not to mention, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maybethemoon said, I pay for this LJ and I'd like it to work reliably. (Well, actually, I have to renew this week when I pay my bills as the time is almost out, but still.)
What keeps catching me by surprise is how resistant so many people are to change. Adjust the colors on the home page and my fpage turns into a festival of bitching. Which is odd, as one of Landes's points is that comfort with change is what moves societies forward, and stereotypically one would think that an online community would not be composed primarily of curmudgeonly Luddites.
Oh, and I admit, I'm just the tiniest bit sad about Brad and Jen. It's like when some friend of a friend that you only knew from parties or something gets divorced and you think, "Oh, that's too bad, they seemed happy."
Well, after that serious entry, I'm off to clean . . .
Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in Economics partly due to his theories on famine; he says it's less about poverty or lack of food and more about distribution, which means politics. Which makes this all the more disappointing and yet typical, as are the ongoing problems in Banda Ache. Meanwhile Doctors Without Borders are pleading with everyone not to forget the Sudan.
When I was in college I took as my economics requirement a course on the history of development and underdevelopment taught by David Landes and based on ideas that he would later write in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. I learned mostly that the tropics are a tough place to have a developed nation and that no one's hands are clean until everyone's hands are clean. (I wish the folks who made such a big deal about Arafat investing in Bowl-Mor lanes had read that one.)
About the buyout of LJ, I have a parable. When BET was purchased by Viacom some years back, there was the usual hysteria about a black-owned, black-targeted channel becoming part of a corporate behemoth. But in the industry it was welcomed, mostly because BET's back office operations were such a mess that no one ever got a correct invoice from them. Their programming really hasn't changed much (except the firing of Tavis Smiley but I think he's better suited to his new home on NPR and PBS anyway, and gives a much-needed boost of color to those two institutions), their ad revenue is way up which gives them more resources to make programming even better. I suppose what I'm saying is, we live in a capitalist system and it's easier to protect what you have if you know how to play the game. Make money at what you are doing and everyone will leave you the fuck alone.
Not to mention, as
maybethemoon said, I pay for this LJ and I'd like it to work reliably. (Well, actually, I have to renew this week when I pay my bills as the time is almost out, but still.)What keeps catching me by surprise is how resistant so many people are to change. Adjust the colors on the home page and my fpage turns into a festival of bitching. Which is odd, as one of Landes's points is that comfort with change is what moves societies forward, and stereotypically one would think that an online community would not be composed primarily of curmudgeonly Luddites.
Oh, and I admit, I'm just the tiniest bit sad about Brad and Jen. It's like when some friend of a friend that you only knew from parties or something gets divorced and you think, "Oh, that's too bad, they seemed happy."
Well, after that serious entry, I'm off to clean . . .
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-08 03:38 pm (UTC)You are so DEAD ON that it makes me want to hug you.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-08 04:03 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I really don't care about Six Apart buying LJ.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-08 04:41 pm (UTC)Really, the internet isn't free. I've paid for various aspects of it that I use for years beyond just my ISP. Not everything is going to be free. That's why network TV has commercials.