Happy Blogiversary to Me

CGD launched this blog a year ago today. I titled the first post Help me write this book. Thank you to all who have done just that by commenting on posts or contacting me outside the blog. You have pointed me to things to read and people to talk to, caught mistakes, and provided feedback on what is interesting or unconvincing. I am grateful for your help.Birthdays can be occasions for reflection, if not so often first birthdays. Thinking back over the last year does put me in a contemplative mood. Blogging has turned out to be one of the most meaningful things I have done in my career. I recommend it, though not for everyone. If maturation is change as well as discovery and acceptance of what one already is, then blogging for me as been a path to greater maturity. I have found a new public voice, or developed more confidence in the one I already had, or some blend of the two.When I was 13 a great teacher would give me half an hour each day to fill a page on some topic she would announce on the spot, such as "sight" or "happiness." I think she helped me learn how to reflect onto paper, to articulate whatever was on the top of my mind, even if it was "I don't know what to write," and then discover the thought beyond. Then when I was 16 I fell hard for a girl. The relationship was not, shall we say, symmetric. She liked me OK. I know now that it was true love for me. But she went to another school, so I did not see her much. I began to write her letters, in tight, penciled cursive on blue-lined paper, sitting in classes for which I had already done the work. I wrote news, thoughts, love. To my surprise, the flow of words never stopped. Alas, some years ago she trashed all the love letters.I feel a continuity between that young man and this blogger 25 years later. The sense that I am rediscovering a writing voice has made blogging especially meaningful for me. And to see that other people appreciate this voice, at least in small doses, is gratifying. But I also try to take my history as a warning. Romantic love is in part self-love; and in my years in Washington I have observed how external validation can lead one to fall in love with one's own voice. Please tell me if you think I'm veering that way in this blog.Should you blog too? There are many kinds of blogs just as there are many kinds of letters. Some are gossipy, others confessional, some newsy, some analytical. The most popular have a point of view but rarely go deep, for fear of taxing readers' attention. I can only advise on my kind of blogging. I have the luxury of taking intellectual journeys for a living. I am funded in return for sharing what I learn, under the expectation that it have practical value. And I am committed to the discipline of saying things plainly in order to reach to more people. My tone may be personal but I put my prose through a fair amount of editing (if often not enough). If you see yourself in that description, if you are in a position to think aloud and you care how you say it, then I would say, yes, blog your intellectual journey. Keep your posts organized. Cut words, but not necessarily ideas. Tell stories. My longest post is also by far the most read. Figure out why. Read other blogs and analyze what works for you and what doesn't.This blog grew out of a book-writing project. The starting idea was to share chapter drafts publicly to get feedback. It quickly became more than that. (And I have yet to see another example of a book being written in public in this way. Let me know if you find any.) Still, the blog serves the project well. In my business, you write a book to: learn through writing; signal expertise; build a basis for shorter, spin-off pieces; and (oh yeah) give people something to read. The blog has directly helped immensely with the first three. Unfortunately, it has impeded the last: it has, stressfully, slowed my book-writing. But I'm sure it has been worthwhile. (By the way, I am closing in on the end of chapter 8 and leaning toward dropping 9, so the end approaches.) I'll close with a conundrum. I write differently for the blog than I do for the book. My book writing is slower and harder, more formal and less fun. And to be honest with myself, this is part of why the blog has slowed down the book. Why is this so? Should it be so? Or should my book read more like my blog?Compare these two passages. The first is from Old Man Schumpeter:

I just read half of a translation of his 1911 Theory of Economic Development. I doubt I'll read the other half: it's pretty tough going. Seems like the guy could have said what he wanted to say in a lot fewer pages. I realized that he was one of the last in the tradition of literary economists reaching back to Adam Smith and the French physiocrats, who thought in prose, not equations....At any rate, Schumpeter makes himself clear. His starting point is a theoretical economy called the circular flow, which I imagine as a pre-modern seaside market town in northern Italy with winding, stone-paved streets. In the circular flow, little changes, ever. The farmer sells to the butcher, who sells to the shoemaker, who sells to the candlemaker, who sells to the farmer. Income and expenditure circulate in predictable ways, day to day, year to year. Credit is useful but inessential. Schumpeter knows that the circular flow is an artifice, but it lines up with a paradigm he wanted to revolt against. A few decades before, Alfred Marshall had popularized, but did not coin, the iconic graphs of supply and demand that showed prices balancing economic forces.The important question, Schumpeter says, is not what makes this equilibrium, but what breaks it. "Carrying out a new plan and acting according to a customary one are things as different as making a road and walking along it." How do economies change? Where do railways and Model T's come from? His answer: the hero of development is not the scientist nor the inventor but the entrepreneur, the one who strikes out to make "new combinations" of materials and labor---new products, or old products made new ways---and so disrupts the circular flow. "Development in our sense is then defined as the carrying out of new combinations." And profits exist only to reward such entrepreneurship.

In this early book, Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, Schumpeter laid the groundwork for the “creative destruction” idea by describing an imaginary economy called the circular flow. I envision it as a pre-modern seaside market town in Italy with winding, stone-paved streets. In the circular flow, little changes, ever. The farmer sells to the butcher, who sells to the shoemaker, who sells to the baker, who sells to the farmer. Income and expenditure flow in predictable ways, day to day, year to year. Methods of production remain static. Credit is useful but inessential. Schumpeter knew that the circular flow was an artifice, but it lined up with a paradigm he wanted to revolt against. Alfred Marshall, the dean of economics in the late nineteenth century had popularized (but did not coin) the iconic graphs of with supply and demand crossing where price balances the two.The important question, Schumpeter wrote, is not what makes this equilibrium, but what breaks it. “Carrying out a new plan and acting according to a customary one are things as different as making a road and walking along it.” How do economies change? Where do railways and Model T’s come from? His answer: the hero of development is not the scientist nor the inventor but the entrepreneur, the one who strikes out to meld labor and materials in novel ways and so disrupt the circular flow. “Development in our sense is then defined as the carrying out of new combinations.” Profits exist only to reward such entrepreneurship.