Recently one of our readers kindly sent us a substantial donation via PayPal, despite being by no means wealthy. If everyone who regularly reads our blogs were to contribute a similar amount, we would be a good part of the way towards our goal of creating an institutional academic environment, which in turn would put us in a position to shake up some seriously ossified scientific and philosophical areas. (notepad 24 oct 2011)Substantial donations have been thin on the ground since then. Some of our fans seem to regard mumbling vaguely in the background that we have a point, and that something ought to be done, as somehow constituting support.
Unfashionable research, even in the form of basic skeleton commentary, can’t happen without administrative infrastructure, a class of intangible for which costs (once you factor in red tape and other issues) are rising much faster than is reflected in simplistic measures like RPI.
Just keeping alive and relatively free of distractions are major challenges for intellectuals; a fact which oppressive collectives everywhere make use of – to manipulate the ones permitted to work inside the system, and to stamp out those trying to exist outside it.
Why should you spend your hard-earned pay on subsidising intellectuals? But you already do. The tax you are forced to pay is used, among other things, to finance ‘research’ — though it tends to be restricted to the kind likely to reinforce the dominant ideology ... (ibid.)