"This is the soft despotism Tocqueville warned us of, an “immense, tutelary power” that wants only what is best for us. Like Nurse Ratched."
Brings to mind this classic quote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
03/28/24: Please forgive the interruption; something went wrong at the very beginning of all this, and what follows should correspondingly be placed at the start of the discussion. Somehow, Matt omitted the title of Pirsig's book in his lead sentence: "In 1974 a fictionalized account of writer Robert Pirsig’s 17-day motorcycle trip ... in 1968 hit bookstores ... and quickly became one of the all-time surprise publishing hits." The book title is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." [For those of us who go for this theme, try "Ghost Rider, Travels On The Healing Road, Neal Peart (Rush's drummer; 1952-2020); ECW Press (2002 hardcover), although I should warn prospective readers that the sheer length of the book is daunting.]
Thank you. Yes and no. The Letters of Nancy Mitford (1993) runs 524 pages. At the same time that I loved reading it, I began silently rejoicing whenever I saw "..." which meant that the editor (Charlotte Mosley) decided that unless SOMETHING got ellipsed, you'd still be reading Letters at the age of nine hundred and two.
In the majority of cases, yes: If the book's really, really good, its length is irrelevant. See: Florence King's STET, Damn It! (2003); Michael Powell's A Life In Movies (1986); Genius In Disguise, by Thomas Kunkel (1995); Laurie Lee, by Valarie Grove (1999).
Outnumbered 1000-1 by the "Generals of Ink" whose books are sound, fury and pulped with contempt.
04/01/24: And the abortions like "Collected Memoirs," by Julian Maclaren-Ross, published by the numb-nuts at some post-office box-pigeon hole "Black Spring Press Ltd, in 2004 (UK paperback). Unreadable. Why? Microscopic type-size. Instead of blowing the print budget on 437 CAN'T-BE-READ pages, CUT, print 350 pages, SAVE THE BOOK. Nope. Didn't happen. Pulped this date.
I’ve seen Rush 6 times and it was always a delight. Maybe the only band where if you listened to their albums and saw them live it was indistinguishable. Neal was an intellectual who happened to play drums (not just play them mind you as he possibly might be the best ever) the band wrote songs that made you think and I can say I’ve picked up a book or two from some of them. Thanks for the tip. I’ll attempt it myself and make it a tribute to him.
03/29/24: You're welcome. Geddy Lee's voice is gold. I was way out there on the periphery as far as what I knew about Rush; Peart's book brought me back into the orbit and I rediscovered what a masterpiece Subdivisions is. Clem of Blondie (drums) is my gold standard and Peart matched it perfectly. Altogether, even though I couldn't finish the book due to its length (so easily edited down to a manageable 400 pages!), I admired what I did read and it was a positive experience gratefully received. Be well.
04/03/24: Horror trip to Florida in 1989. Crescendo was meeting, by chance, Farrah's father, charming fellow, ten miles to the right of Attila The Hun. Descendo was the next day, when the flu (caught from a lady at this infamous Meeting) knocked me out cold ten minutes after returning home. Had to call in sick on the first day of the ensuing work week, a Monday, oh no, that didn't look like a fake sick-call at all, right (!).
Thirty years ago, Alan Cooper ('the father of Visual Basic') wrote the definitive book on User Interface (what we now call GUI) design. In the introduction he talked about the tendency of software writers to write software for the convenience of computers rather than for the convenience of users. His book (and his approach) was heralded as an enlightened way to design software, so that users could actually use it in a natural, intuitive way. For the next decade or so, software became more intuitive and more usable, but now this philosophy seems to have gone the way of MSDOS. Now software engineers like the Google guy described are now more convinced than ever that humans and humanity are the problem, and their software creations are the solution, not the other way around
@Mark1--"...engineers’ mantra seems to be “they’ll figure it out”."
I think it is worse than that; in that it is one of these "is that a bug or feature?" scenarios.
Since engagement is the metric that drives the determination of whether an app/software is successful, the longer somebody is fiddling around with it trying to get the frickin' thing to work, the higher the engagement and less time you get spend on a different platform.
