With some generous technical help, I’ll be attempting a move of the site to a (hopefully) faster and more reliable server. The posts should be readable, but no more comments until further notice please.
Update The move is complete and we’re set to go. You can treat this as an open thread. I’ll try to post something new before long.
Tim Dunlop has announced the closure of the Road to Surfdom blog. It’s been a gradual process. Tim moved to the News.com blogocracy site a couple of years ago, and recently announced his retirement from blogging there.
Tim was one of the pioneers of Australian blogging. He started Surfdom in May 2002, at a time when the dominant voices in blogging where those of the US-centric warbloggers, beating the drum for war with Iraq. Tim joined Rob Corr and a handful of others putting forward more an alternative view.
I started blogging a few weeks after Tim and in those long-gone days, we found we thought very much alike, not only sharing the same views, but often writing almost identical posts, to the extent that we seemed to be blogtwins.
That was when the Iraq war and the merits or otherwise of the Bush administration were matters of lively debate, and much of the news was viewed through that prism. Bloggers had something to prove, particularly given the acquiescence of the mainstream media in the spurious case for war. Most of the pioneers from that time have proved their point and moved on, but the space they helped to create has been filled by millions more blogs, including dozens (maybe hundreds, I don’t keep up as well as I should) of Australian political blogs.
Blogging is going to be very different now in all sorts of ways, and Tim is taking a new direction, with plans to write a book. I wish him all the best.
It will be some time before we can truly determine the political, social and geopolitical implications of Obama’s victory. In the meantime, I’ll be parochial and observe that this really is the end of an era (in fact the first era) of political blogging.
I’m as tired as anyone of the poor performance of the site. I’m currently investigating a couple of options. One is to try to migrate to a different server with my existing host. This should improve things, but I can’t get much support with things like SQL databases, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do it. The second is to move the whole blog under the wing of Crikey. That would save a fair bit of effort for me, but I’m not sure how readers would feel about it. Any thoughts?
Since the collapse of the US financial system became undeniable, I’ve been struck by the number of people insisting that this has no implications for free-market policies because the US (and particularly its financial sector) is not truly a free-market economy. [1]
In the spirit of market economics, I want to offer a trade to all such people. I will agree that
(a) the US is not a free-market economy, and its failures do not constitute evidence against the claim that a pure free-market economy is the best possible form of social organization
(b) no other actually existing society is, or has ever been, a free-market economy, and no actual or conceivable events anywhere constitute evidence against the claim that a pure free-market economy is the best possible form of social organization
(c) In discussion with parties to the agreement, I will not contest the claim that a pure free-market economy is the best possible form of social organization
All I ask in return is that the counterparties to the deal agree not to advocate, oppose, criticise, or comment on any policy or political position that might actually be implemented, to ensure that the purity of the free-market ideal is not compromised by actual experience.[2]
fn1. Since I haven’t checked, I’ll assume that this set of people has zero overlap with those I once debated who insisted that the supposedly superior performance of the US economy over social-democratic competitors demonstrated the superiority of free market economics.
fn2. I’m willing to make the same offer to Marxist-Leninists and (two for the price of one) to combine both offers for free-market Marxist-Leninists
I’m taking a break for a while, in an attempt to catch up on various real-life backlogs. I may post a bit at Crooked Timber. While I’m away, check out the many excellent blogs in the blogroll.
After a long period of deterioration, the shared server from which the blog is hosted has finally been repaired, fixing the cumulative depredations of spammers. At least for the moment, response seems to be rapid and free of 503 and similar errors. I’m looking into migration options to avoid a return to the problems that have plagued the blog intermittently for the last year or so, but this depends on getting a bit of free time. In the meantime, I’m just glad to be back on air.
It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
John Quiggin 