I was an occasional reader of American business-technology magazine Red Herring, which has just closed down. They often carried very interesting articles, such as the excellent round up of the state of nanotechnology (by several authors), and a piece on The Company and Society by John Micklethwait (who is indeed a relative of Samizdata.net’s very own Brian Micklethwait) in the final March 2003 print version (hence no links).
However I was only an occasional reader of Red Herring because although its coverage of technology was rather good, I found its neo-conservative acceptance of statist axioms in so many articles tedious, and to be honest I am not all that interested in the details of how corporate America finesses OSHA and tax regulations in order to function, or how they get their snouts in the public trough for R&D money.
Likewise I found my eyes rolling back when I read remarks from Editor-in-Chief Tony Perkins like…
We wish the Bush administration luck in trying to change the spending culture in Washington, D.C.. State governments must also learn how to do more with less.
…because there, oh so succinctly, is why I regard neo-conservatism as something which completely misses the point. The principle problem with government is not that it takes lots of other people’s money… no… that is just a consequence of what is wrong. The root problem is that government does things it has no business legitimately doing at any cost to taxpayers.
We do not need the state to do more with less, we need it to do less with less.
I agree with Perry’s comments. Used to subscribe to Red Herring and liked the tech articles.
But there was a liberal tilt to just about all topics covered. Not too surprising for a mag published in San Francisco, where Trotsky is considered a moderate.
So I let my subscription lapse. No use sending good money after bad.
Speaking as a freelance journalist, I’ve never managed to have a lot of respect for magazines that can’t even stir themselves to answer short, polite query e-mails from freelancers.
When I was a magazine editor, I had no trouble replying to every query, and I had plenty of opportunity to see just how unbelievably lazy and self-indulgent most editors are.
If Red Herring had bothered to reply to me (as American Spectator recently did, before shrewdly buying an article of mine) I might have been able to help Red Herring survive by selling them an article lots of people would have enjoyed reading.
So there!
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