Your generosity gives me pause. I'm convinced that many who write the directions/manuals/instructions simply do not even conceive of someone who doesn't have a nodding acquaintance with whatever they are directing or instructing you on. The 'walk a mile in another's shoes' philosophy seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky has programmer-archaeologists, sifting through layers and layers (thousands of years worth of development) of software. A different viewpoint on machine intelligence.
"In the introduction he talked about the tendency of software writers to write software for the convenience of computers rather than for the convenience of users."
I have actually spent most of my 30+ year career as a documentation developer at the interface between designers and users of software fighting this very battle. And I'm probably going to retire in a few years, having made few inroads into fixing it.
Is the Cooper book you are referring to “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum”? A fantastic book that may still have some impact in UX (user experience design), but then again maybe not, given the intrinsic arrogance of the name. I'll design my own experience, thank you very much.....
Coders create interfaces for services that agencies would rather not supply (like tax answers, returning a product, or rent subsidies) that a genius patient saint couldn’t navigate, but one click will buy a plethora of products. Years ago I fought with software writers who didn’t have a clue what we actually did to produce a newspaper but were tasked with linking dept systems. I finally figured out it was them not us.
In 1987 Apple published the first version of their Human Interface Guidelines, written mostly by Bruce Tognazzini. That early HIG was the UI bible for years. Having spent 40 years as an independent Apple consultant, I'm disappointed at the 20-year trend of Apple computers becoming more and more infantilizing of the user base (and Microsoft, who gave us Clippy, for which I blame Bill Gates). Not to get into any platform cult battle, this is a trend not only with computers but cars, kitchen appliances, and everything else, epitomized by the flashing 12:00 on the VHS player.
In the late 90s I was writing a database for the local newspaper to run their classified ad system, my first software job. A professional coder friend was shocked—shocked!—that I started by interviewing the front desk girls about the classified ad process. My friend said software designers never talk to the end users. (Yes, they were all girls, and I was actually one of them.)
Years later the newspaper switched to a commercial product. I was still working the front desk, and none of us considered the new software an improvement.
The automated bathroom is frustrating for a number of reasons. Every public place seems to have a different combination--auto water, auto soap but no auto towels, auto towels and soap but no auto auto water, etc. Auto flush toilets seem to either flush each time you shift position, or pause long enough after you stand to have you fear leaving your waste behind for others to view and be disgusted by. And, the elephant in the room, what happens when the power goes out?
My local brewery has a sticker on top of the toilet that says, “wave hand over to flush” even though there’s a traditional flush handle right there. Aside from the fact that having a camera in a bathroom is the height of creepiness, I think it would be funny to observe how many people actually fall for it. Got me once, I must confess. But only once.
Loved this. I am grateful every day that I was raised by a mechanic and am unafraid to turn a wrench, dirty my hands or try to fix pretty much anything. Not always successful, but am often enough to make it worth the effort 100 times over. I remember going into an auto parts store to buy new wiper blades at the beginning of monsoon season in the desert and having the guy behind the counter tell me I was the first person to buy blades that day who was actually able to put them on the car without the counter guy’s help. I once thought that was weird. Now I realize that *I* am the one who is weird. Ordering Shop Class as Soulcraft now…
Funny enough, my father was a professor. But he did everything he could by hand: completely re-layed out the interior of our house, did stained glass, gunsmithing, wood turning, etc.
It helped that he couldn't find a job after getting his PhD, and had to swing a hammer for a few months.
My dad was a systems analyst by profession, but his father and his father's father and probably those before were carpenters, and one of his brothers remained a carpenter / builder. I learned to use a wood shop early on in life. I love to work with my hands.
These are the most constructive conversations I've witnessed on the Internet since... can't remember. Matt tapped into another world here. A pleasant surprise.
I had looked for Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death at my favorite used books store but instead found another book of his - Technopoly. It was a very deep read on the trade-offs that technological progress imposes and that we very rarely think about - which seems to be Crawford's ouvre as well. The learned helplessness really hits home with me, because I am crap at doing home repairs, and I'd be embarrassed to admit that non-anonymously.
