simonparker.bsky.social
Public servant in search of a better future. Communities and service users first.
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I'm trying to imagine the sort of person who would change their behaviour if it weren't for JSO. Just as a thought experiment, how would they justify that to themselves? I suspect a lot of these people are just looking for excuses to carry on as usual.
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Yep it's the intellectual courtier class.
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I worked for an employee-owned business briefly and was actually disappointed at how simple the governance was. We voted once a year on what to do with the profits.
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And it does help when the philosopher legitimises your own sense of greatness. Look at Musk - he thinks he's about to usher in fully automated luxury oligarchy on Mars.
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Oh ok sort of get it - akin to asset locks, ie I own it but can't sell it? I definitely think we need to ask some hard questions about why the co-op economy can't seem to scale.
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He's actually interesting in a sort of precocious post-doc way, and clearly people pay for his stuff, but it's very much out of the right wing Bay Area reality tunnel.
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Bloody hell Paul. Put me down for the blog but can you show your working for those of us slower at thinking?
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I strongly suspect this is where Dominic Cummings got the term from. The Bismarck thing seems a giveaway.
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I spent some time trying to work out where the NPC meme came from. I mean D&D obvs but so far I've gotten back to Samo Burja, a Bay Area pseud who divides the world into great founders who re-write scripts and NPCs who follow them: youtu.be/3P2bzwn61Vs
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It's called the radical flank effect. The direct action isn't popular, but it raises the profile of the issue and legitimises moderate activists. I'm not a massive fan of JSO, but they aren't idiots.
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I posted some evidence on this higher up the thread. There are a couple of studies which suggest the same thing, namely that JSO isn't popular but its actions increase support for moderate climate action: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Left, Frederick Gibberd. Right, Jonn Elledge.
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I just assumed this is the sort of thing you were aiming at?
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And oh goodness he's in the Water Gardens which are now unrecognisable thanks to a horrible surface carpark.
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Also I think Jonn could learn a lot from Gibberd's hair.
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I've been on a bit of a new town kick recently and was genuinely surprised at how much people loved them well into the 80s. This video of Freddy Gibberd discussing Harlow - where he lived from its foundation - is a lovely document www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPpe...
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TL;DR non-violent protests raise the profile of climate change as an issue while making moderate climate change groups seem more mainstream. When people say 'I like your cause but not your actions' we should believe them.
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For instance www.nature.com/articles/s41... and theconversation.com/just-stop-oi...
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I can't read full piece because paywall but I'd love to see some more evidence in this space rather than the usual vibesplaining. The data I've seen provide support to the idea that actions like JSO's solidify moderate climate support and only piss off people who were always going to be pissed off.
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Look Paul I have seen the future and the only reason those Washington bureaucrats don't agree is because they're all NPCs.
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Imagine I'm a single parent with three kids who's just been evicted from my rental in East London with nowhere to go. Your algo isn't going to get a roof over my head tonight, nor will it help find me the right housing solution. Like so many NHS Direct calls, it will tell you to call a person.
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But you absolutely shouldn't accept this formula because it's bullshit.
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If you accept this formula then yeah bureaucracy is bad. The original purity of my algorithmic intent will be subverted by public servants who want to feather their own nests and drive their own agendas. So far, so James Buchanan. At least the algos do what we tell them to.
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Over the past few days, I have also been reminded of this paper by @grattonecon.bsky.social and @bartonelee2.bsky.social and, of course, ...
gratton.org/papers/Drain...
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I *think* it has its origins in John Birt era strategy unit documents (first time I saw this anyway). IMHO ppt is the right tool for dataviz-driven reports because it handles charts better and also landscape. If you want a narrative report, use word.
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As ever, the real money isn't in DEI or chief executive salaries, but in the costs of pensions, healthcare etc, so strategic changes to the size of government have to grapple with promises made to citizens.
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In the long run you'll probably find that you build a lot of that cost back in. Look at the Department for Education, which was cut to shreds by 2015. It became too small and lacked corporate capacity in important areas like digital.
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Can we get to society of participative innovation before they take us to a society of neo-feudalism (on Mars)?
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It's the Nietzschean/Promethean argument that great men will bypass democracy and use technology to save humanity. The herd versus the hero. Of course the great men - whoever they may turn out to be - also get to be kings with very nicely feathered nests.
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Tnks and you're right that raising the referendum threshold and offering new bands *but* pinning the decision on councils is the obvious way to do it in the short run. Given the extent to which clean, green and safe influence voters it could help (assuming not all swallowed by social care).
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Can't read this because paywall, but very much hoping part of the argument is for reforming council tax, which is by design very hard to increase.
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Woot. There is lots of evidence that fiscal devolution is the real secret sauce that makes the whole thing work.
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Yep and 'planning reform' doesn't necessarily address that problem.
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I think in this case they're using Richmond and Wandsworth as a benchmark and saying if everyone could achieve the same ratio of staff to residents you get the £1bn. On the face of it that isn't a terrible way to get a rough estimate, but the resulting saving seems very high to me.
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Intuitively I'm sceptical. The entire two tier reorganisation project is likely to save less than £700m and that involves abolishing a lot more than 16 councils.