Category Politics

• What I'm reading: corporatism and corruption

  Dan Davies, Corporatism with a flat cap:

  Either this cosy arrangement of mates, backhanders, off the books work and quiet words is the reason that nothing gets done in this town. Or … it’s the method by which everything gets done. If we want to think of an international analogy, do we look at some post-Soviet backwater where nothing gets done without blat, or some rapidly modernising part of China where everything gets accelerated by guanxi?

  Me, in this blog, earlier:

  Relationships of patronage and support, which are other names for corruption and nepotism, reward other virtues and talents than the ones our society values. Older, crookeder systems reward qualities like loyalty, attention to the needs of the institution, a strong sense of collective identity and goals, staunch support within groups and teams, talent-spotting and career development by superiors and bosses, protecting one's mates, and task orientation (just 'getting things done') as opposed to process orientation (making sure things are accountable). Those things aren't to be sneezed at either.

  Posted 17 April 2025 | Author Liam Hogan

• Methodism

  THE IDEOLOGICAL BASIS TO the American tariffs, and to whatever else the hell they seem to be doing to their economy and society, has a long-standing history.

  Posted 6 April 2025 | Author Liam Hogan

• Gronk

  THE LIBERAL CANDIDATE FOR Whitlam in this Federal election believes that women should not serve in combat roles in the ADF. This is at the obvious level just evidence that the man is a gronk. His views about women are backward, creepy, juvenile, and most importantly, wrong. At a grander level though this man's views aren't about women at all but about manhood and masculinity, part of the Triumph of the Operator:

  Posted 4 April 2025 | Author Liam Hogan

• Managers

  THE LONG AWAITED AMERICAN tariffs are announced. They promise to be as catastrophic for the largest economy in the world, whose currency is the global reserve, as anyone had predicted. 'The Markets' as at the time of writing are responding, also, predictably, but as though they could not quite have believed that a politician who made repeated statements that he would do a thing, is on record over decades supporting a thing, once in a position to do the thing, would do the thing. Who'd have thought?

  Posted 3 April 2025 | Author Liam Hogan

• Kings

  MONARCHY IS ONE OF the older and more ridiculous of human conceits. The more you think about it the weirder it gets. Elective or hereditary it's permanent; there's no such thing as rotating kingship, and the idea is that you do it unaccountably until you die, restricted only by God or the Mandate of Heaven. They are, like the current world's political situation is, totally ludicrous, but very, very serious.

  Posted 20 February 2025 | Author Liam Hogan

• Language Models

  THE POINT OF MAINTAINING a blog is a fundamentally personal and political one, shared with almost all writing that matters. Now, certainly, this blog will never ever matter; but that infinite irrelevance is even more reason I feel to think out the politics of maintaining it.

  Here is my policy: I don't like AI, and will never use it for writing.

  Posted 5 February 2025 | Author Liam Hogan

• What I'm reading: Commonweal vs. Branko Milanovic

  A Sick System: On the killing of a health insurance CEO, by the editors, Commonweal

  Americans are suffering too much, dying too soon, and going broke in order to prop up a completely unnecessary but very profitable industry. The time has come for us to begin phasing it out. The only questions should be how fast to do so and by what means: we could add a public option to Obamacare’s individual insurance market; we could gradually lower the eligibility age for Medicare or allow people to buy into Medicaid. But until we change direction, the problem will just get worse, leading to more despair and to more acts of rage. It is right and necessary to condemn such acts, but we no longer have a right to be surprised by them.

  To be young, perchance to dream by Branko Milanovic, on Vojinović's The political ideas of the Young Bosnia

  'A feeling of pride and fear mounted in him. Then another commotion, more yelling, disorder, running: nothing has happened they were shouting now: his Majesty was unharmed, a fiendish and dilettantish attempts on his life has failed. People began to slowly trickle back home. He thought of doing the same. But perhaps it was not good to be seen running away right now. It may be suspicious. He walked into a pastry shop. Should he take a baklava or a millefeuille? He decided for the latter even if it was more expensive. He realized that the money was in the same pocket with his pistol, moved a little away from the crowd and carefully took out 12 hellers. He counted them one by one. He had very little money. Like all 19-year olds he liked cakes. Somebody yelled again; cries became stronger and closer. He left the millefeuille after the first bite and walked three or four steps out of the store. There right in front of him was a stopped car, with His Majesty and the wife, berating the driver. He touched the pistol as if to make sure it was still there. Then he took it out…'

  Posted 6 January 2025 | Author Liam Hogan

• Orcs

  ORCS ARE CREATURES FROM Tolkien, and specifically Tolkien, who created them as fantastic creatures of dread, and large numbers. Certainly, JRR Tolkien worked in veins of antiquarianism, and everything he wrote was a meta-reference to some Old English or Celtic or Norse forebear, as anyone who's got bored by his books knows, but the forebears of orc-dom in British, Irish, and Northern European myth are not the orcs of modern myth. Traditional goblins are solitary, intelligent, skilful, tricky. Hobgoblins are humorous, though the butt of the joke might be you. Elves will definitely steal your baby, and fairies will definitely trick you. Demons, though certainly folkloric, relate specifically to the rules of Christianity and formal religion. The orcdom of uncountable ugly barbarian numbers, who are enemies and only enemies, and who have been made massively popular in the Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer 40K games franchises, appear to arrive fresh, culturally whole, in the late 20th century. Or did they?

  Posted 18 December 2024 | Author Liam Hogan

• Fifty grand

  ARTS DEGREES AT AUSTRALIAN universities are predicted to cost more than fifty thousand dollars:

  Posted 6 December 2024 | Author Liam Hogan

• Hobbes

  WE LIVE IN AN age identified by meritocratic principles. Those aren't ones which describe the world as it is, since clearly the best people are not selected to the highest positions of privilege (I mean, look around), they're principles that describe the world as it ought to be, and which serve to justify what will be. The meritocratic model of the world is one in which it's the inequality of human achievements, intelligence, hard work, talents, that justifies the existence of inequalities of power and privilege, and which aims to exclude accidents of undeserved success. The meritocratic model says, good things should come to the good, and by implication, lays the judgement of failure on the failed. From here, let me introduce a seemingly irrelevant but actually critically relevant event: US President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden.

  Posted 3 December 2024 | Author Liam Hogan