If you like that genre of books, I highly recommend The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. It came out in like 2010, but has become even more relevant and popular these past few years.
Thanks. I wrote about another interesting thinker Robert Nisbet (Twilight of Authority): https://rathercurmudgeonly.substack.com/p/blinding-flash-of-the-obvious . Postman's style was a challenge, almost on the order of Hoffer. But that idea of trade-offs tied back to a Thomas Sowell observation and Bastiat's point on the seen and the unseen. Crawford's on the money that convenience is our Achilles heal right down at the level of the individual let alone in aggregate.
I read that book. It was fascinating but as I remember it one of the premises was that pulling one's attention away from an article being read to click on a hyperlink was disruptive to one's brain and ultimately counterproductive to assimilating the information in the original article. I actually disagree with that idea for my own comprehension of an idea or thesis. For example, I had never heard of "Energy Lysenkoism" so when I stopped to click on the link & read about it & fully digest it I believe I had a better understanding of the concept as well as how it applied to the Matt & Emily's post. Sorry about the long explanation but I have been thinking about that for many years and I finally had the chance to tell someone my experience. Haha.
There is a book that while reading it, you will have to put it down to research the reference he is making - I don't care how well read you are in Western culture. Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun.
That is happening to me now with Rand Paul's book, "Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up" (Oct. 2023). Between the scientific papers/articles & the political stories/articles I am just about in the middle of the book. Terrific read - tho it makes me so mad that those 5-6 'Fauci n Friends' scientists/doctors - bamboozled the entire world about COVID. So many ppl couldn't say good bye to loved ones because they couldn't visit them... don't get me started.
Good stuff! Thanks Matt and Matthew. At some point the price point of Substack subscriptions is going to have go down. Too many good content providers to be affordable. Haven't got a spare grand to pay for a dozen subscriptions. Hopefully, some sort of co-operative venture option will make that possible.
Now, more than ever, we need diversity and real intellectual debate.
Totally agree that this model isn't going to be sustainable in the long run. Substack has to pivot to a revenue share type of model in which you simply subscribe to Substack and the writers get paid based on the reads their pieces get.
This. Substack needs some kind of bundle plan. It might mean less $$$ for Taibbi, as I subscribed to him first and he is one of the more popular subscriptions/substacks, but I’m not paying for eight or nine substacks at $5 a month each.
Farmers using organic regenerative farming practices are the only people I can think of who are not moving into the assisted living society. They do need one another - other farmers with regenerative practices - but they are an avenue forward out of a nation in sick disease-ridden decline and lockstep codependency with Big Ag & Big Pharma.
speaking of farmers, another aspect of this is john deere and how they are locking down their tractors via drm - they are in fact worse than the auto makers even. basically any "service" of newer tractors requires travel to the dealerships -
luckily older tractors don't have this problem, but it really really is illustrative of where we are going here, like it or not.
Apple is basically this too btw - at least according to Louis Rossmann. they just market their stuff better so you don't know it - as much.
Yes I am not super familiar with farming, but from what I have heard this is precisely why there is now a renaissance in bringing back old farm equipment, often via home / friend repair, so that you actually own the equipment you bought instead of just paid exorbitant sums to effectively rent it.
My brother, who managed the complex development of pharmaceutical production facilities, also has a small farm in Pennsylvania that he bought when he joined the Old Order Mennonites. He does everything, and buys old tractors. Our dad was a mechanical engineer who was one of the small team that designed the tv antennae the astronauts opened on the moon landings. I was a girl so was not expected to do these things, but I watched my dad many nights as he built and repaired things in his shop, and cleaned the game he hunted. In our family, I repair everything, while my husband, whose father was an attorney, breaks whatever he ambitiously turns his hand to; he can't "see." Once I told my dad that my attitude was, if other people can learn to do things, I am capable of learning to do it, and he laughed and said that was practically our family motto.
basically the os is "locked" so that you can't do anything aside from oil changes - ie, change combine parts or even various accessories requires you to hookup equipment to "okay" it - if it doesn't do that, your equipment doesn't work.
