Two exciting events yesterday. In the public arena the Quadrant Celebration of REALLY Dangerous Ideas.
Gary Johns (“Abolish the Human Rights Commission”)
Tom Switzer (“Privatise the ABC”)
Kerryn Pholi (“Does Respect Matter?”)
Peter Day (“The World Needs the Anglosphere”)
Greg Melleuish (“Intellectuals Do Not Matter”)
All good stuff and spirited discussion ensued to demonstrate healthy disagreement about how to get the job done while saving the decent parts of the ABC.
In a different arena, the launch of some intellectual air support for the ground forces of classical liberalism. The first of a series of Amazon e books to explain the ideas of the great classical liberal Karl Popper went live overnight. A nice coincidence, but completely unplanned!
Two books went live, The Poverty of Historicism and The Logic of Scientific Disovery. A gliche in the second has left the html codes visible (despite looking ok in preview). So leave that one for the moment and take on board the more relevant Poverty of Historicism.
This is Popper’s critique of the idea that history is out of human control, so we have to submit to the trends of the time, which at the time of writing were communism and fascism. Now it is Big Government and the Nanny State. Popper wrote this while he was on an extended working holiday in New Zealand from 1937 to 1945. He was designated as an “enemy alien” so he could not join the ANZACs on the ground and he took to the stratosphere in the world of ideas to take out some of the dangerous ideas that pave the way for bad policies.
Popper later described The Poverty as his stodgiest piece of writing but there were several mitigating circumstances. He was still struggling with English as a third or fourth language. He had a very demanding teaching load because he was the sole lecturer in philosophy and the writing had to be done in his own time because his professor insisted that he was employed to teach, not to do research and writing. For several years the outcome of the war was in doubt and at home in Austria sixteen of his relatives perished in the Holocaust. He had to make do with primitive library facilities (his father’s house contained more books than the college library) and he was desperately short of colleagues who could discuss his ideas in depth.
In 1945 Professor Anderson invited him to take up a position at the Uni of Sydney but got a better offer from the London School of Economics. This is a scan on his career.
Still waiting for Sinc’s guide and overview on Oakie’s ideas:)
The battle continues!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_Bias_in_the_ABC
although those numbers of people wanting to delete the page are stacking up against me!
Lysander Spooner
21 Mar 13 at 10:51 am
Are the books likely to turn up as iBooks at some point?
Driftforge
21 Mar 13 at 10:57 am
Privatise the ABC.
I was listening to ABC Newcastle the other day and Jill Emberson was interviewing an academic, Terry Leahy, about sustainability and evil coal mines. Leahy announced he was a Marxist and extoled the virtues of a Marxist environmental approach to AGW and that the capaitalistic structure should be replaced by a Marxist one with a bottom up revolution.
Intriqued by this and remembering that we have had a Marxist environmental approach to society with Pol Pot I rang up the ABC. The young thing who answered gushed about how great Leahy’s brain flashes were. When I asked if I could speak to Emberson, who had been just as enthusiastic during the interview, she asked why. I said I wanted to point out that Leahy was evidently a supporter of Pol Pot; before I could elaborate the tone turned very frosty and I was informed they were on the air [fancy that for a radio station], but I could listen to the 2nd instalment.
Should a taxpayer funded organisation such as the ABC be giving extensive air-time to a fringe ratbag who excuses Pol Pot, supports a repugnant ideology and wants to overthrow the Australian social structure?
Come to that, should the taxpayer be supporting an ideological fruitcake who supports a vile ideology and possibly infests the minds of impressionable young people?
Anyway, the ABC should be gutted so that a country service is provided where the commercials don’t reach and the rest sold to private enterprise.
Will Abbott have the balls to do it or will the coalition continue on its masochistic way and put up with the ABC?
cohenite
21 Mar 13 at 11:31 am
Privatise the ABC. You should hear the Hobart “journo” if you can call him that, who does all the state political reporting on the 7pm ABC news named Brad Markham. He’s the usual twenty something ABC location reporter but Tassie being the home of the GayBC he could find five s’s in banana. Unbelievably awful prissy queenie voice. Thankfully the remote mute button is always handy.
PS I’m a gay man of 67 by the way. He makes my male partner and I recoil with embarrassment because it’s all sooooo obvious why he got the job in the first place.
davey street
21 Mar 13 at 11:40 am
Hmmm, is there a bit of momentum building to shine a light on the ALPBC?
$1bn a year is OK when you are rolling in company tax and CGT, less so when the government is scrounging around for hollow logs and change down the back of the sofa. A starting point would be to re-examine the Charter and put the bloated tax-eater on a diet.
H B Bear
21 Mar 13 at 11:47 am
and yet gillard managed to give the ABC an additional $10 million this year…an election year.
Gab
21 Mar 13 at 11:49 am
Hey Lysander – have a look at this – an analysis of the political persuasions of Q & A ‘guests’…
Rabz
21 Mar 13 at 11:53 am
Get rid of the ABC completely! Don’t keep any of it, not even the rural services. It’s like a cancer and before a year had passed it would have expanded again. Taxpayer money would be better spent subsisdising satalite services for those remote rural areas.
The bigger the ABC gets the more influence it will have to take in more taxpayer funds and promote it’s staff’s agendas. We are already seeing it with it’s lack of regard to it’s charter and expanding services.
Luke
21 Mar 13 at 12:17 pm
No probs Driftforge, there is a free app to read Amazon books on ipad, assuming that is what you want.
Poor Old Rafe
21 Mar 13 at 12:26 pm
Thanks for the post PoR,
Amazon has a free download of Kindle for PC and I have no problem with reading Poverty of Historicism online.
Great buy so far @ $3.99!
Jessie
21 Mar 13 at 10:48 pm