Hi Everyone,
I have written several posts about my desire to write a book. In my post Getting to the Book, I outlined several of my ideas from over the past couple of years. I explained why I dropped these ideas. It was a combination of procrastination, indecisiveness, and not being convinced I was on the right track. I ended the post, by concluding I would go all out on my latest idea at that time, which was a book based mostly on my Hive content relating to Freedom-based Economics. I came up with an outline. I fitted my existing content to that outline and then began filling the gaps with new content. I was writing on and off for about half the year. I made great progress. I published all the relevant posts to Hive. Below are the posts that I published during that time.
- Tax: To pay or not to pay?
- Freedom for Us, Them, and Everyone (Part 1)
- Freedom for Us, Them, and Everyone (Part 2)
- The Masters of Production
- The Old Gods and the New
- The Establishment
- Freedom as a Path to Happiness
- Centralisation vs. Decentralisation
- Political Systems and Freedom
- A Few Thoughts on the Importance of Competition and Markets
- Making information work for us and not against us
- Accessing the Potential of Technology
- Exploitation of the Poorest Countries
- Our relationship with other animals and the universal desire for freedom
- Our Relationship with the Environment
I stopped in the second half of the year for a two month period I had designated to running the economics challenge series. I felt that I had sufficient content for the book. I just needed to organise it, mix it with the relevant existing content, and then sort it into chapters. I believed that I could have this done by the end of the year. The tasks seemed quite simple but there was still a problem. The world was moving too quickly. More things kept coming up that were just as relevant to the book as what I had already written. Some of my content was also becoming out-of-date. For example, some of the older posts had the best data available from around three years ago, which now might be 7 or 8 years old. More compelling statistics are constantly being released but it will not be long before they will also be out-of-date.
Instead of combining my content to finish the book, I continued publishing new content on Hive. All of these posts were just as relevant as the content that I had already decided to include in the book. I needed to draw the line on what should be and what should not be included. In the meantime, I began to use the PeakD Collections feature. I first used it to organise my collection of posts series that I began several years before this feature was available. This feature is really useful as it allows me to organise my posts based on content and topics. Early this year, I used the collection feature again. This time I made a collection consisting of the posts that I considered best defined my channel and work.
I recently realised that the collections feature could also help me with what I wanted to achieve with a book. Once a book is published, it is a completed piece of work. To change it requires republishing and new editions. This was not ideal considering the extent of rapid developments occurring in the world. The book world would be out dated within a short time. Instead of writing a book based on my content, I think it might be better to use the collection feature to create a living book. I would be able to add new relevant posts at any time to this collection. The description feature above the links can be used to describe the content from the posts and why it is significant. By keeping it on Hive, I also avoid the threat of censorship, which is strongly applied to any content that is anti-establishment. A large majority of my content relating to Freedom-based Economics presents alternative models to the current establishment.
Am I still writing a book?
I have changed my mind about what I am doing with my Freedom-based Economics content but I have not changed my mind about writing a book. The book needs to be based on something that is not evolving as rapidly as my Freedom-based content. It needs to be based around consistent concepts that do not necessarily need the support of statistics. It also needs to be based on something that is not as easy to censor. The answer could be to write a fictitious story. Facts can be censored if they are claimed to be false. Opinions can be censored if they are claimed to be offensive, misleading or dangerous. Fiction is a little harder to censor if it is not intended to be a factual representation of real events. Fictitious stories have not escaped censorship. The classic Roald Dahl books have been targeted for use of language that some may consider no longer appropriate. However, the core storylines are more difficult to censor. Arguments would need to be made that they are inciting hatred or violence in some way.
Explaining philosophies and even economic theory through storytelling is not a new concept. Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and many others have told stories around their philosophical, political and economic beliefs and/or ideas. Storytelling demonstrates the application of theory without concern for defending facts or the use of case studies that may only demonstrate partial application. It enables the projection of theory on a hypothetical future that may only be beginning to emerge.
My idea partly stems from my contests. The contests work around fictitious examples but contain elements of real economic concepts. For example, the buying and selling games uses the concepts of demand and supply. The contests enable me to isolate particular concepts through the exclusion of other influencing factors. Nothing functions in isolation. To understand the world it is necessary to work backwards to establish the cause for the effect. However, to explain concepts, it is easier to work forwards to demonstrate how one thing leads to another and then another. Working forwards also reaffirms or challenges the logic used to determine casualty.
The book would use a fictitious society that is unlike any in reality but still relates to the real world. The easiest way to do that would be to invent another world and another humanoid species to replace or represent people. The world would need to be simpler than our world. This would facilitate the explanation of sophisticated concepts to a broad audience through storytelling. This world would have one country; thus, would be symbolic of a One-World style of Government/governance that is vaguely prevailing in the world today. This simplified world would enable me to explain the various relationships between various groups within social, religious, economic, and governance systems.
I have been posting less content recently as I have been developing this fictitious world as well as the storyline that would convey most of the concepts I have written about as part of my Freedom-based Economics series of posts. I aim to complete a few chapters a week. Therefore, I should complete the story before the end of the year. I will provide updates in my Actifit Reports as well as in a few separate posts. I will be posting fewer written posts this year. I aim to post more videos over the summer months when the weather is better. These will take less time as I would be using content from existing written posts. I will continue running the economic contests and I will run the economics challenge series in the third quarter of this year.
Writing a fictitious story for a book is going to be challenging. I have not attempted this type of content before. I rarely read fiction stories either. I am making the effort to read some books to give me a better idea of the style of writing. From what I have seen so far, the style of writing can vary quite significantly. I am hoping the writing skills I have acquired from writing papers, articles, and my Hive content will be transferrable. Thus, making the learning curve a little less steep. No doubt, I will improve as I go along. As I become more familiar with the different style of writing, I expect I will need to rewrite some of the first chapters.
More posts
If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These 'Collection of Works' posts have been updated to contain links to the Hive versions of my posts.
Hive: Future of Social Media
Spectrumecons on the Hive blockchain