Today’s tractors are completely locked in with satellite guided GPS, to maximize the amount of ground available for tillage. A farmer can push the button in the cab and the tractor will follow the path traced by drones and analyzed for maximum efficiency.
oh dear. what an effed up society. I'm pretty sure however that yesteryear was also not a sunny bright safe ethical society. History taught well tells us so
I got a ‘77 F150 I just completely rebuilt (paint, engine, interior, etc.) 10 times the truck then the current $50k+ P.o.S. that are available nowadays. May you find your Bronco!
Same here. I needed a truck for my gentleman’s farm and after looking at new $50k base model pickups, restored an ‘89 F-150. That inline 6 will be rolling over the graves of these new trucks.
I also have a ‘67 Beetle. There’s nothing more Zen than tuning an old air-cooled engine.
Wow. Just today I transported ( in a real gasoline vehicle) an eighty-six year old gentleman. To an appointment. We talked about almost everything mentioned in this article! I like this guy also. BTW just finished reading the 25th anniversary edition of “ Zen…..”. Read the first edition in 1975. Seems threatening to me to read that the current potus states all EV by 2030!
I was just talking about this today and asking how some (many) people survive without the ability, confidence, knowledge, tools, skill, etc, etc, to maintain and repair their “stuff”. Of course, they do survive, but at a higher cost of living (or by finding someone like me and a six pack). Curse you, Taibbi….I like this guy’s philosophy; another Substack subscription.
So glad to see this interview. Been a big fan of Matthew Crawford since his 2009 book - Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. it speaks well of Matt Taibbi that he considers this author important.
"Waving your hands under the faucet, trying to elicit a few seconds of water from it in a futile rain dance of guessed-at mudras, you feel like you are being punked. "
Nailed it. I also felt Ellen Generes' joke about automatic toilets (so many seem to randomly flush) - "I'll decide when i'm finished".
"This is the soft despotism Tocqueville warned us of, an “immense, tutelary power” that wants only what is best for us. Like Nurse Ratched."
Brings to mind this classic quote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis
Yes, CS Lewis and Tocqueville, both still very very valuable writers/thinkers.
03/28/24: Please forgive the interruption; something went wrong at the very beginning of all this, and what follows should correspondingly be placed at the start of the discussion. Somehow, Matt omitted the title of Pirsig's book in his lead sentence: "In 1974 a fictionalized account of writer Robert Pirsig’s 17-day motorcycle trip ... in 1968 hit bookstores ... and quickly became one of the all-time surprise publishing hits." The book title is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." [For those of us who go for this theme, try "Ghost Rider, Travels On The Healing Road, Neal Peart (Rush's drummer; 1952-2020); ECW Press (2002 hardcover), although I should warn prospective readers that the sheer length of the book is daunting.]
Loved Pirsig's book & read it twice. (Also own 2 bikes. :) Also liked Jim Rogers' "Investment Biker."
I haven't read Peart's book, so thanks for the pointer. There's nothing wrong with a long book if it's engaging; to the contrary in fact.
Same! Jupiters Travels by Ted Simon is a must read as well.
Thank you. Yes and no. The Letters of Nancy Mitford (1993) runs 524 pages. At the same time that I loved reading it, I began silently rejoicing whenever I saw "..." which meant that the editor (Charlotte Mosley) decided that unless SOMETHING got ellipsed, you'd still be reading Letters at the age of nine hundred and two.
In the majority of cases, yes: If the book's really, really good, its length is irrelevant. See: Florence King's STET, Damn It! (2003); Michael Powell's A Life In Movies (1986); Genius In Disguise, by Thomas Kunkel (1995); Laurie Lee, by Valarie Grove (1999).
Outnumbered 1000-1 by the "Generals of Ink" whose books are sound, fury and pulped with contempt.
