Richard Prebble/I’ve Been Thinking
I liked the book. I liked his ideas about the impossibility of value-free education. I liked his creative problem-solving get-things-done approach. I like that he came from a Labour background and identified institutional evil in the form of statist inefficiency and corrected it where he could, rather than having a prior ideological commitment to libertarianism. I don’t like that he doesn’t appear particularly aware of the possibility of institutional evil in private corporations. I don’t like the unquestioned idea that exporting/importing is great. I don’t like that economic growth is an unqualified and unexamined good.
27 responses to “Richard Prebble/I’ve Been Thinking”
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why isn’t exporting/importing great? and economic growth is fab. just ask brian tamaki.
Nicer to exchange goods with people you know/care about/locals.
But, Matthew, we should care about everyone.
Nope, just neighbour.
Fascist
perhaps you could forward him some wendell bery?
Excellent suggestion. I had almost that exact thought, but not the proactive bit of actually sending it to him. I will.
i’m with tim. isn’t the international market just a neighbourhood writ large? it’s called the ‘global village’ for a reason, you know.
Don’t be stupid.
Matt is right, in his post and responses.
sorry.
Sorry to get short. I’m in a confusing mood.
You can’t love Humanity you can only love humans. For that matter can’t even love humans can only love this man this woman this child.
e e cummings wrote a poem:
good poem
i agree with ideas of helping people in your own community but i am struggling to see how either preventing people from buying goods produced overseas or taking money from them if they choose to do so is in any way a good thing. if australia is better at producing cardigans because of their natural resource disposition, then why shouldn’t i buy from them—-i will get my cardigans at a lower price and that would leave me with more money to [provide food for people from my community].
I wasn’t advocating tariffs/subsidies, I just don’t think the govt should see salvation (economic or otherwise) in finding ever-larger markets.
There is an alienating distancing dehumanising effect when most of the material things around me come from the other side of the world, akin to eating out at McDonalds instead of at a friend’s place.
O and I STRONGLY recommend reading Wendell Berry’s book of essays What Are People For?. It’s even avaiable right now at your library. (The annoying bug my blog software has means I can’t link to the record directly, but if you search for the title or his name, it’s there, and available.)
Re 14: are you saying that if you have a NZ made TV in front of you you feel more human/less alienated than if it is made somewhere in Asia?
If I ever felt ‘alienated’, it would be when eating at a local fish & chip shop where the owners don’t speak english…more so than at a kiwi operated McDonalds frnachise.
16: NOPE, a TV I made MYSELF would separate me from my surroundings the very first time I turned it on. Mwahaha.
17: Can build tiny bridges of understanding with immigrant fish and chip people (like my grandparents neighbours hopefully tried to do). And my dichotomy was between friends and McDonalds, not two different fast food joints.
hey y’all. Just stumbled upon this site whilst on google, trying to find the reformed youth website. Has it been forced into retirement or something? I also found Jono’s site. I didn’t realise he was such a good photographer! Some very cool pics. Well, I don’t actually have anything to say about whatever subjects were being discussed, but I will regularly check out Matt and Jono’s sites from now on.
Oh, also: Fat Freddy’s Drop is playing at Sandwiches this Thursday night. Tickets are $20 from real groovy. If you’re keen to go, give me a text. I’d love to, but haven’t found anyone else who want’s to go as of yet.
Rad, thanks for visiting, Kate. You can use a site like changenotes.com to keep track of when sites update, so you don’t have to go and check them.
hmmm yes I am rather keen. I will decide tomorrow, I spect.
same
18: What if your friends work at McDonalds?
I decree this is a sidetrack.
worst s/n ratio of any comment thread on mhjb ever?
it is now
perhaps chud, we could use a ‘repeater’ to ‘regenerate’ the ‘signal’