Eccentric Blog Recommendation Of The Day

ECCENTRIC BLOG RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY....One of my longtime discontents with modern life has been the accelerating professionalization of everything. This is not quite the same thing as homogenization or corporatization, though it's obviously related, and I blame it for sucking much of the life out of marketing, media, retailing, political campaigning, product design, etc. etc. I certainly enjoy the fact that my car doesn't fall apart and my supermarket is well stocked, but still, it can get kind of oppressive at times.

Maybe someday I'll try to explain what I really mean by this, but since I'm not entirely sure myself, it won't be today. I only bring it up because it seems somehow related to this conversation about James Scott's Seeing Like a State between Brad DeLong and Henry Farrell — though, honestly, I'm not quite sure how. And you should be warned that both posts are long and a bit abstract. But even though the underlying conversation about how markets and institutions interact is fairly prosaic, they intrigued me anyway. If I can figure out why, I'll let you know later.