04/01/24: And the abortions like "Collected Memoirs," by Julian Maclaren-Ross, published by the numb-nuts at some post-office box-pigeon hole "Black Spring Press Ltd, in 2004 (UK paperback). Unreadable. Why? Microscopic type-size. Instead of blowing the print budget on 437 CAN'T-BE-READ pages, CUT, print 350 pages, SAVE THE BOOK. Nope. Didn't happen. Pulped this date.
I’ve seen Rush 6 times and it was always a delight. Maybe the only band where if you listened to their albums and saw them live it was indistinguishable. Neal was an intellectual who happened to play drums (not just play them mind you as he possibly might be the best ever) the band wrote songs that made you think and I can say I’ve picked up a book or two from some of them. Thanks for the tip. I’ll attempt it myself and make it a tribute to him.
03/29/24: You're welcome. Geddy Lee's voice is gold. I was way out there on the periphery as far as what I knew about Rush; Peart's book brought me back into the orbit and I rediscovered what a masterpiece Subdivisions is. Clem of Blondie (drums) is my gold standard and Peart matched it perfectly. Altogether, even though I couldn't finish the book due to its length (so easily edited down to a manageable 400 pages!), I admired what I did read and it was a positive experience gratefully received. Be well.
One of my favorite quotes
A C. S. quote I've employed many times. Many of my "progressive" relations scoff that he got it dead wrong, instead of dead right as Lewis did.
I like this guy...
Me too. Seems to have a brain
And a very gifted way with words.
Good. I can't find mine. Perhaps there's a deal to be made here...
How do you do with faucet handles?
Depends on Farrah's mood...
Didn't see that one coming. I hear it helps to wave your hands a bit.
04/03/24: Horror trip to Florida in 1989. Crescendo was meeting, by chance, Farrah's father, charming fellow, ten miles to the right of Attila The Hun. Descendo was the next day, when the flu (caught from a lady at this infamous Meeting) knocked me out cold ten minutes after returning home. Had to call in sick on the first day of the ensuing work week, a Monday, oh no, that didn't look like a fake sick-call at all, right (!).
For me, the point is that he can and does use that brain. I've known people with very high IQs who don't actually do any real thinking.
Yes, I have been following him since my wife got me Shop Class as Soul Craft when it came out.
Yup, I experience his point about automatic sinks everyday at work. Infrared sensors are the eye of Sauron!
Thirty years ago, Alan Cooper ('the father of Visual Basic') wrote the definitive book on User Interface (what we now call GUI) design. In the introduction he talked about the tendency of software writers to write software for the convenience of computers rather than for the convenience of users. His book (and his approach) was heralded as an enlightened way to design software, so that users could actually use it in a natural, intuitive way. For the next decade or so, software became more intuitive and more usable, but now this philosophy seems to have gone the way of MSDOS. Now software engineers like the Google guy described are now more convinced than ever that humans and humanity are the problem, and their software creations are the solution, not the other way around
Yes! The software engineers’ mantra seems to be “they’ll figure it out”.
@Mark1--"...engineers’ mantra seems to be “they’ll figure it out”."
I think it is worse than that; in that it is one of these "is that a bug or feature?" scenarios.
Since engagement is the metric that drives the determination of whether an app/software is successful, the longer somebody is fiddling around with it trying to get the frickin' thing to work, the higher the engagement and less time you get spend on a different platform.
Hate those guys....
Revenge of the nerds…
Your generosity gives me pause. I'm convinced that many who write the directions/manuals/instructions simply do not even conceive of someone who doesn't have a nodding acquaintance with whatever they are directing or instructing you on. The 'walk a mile in another's shoes' philosophy seems to have fallen by the wayside.
I do believe they revel in deploying a ruder version... oh, if they had just been popular in high school.
You start to understand the Butlerian Jihad and why it happened.
Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky has programmer-archaeologists, sifting through layers and layers (thousands of years worth of development) of software. A different viewpoint on machine intelligence.
Sometimes more is just... more. See: TV remote controls.
"In the introduction he talked about the tendency of software writers to write software for the convenience of computers rather than for the convenience of users."
