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101 sats \ 2 replies \ @antic 14 Jun \ on: Deflation mostly_harmless
I think about this every time I write a substack--if I were more of a manipulative entrepreneur who wanted to, I could extend this (intentionally brief) article: https://antic.substack.com/p/forget-universal-basic-income-embrace into a 200 page book called "Universal Basic Resources: Building a post-scarcity civilization, one free resource at a time." and flush it out with historical examples and references, and maybe I'd be doing podcast circuits as a thought leader on economics, but I feel like most things should just be casual zeitgeist seeding conversational shares and not published books.
Also reminds me of a buddy I had decades ago who was a writer, and we talked a lot about writing process, and it came up that what a writer doesn't say and leaves for the reader to figure out can be more powerful than just laying it all out there in bulk words.
Under what circumstances would you think it worth your while to write the 200 page version? That's been on my mind a lot recently.
Have you heard of Hemingway's iceberg? If not, worth a google, you will dig it.
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Part of the blocker is that I don't have any desire to publish a book like that so it doesn't seem worth my time to write it out in that much depth/detail. If I were going to spend that much time writing, I'd finish my book of short sci-fi stories that's still incomplete. I tend to write sub-stacks on topics that pop up frequently enough in conversations that I get sick of making the same arguments over and over and instead want a place to point someone to a place where I've already written my thoughts on it. Trolley Problem: check, UBI: check, Quantum attack on Bitcoin: check. I don't have to write a text bomb when someone brings it up, I can just send them a link and if they don't read it, at least the conversation is over :)
I've got a couple of things unpublished that are more generalized essays/thoughts but in the past I've deleted those from medium or other places because I don't see much value in sharing that much with the wider world...
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