Treatise on value - what-a-yer

Commenting on the phenomenon that is blogsphere, Span is concerned that there appear to be more committed bloggers on the right than on the left. This is based on SageNZ analysis of the blog stats, separated by political alignment. Its interesting, but certainly not the final word on value.

Personally I am not too worried. Those on the right often emphasise quantifiable increases in production, often at the expense of quality. I suspect only a right winger would attempt to judge the value of blogs purely based on numerical posting frequency, site hits or comments received.

Sadly the State Sector Act 1988 judges our public service in a similar fashion, artificially in terms of 'outputs'.

I often suspect this emphasis of the right is driven by a simple form of logical positivism, which holds that if something cannot be measured it cannot exist or is not worth worrying about. It’s like reducing 'intelligence' to a score on an IQ test. It’s not a very effective philosophy of science, just as choosing a school on a basis of a league table is not very effective either.

Although I would like to post more frequently, I am not about to work in a blogging sweatshop where the arguments will fall to pieces like a cheap pair of shoes :)