(1) You have a dozen posts in a row on the same topic. Lots of people (including me) would love to read one or two good posts on Rodrik’s book but are unlikely to read a dozen at once.

(2) You don’t get good discussions in comments. people are discussing basically the same issues in a dozen different comments threads, so it’s much harder to engage with each other or get a critical mass of good commenters in any one thread.

(3) Everything else gets pushed off the front page, including posts that still might ahve had active comments threads or that could still be attracting new readers.

(4) The author isn’t able to fully respond to all the posts, but instead does a catch-all response devoting maybe a paragraph to each one. this means you don’t get potentially the biggest benefit of this kind of online seminar, a real engagement between writer and critics. If you did one or two posts a day, Rodrik (or whoever) could properly respond to each one.

Please, please, please: The next time you’re doing one of these, consider spreading it out over 3-5 days.

I do have a post on this subject, but it turned into such a total unrelated rant that it didn’t seem fair to ask Dani to comment on it, so I’ll be posting it as a sort of “fringe meeting” of the seminar, probably tomorrow.

A perfect example can be seen with the drug “war”. This has been going on for so long that there would appear to be economic interests which depend on it not succeeding. The most obvious beneficiaries are drug smugglers, who get a higher price then would be the case if the drugs were either legal or regulated. Others include the drug enforcement and legal infrastructure which deals with the law breakers. Stable careers exist for judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys and the prison system.

It’s not clear (to me, at least) who are the principal beneficiaries from an apparently sub-optimal development effort. It would seem that those involved in corruption in receiving countries, NGO’s and international organization like the World Bank and IMF all gain from the status quo.

For an example of how doing good can affect the sponsor one has only to look at the March of Dimes. Once polio was licked the charity had no further reason to exist, but it still had an infrastructure. It took some time for them to find a new “cause”. The option of declaring victory and going home was, apparently, never considered.

So my question is who benefits from the status quo and how would you overcome their resistance to change?