I have actually spent most of my 30+ year career as a documentation developer at the interface between designers and users of software fighting this very battle. And I'm probably going to retire in a few years, having made few inroads into fixing it.
Is the Cooper book you are referring to “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum”? A fantastic book that may still have some impact in UX (user experience design), but then again maybe not, given the intrinsic arrogance of the name. I'll design my own experience, thank you very much.....
Coders create interfaces for services that agencies would rather not supply (like tax answers, returning a product, or rent subsidies) that a genius patient saint couldn’t navigate, but one click will buy a plethora of products. Years ago I fought with software writers who didn’t have a clue what we actually did to produce a newspaper but were tasked with linking dept systems. I finally figured out it was them not us.
'Years ago I fought with software writers who didn’t have a clue what we actually did to produce a newspaper'
Been there, saw that. So true!
In 1987 Apple published the first version of their Human Interface Guidelines, written mostly by Bruce Tognazzini. That early HIG was the UI bible for years. Having spent 40 years as an independent Apple consultant, I'm disappointed at the 20-year trend of Apple computers becoming more and more infantilizing of the user base (and Microsoft, who gave us Clippy, for which I blame Bill Gates). Not to get into any platform cult battle, this is a trend not only with computers but cars, kitchen appliances, and everything else, epitomized by the flashing 12:00 on the VHS player.
In the late 90s I was writing a database for the local newspaper to run their classified ad system, my first software job. A professional coder friend was shocked—shocked!—that I started by interviewing the front desk girls about the classified ad process. My friend said software designers never talk to the end users. (Yes, they were all girls, and I was actually one of them.)
Years later the newspaper switched to a commercial product. I was still working the front desk, and none of us considered the new software an improvement.
The automated bathroom is frustrating for a number of reasons. Every public place seems to have a different combination--auto water, auto soap but no auto towels, auto towels and soap but no auto auto water, etc. Auto flush toilets seem to either flush each time you shift position, or pause long enough after you stand to have you fear leaving your waste behind for others to view and be disgusted by. And, the elephant in the room, what happens when the power goes out?
Pray.
"what happens when the power goes out?"
That's a good point.
All the robots will just stand there suck in a While Loop, waiting to wash their hands, until it comes back on. It could be days if it gets bad.
They won't be driving anywhere and nothing will get delivered.
My local brewery has a sticker on top of the toilet that says, “wave hand over to flush” even though there’s a traditional flush handle right there. Aside from the fact that having a camera in a bathroom is the height of creepiness, I think it would be funny to observe how many people actually fall for it. Got me once, I must confess. But only once.
Loved this. I am grateful every day that I was raised by a mechanic and am unafraid to turn a wrench, dirty my hands or try to fix pretty much anything. Not always successful, but am often enough to make it worth the effort 100 times over. I remember going into an auto parts store to buy new wiper blades at the beginning of monsoon season in the desert and having the guy behind the counter tell me I was the first person to buy blades that day who was actually able to put them on the car without the counter guy’s help. I once thought that was weird. Now I realize that *I* am the one who is weird. Ordering Shop Class as Soulcraft now…
I come from a long line of carpenters - I love that i know how to build stuff and know how to use tools.
Funny enough, my father was a professor. But he did everything he could by hand: completely re-layed out the interior of our house, did stained glass, gunsmithing, wood turning, etc.
It helped that he couldn't find a job after getting his PhD, and had to swing a hammer for a few months.
My dad was a systems analyst by profession, but his father and his father's father and probably those before were carpenters, and one of his brothers remained a carpenter / builder. I learned to use a wood shop early on in life. I love to work with my hands.
Me too. Was using the band saw and RAS when I was a wee one.
These are the most constructive conversations I've witnessed on the Internet since... can't remember. Matt tapped into another world here. A pleasant surprise.
Totally
Yes, but that's being weird in a good way.
Me too!
