Like an oiled boomerang, Richard Florida returns: “I got wrong that the creative class could magically restore our cities, become a new middle class like my father’s, and we were going to live happily forever after,” he said. “I could not have anticipated among all this urban growth and revival that there was a dark…
It’s January, so it must be time for the annual celebration of the value of the UK’s creative industries. The UK’s creative industries are now worth a record £84.1 billion to the UK economy, figures published today reveal. British films, music, video games, crafts and publishing are taking a lead role in driving the UK’s…
Is specific discrimination against the Irish a false memory? University professor says yes, teenage historian says no.
How to ensure enough men become soldiers? Daniel Defoe, 1704: ’tis as plain our people have no particular aversion to the war, but they are not poor enough to go abroad; ’tis poverty makes men soldiers, and drives crowds into the armies, and the difficulties to get English-men to list is, because they live in…
Are creatives replacing artists? Does it matter? Bill Deresiewicz says: When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems:…
Time for the annual celebration of the value of the UK’s creative industries. “From Art to Architecture, Film to Fashion, British talent leads the world” “The UK’s Creative Industries, which includes the film, television and music industries, are now worth £76.9 billion per year to the UK economy.” Strange to mention the creative activities with…
Is a Universal Basic Income, the neoliberal alternative to unionization ? Some thoughts at interfluidity.
A consideration of the effects of Master and Servant laws at Flip Chart Fairy Tales: For most of the period since the middle ages […] labour law was firmly on the side of the employer. […] State intervention in the labour market is nothing new. The only aspect that is relatively new is its intervention…
Discussion of the role of entrepreneurial failure at the New York Times: Already-successful entrepreneurs were far more likely to succeed again: their success rate for later venture-backed companies was 34 percent. But entrepreneurs whose companies had been liquidated or gone bankrupt had almost the same follow-on success rate as the first-timers: 23 percent. In other…
When did ‘innovation’ stop being a dirty word? How does progress occur? The eighteenth century embraced the idea of progress; the nineteenth century had evolution; the twentieth century had growth and then innovation. Our era has disruption, which, despite its futurism, is atavistic. It’s a theory of history founded on a profound anxiety about financial…