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RoosterRoy's avatar

Steve Keen has a patreon site where he is explicit that he is raising funds so that he can spend more time working on his Minsky model and indeed hire an assistant. Subscribers can purchase access to his blogs and podcasts - he’s still doing it so it is presumably having some success.

On that note, I would love to hear proper arguments between economists and other people who actually know stuff about how to solve particular problems that we have in our country. I recently wrote how I find levelling up a fascinating concept in response to a different blog. To kick things off, you could do a series where you invite two economists with opposing ideas to discuss how they would level up, say, teeside, and then Norfolk and then another region etc. what seems to work well on other podcasts (see the rest is history and we have ways) is starting out free and gaining a lot of followers and then over time adding subscribable extras. Both of those podcasts actually have two presenters who get on well and crack jokes. Both have won tremendous success.

Meanwhile, in terms of other sponsors. I imagine there are people who might sponsor something like this, but you can’t go to them with the claim that you’re going to zero base the entire government. They won’t believe and it’s too vague. I think you would need to pick a particular outcome that is broadly agreed upon as a good thing so that the project doesn’t attract mass opposition from the off (social care? A central provident fund as a good but “impossible” idea, making the railways work**) and work out how to zero base the administration in the current civil service around that. Firstly it’s believable that this can be done. Secondly, You can aim at particular people who want that particular problem solved.

So if the goal is social care being properly dealt with, there may be people in the insurance industry willing to sponsor a sensible review of this type because any sensible reform will result in people making proper savings for this. That is separate from the administrative ability to deliver it, of course, but I suspect the only way to get anyone interested is to link administrative arrangements to the actual outcomes to be delivered. Then the administration to deliver a different kind of outcome may require a different sponsor.

Sorry for waffling. Hope there are some gold particles you can sieve from all the mud.

** as a fellow SDP member, this is a particular point of interest. It doesn’t bother me if government gets involved in this. There are evidently models around the world that can be copied where state run railways work well. But simply nationalising the railway, as ourdear leader suggests, doesn’t actually fix anything. What changes to the administration of the railway are required, to make the thing work properly, whoever owns it?

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Tom Watson's avatar

Great idea - afraid I haven't got a clue how you'd go about getting that off the ground.

But have you tried thinking about digital?

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