I had looked for Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death at my favorite used books store but instead found another book of his - Technopoly. It was a very deep read on the trade-offs that technological progress imposes and that we very rarely think about - which seems to be Crawford's ouvre as well. The learned helplessness really hits home with me, because I am crap at doing home repairs, and I'd be embarrassed to admit that non-anonymously.
If you like that genre of books, I highly recommend The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. It came out in like 2010, but has become even more relevant and popular these past few years.
Thanks. I wrote about another interesting thinker Robert Nisbet (Twilight of Authority): https://rathercurmudgeonly.substack.com/p/blinding-flash-of-the-obvious . Postman's style was a challenge, almost on the order of Hoffer. But that idea of trade-offs tied back to a Thomas Sowell observation and Bastiat's point on the seen and the unseen. Crawford's on the money that convenience is our Achilles heal right down at the level of the individual let alone in aggregate.
There is no Achilles heal. It's incurable.
Well played. Eels are slippery things.
I read that book. It was fascinating but as I remember it one of the premises was that pulling one's attention away from an article being read to click on a hyperlink was disruptive to one's brain and ultimately counterproductive to assimilating the information in the original article. I actually disagree with that idea for my own comprehension of an idea or thesis. For example, I had never heard of "Energy Lysenkoism" so when I stopped to click on the link & read about it & fully digest it I believe I had a better understanding of the concept as well as how it applied to the Matt & Emily's post. Sorry about the long explanation but I have been thinking about that for many years and I finally had the chance to tell someone my experience. Haha.
There is a book that while reading it, you will have to put it down to research the reference he is making - I don't care how well read you are in Western culture. Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun.
That is happening to me now with Rand Paul's book, "Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up" (Oct. 2023). Between the scientific papers/articles & the political stories/articles I am just about in the middle of the book. Terrific read - tho it makes me so mad that those 5-6 'Fauci n Friends' scientists/doctors - bamboozled the entire world about COVID. So many ppl couldn't say good bye to loved ones because they couldn't visit them... don't get me started.
Carr's The Glass Cage is also very good in this genre...
Good stuff! Thanks Matt and Matthew. At some point the price point of Substack subscriptions is going to have go down. Too many good content providers to be affordable. Haven't got a spare grand to pay for a dozen subscriptions. Hopefully, some sort of co-operative venture option will make that possible.
Now, more than ever, we need diversity and real intellectual debate.
My problem with all the good writers on Substack is that I don't have the time to read all the ones I want!! 😳
Totally agree that this model isn't going to be sustainable in the long run. Substack has to pivot to a revenue share type of model in which you simply subscribe to Substack and the writers get paid based on the reads their pieces get.
I don't think the Spotifying of Substack writers helps anyone.
Superficially at least, that sounds like a good idea. Being retired on a fixed income, I have to limit myself to a handful of subscriptions.
The weak point of the Substack business model, I’m afraid.
This. Substack needs some kind of bundle plan. It might mean less $$$ for Taibbi, as I subscribed to him first and he is one of the more popular subscriptions/substacks, but I’m not paying for eight or nine substacks at $5 a month each.
Indeed. I would be willing to pay a higher fee to have access to more, but when my credit card bill comes every month my wife just shakes her head.
50 YEARS since Zen?
Jeebus, I got OLD!
Keep it up Matt, your ilk may prevail yet. I 'discovered' you a couple, three years back, changed my world view you did. Keep it up!!
Exactly: "one big assisted living facility".
Farmers using organic regenerative farming practices are the only people I can think of who are not moving into the assisted living society. They do need one another - other farmers with regenerative practices - but they are an avenue forward out of a nation in sick disease-ridden decline and lockstep codependency with Big Ag & Big Pharma.
Even all the old veterinarian practices are being sucked into the corporate maw.
speaking of farmers, another aspect of this is john deere and how they are locking down their tractors via drm - they are in fact worse than the auto makers even. basically any "service" of newer tractors requires travel to the dealerships -
luckily older tractors don't have this problem, but it really really is illustrative of where we are going here, like it or not.
Apple is basically this too btw - at least according to Louis Rossmann. they just market their stuff better so you don't know it - as much.
