one,  two,  three, and four.

Shalizi's response:

I took it to be obvious that what I was advocating at the end was a rather old-fashioned social democracy or market socialism — what Robert Heilbronner [sic] used to call a "slightly imaginary Sweden". The idea that the positions I like are at all novel would be silly.

His first paragraph (again)

Attention conservation notice: Over 7800 words about optimal planning for a socialist economy and its intersection with computational complexity theory.

And last

These are all going to be complex problems, full of messy compromises. Attaining even second best solutions is going to demand “bold, persistent experimentation”, coupled with a frank recognition that many experiments will just fail..."

He seems not to see the disconnect.

Social Democracy is loyalty to the game of the political system you're a part before loyalty to the desire for victory. It's an athletic competition without, and without need of, referees. Academics, politicians and judges are no more than player representatives. Social Democracy is the behavior of the Irish fans in Gdansk made into principle.

In life as lived, practice precedes theory. History and descriptive literature tell us more about the future than speculative reason; they describe for us what we've done and what we are. There's a reason science fiction is called "pulp" fiction, and there's a reason detective fiction is consistently the only form of pulp to rise above its status. Henning Mankell would not deny that his primary subject is Swedish social democracy; Isaac Asimov's subject, whether he wanted it to be or not, was post-war America, and Red Plenty is more concerned with 2012 than 1956 or 2075. It will rise or fall on how well it's seen as doing that.

History shows that speculative reason ages badly, and Cosma Shalizi wants to invent more than he wants to observe.

The comments is the first post were "jumbled together" because they had been posted and deleted on the thread at Crooked Timber.

Two of my greatest hits:

Rule #1 "Make it idiot-proof"

Klub Kid Kollectivity (For Chris and Henry)