TITHONUS' DIARY!!
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hypothetically speaking Ok, suppose you wake up one fine morning and you have an idea that you think will change the world. An idea for a simple, short, powerful essay on economics which will transform the thinking of anyone who reads it. "Wow!", you think to yourself, and rush down to your computer and start writing. You start setting up the pieces that people will need to understand in order to follow your argument... you're writing, just reproducing what's already known and assumed "in the field" but which needs to be there for the audience of non-economists... you reach about 1500 words and you're just about to start on the interesting bit. Then you find that the words won't come. You're not sure how to start. You don't know why the idea seemed so powerful - really it's just another way of expressing something that everyone but the economists already knows, except in slightly more "economistic language", which means that you're going to be ignored by the economists (for saying something they don't want to hear) and ignored by everyone else (who are going to resent wading through pages of ECON101-speak in order to get to the point, which is going to just tell them something they already know). And you haven't started the interesting bit yet. And you've got other work to do too. Other, much more pressing work. - Would you follow up on your original inspiration? Or would you drop it and go back to your other work? - "Something there is about you That strikes a match in me Is it the way your body moves? Or is it the way your hair blows free? Or is it because you remind me of something that used to be? Something that's crossed over from another century" - Bob Dylan |
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