Yes I am not super familiar with farming, but from what I have heard this is precisely why there is now a renaissance in bringing back old farm equipment, often via home / friend repair, so that you actually own the equipment you bought instead of just paid exorbitant sums to effectively rent it.
My brother, who managed the complex development of pharmaceutical production facilities, also has a small farm in Pennsylvania that he bought when he joined the Old Order Mennonites. He does everything, and buys old tractors. Our dad was a mechanical engineer who was one of the small team that designed the tv antennae the astronauts opened on the moon landings. I was a girl so was not expected to do these things, but I watched my dad many nights as he built and repaired things in his shop, and cleaned the game he hunted. In our family, I repair everything, while my husband, whose father was an attorney, breaks whatever he ambitiously turns his hand to; he can't "see." Once I told my dad that my attitude was, if other people can learn to do things, I am capable of learning to do it, and he laughed and said that was practically our family motto.
Bring back trade classes in k-12.
Exactly. The ending of shop class is so many schools is a disaster. Kids can't fix a flat tire on a bicycle and that is not an exaggeration.
basically the os is "locked" so that you can't do anything aside from oil changes - ie, change combine parts or even various accessories requires you to hookup equipment to "okay" it - if it doesn't do that, your equipment doesn't work.
Today’s tractors are completely locked in with satellite guided GPS, to maximize the amount of ground available for tillage. A farmer can push the button in the cab and the tractor will follow the path traced by drones and analyzed for maximum efficiency.
i'm talking you want to replace a part that broke, nope go to the dealer etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPYy_g8NzmI
oh dear. what an effed up society. I'm pretty sure however that yesteryear was also not a sunny bright safe ethical society. History taught well tells us so
A Ford! A Ford! My kingdom for a 1974 Bronco!
I got a ‘77 F150 I just completely rebuilt (paint, engine, interior, etc.) 10 times the truck then the current $50k+ P.o.S. that are available nowadays. May you find your Bronco!
Same here. I needed a truck for my gentleman’s farm and after looking at new $50k base model pickups, restored an ‘89 F-150. That inline 6 will be rolling over the graves of these new trucks.
I also have a ‘67 Beetle. There’s nothing more Zen than tuning an old air-cooled engine.
Just watch #3 cylinder on the VW!
'How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot' by John Muir, and 'Zen', and I was away...
I had that VW book!
Wow. Just today I transported ( in a real gasoline vehicle) an eighty-six year old gentleman. To an appointment. We talked about almost everything mentioned in this article! I like this guy also. BTW just finished reading the 25th anniversary edition of “ Zen…..”. Read the first edition in 1975. Seems threatening to me to read that the current potus states all EV by 2030!
I took a 100 year old man to an appointment in a horse drawn buggy today.
Possibly one of the EVs that the climate activists hurled oil (!) on at the NY Auto Show just recently: https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60349230/climate-activists-dragged-out-new-york-auto-show-after-tossing-oil-on-evs/
E.C. Thanks for this. Wild ride, indeed.
I was just talking about this today and asking how some (many) people survive without the ability, confidence, knowledge, tools, skill, etc, etc, to maintain and repair their “stuff”. Of course, they do survive, but at a higher cost of living (or by finding someone like me and a six pack). Curse you, Taibbi….I like this guy’s philosophy; another Substack subscription.
Sadly, I am one of those mechanically-crafty-hands-on illiterates that doesn't know which end of the screwdriver to plug in.
So glad to see this interview. Been a big fan of Matthew Crawford since his 2009 book - Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. it speaks well of Matt Taibbi that he considers this author important.
Matt -
Good choice for your first interview, I enjoy his writing and perspective.
Crawford is a brilliant thinker.
Highly recommend N.S. Lyons as your next Q&A.
"Waving your hands under the faucet, trying to elicit a few seconds of water from it in a futile rain dance of guessed-at mudras, you feel like you are being punked. "
Nailed it. I also felt Ellen Generes' joke about automatic toilets (so many seem to randomly flush) - "I'll decide when i'm finished".