{"id":12376,"date":"2009-09-23T16:02:20","date_gmt":"2009-09-23T16:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/09\/23\/i-must-not-be-a-serious-blogger\/"},"modified":"2009-09-23T16:02:20","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T16:02:20","slug":"i-must-not-be-a-serious-blogger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/09\/23\/i-must-not-be-a-serious-blogger\/","title":{"rendered":"I Must Not be a Serious Blogger"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the Typepad start-up page, there is the following come-on:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Are You a Serious Blogger? Prove it. Put ads on your blog to get paid for your hard work and give it a more professional look.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The underlying assumption is curious:  an activity is serious if it makes make money and because it makes money; the very same activity is unserious if it does not.  I expand on this theme in <\/font>Work, Money, Living and Livelihood.<\/font><\/a>  You will have guessed that I reject the assumption.<\/font><\/p>\n

Not that I have anything against money or its (ordinate) pursuit.  Nor do I have anything against economic inequality. If your talent and hard work and good fortune have led you by legal means to a net worth  thousands of times greater than mine, then I salute you.  The notion that a legitimate function of government is wealth redistribution is a socialist abomination and of late an 'Obamination.'   I fail to see any good reason to accept John Rawl's Difference Principle, the thesis that socioeconomic inequalities are justified only if they make the worse off better off than they would have been without the inequalities.  There is no problem with economic inequality as such. 'Economic justice' is a junk phrase on a par with 'social justice.'<\/font><\/p>\n

So my objection to the above assumption does not stem from any aversion to the lean green or its unequal distribution.  What I object to is a conceit found as much on the Left as on the Right, namely, that 'seriousness' and 'success' are spelled with dollar signs, that the only value is economic value.<\/font><\/p>\n

Finally, the notion that ads give a blog a more professional look is absurd.  They are just so much distracting clutter.  And if they move,  it is even worse.  Ads are gimmicks to turn a buck; they make a site appear less professional and less serious.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Typepad start-up page, there is the following come-on: Are You a Serious Blogger? Prove it. Put ads on your blog to get paid for your hard work and give it a more professional look. The underlying assumption is curious:  an activity is serious if it makes make money and because it makes money; … Continue reading “I Must Not be a Serious Blogger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-money-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}