The next step on Our Long Walk

Happy New Year!

This is a free post from Our Long Walk, my blog about the economic past, present, and future of South Africa. If you enjoy it and want to support more of my writing, please consider a paid subscription to the twice-weekly posts that include my columns, guest essays, interviews and summaries of the latest relevant research.

Previously on Our Long Walk:

• What makes for the perfect Christmas party? A research study shows that personal involvement and a positive environment enhance the enjoyment of office Christmas parties.

• Economic history goes global (guest post): EHDR has succeeded in increasing the visibility and representation of the Global South in economic history literature, diversifying its content, and gaining international recognition.

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Happy New Year to all readers! May 2024 be an exciting, enriching and enlightening year. And I hope that Our Long Walk can contribute in a small way to making that happen.

First, an update. In December, we crossed the 1800 free subscriber mark. A big welcome to all new subscribers – and thank you to those who share posts on social media, click the like button, or forward emails to friends and family and encourage them to subscribe. Substack provides rich statistics, and I can report that Our Long Walk is read across 36 US states and 81 countries, of which 22 are African. Half of all subscribers are based in South Africa.

A special thank you goes to my three dozen paid subscribers. Paid subscribers mirror the statistics of free subscribers surprisingly well; of the 11 countries with paid subscribers, three are African. 57% are South African. Interestingly, two of my top three posts of 2023 were all for paid subscribers only: 1) Decoding the Stellenbosch mafia ($), 2) The story of Louis, and 3) The secret soul of Springbok rugby ($). One of the more fundamental changes this year will be to provide more exclusive content for paid subscribers (without reducing the content for free subscribers), a change that should become evident over the next few weeks.

I particularly enjoyed publishing guest posts. A big thank you to each of the eighteen guest authors who wrote for Our Long Walk. Three were translated and republished in Rapport, and one became a Financial Mail spread. It is, of course, difficult to choose favourites, but I particularly enjoyed 1) Gustav Venter’s long-form essay on cricket, 2) Deirdre McCloskey (herself a cricket fan) on liberalism and the equality of permission, and 3) the very first one, by Jan Luiten van Zanden, on slavery in the Netherlands. The three also showcase the breadth of topics I’d like to encourage on Our Long Walk.

As the new Chair of Economics, History and Policy at Stellenbosch, I will add more policy-related posts in 2024. My lens will continue to be economic history, using the past to inform the present. Stories, I believe, help us understand complicated policy issues. Such (hi)stories are not just for sharing clear and relevant information; they are also powerful tools for convincing people and influencing decisions.

Two exciting projects will help us do that. The first, by popular demand, is a podcast series. Over the last few years, I’ve had many readers suggest starting a podcast series. For long I resisted, partly because I was never a podcast listener. That changed when I, thanks to Covid lockdowns, discovered the power of podcasts. Watch this space for more on what we’ve got planned.

The second will be to update and expand Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom, the book that best summarises my beliefs about why we as humans flourished. Given that fewer than 50 copies of the 2021 issue are still available in South Africa, OLWEF will get a second South African edition in 2024. The Afrikaans version – Skatryk – is also available as of today as an audiobook, read by the talented Melt Sieberhagen. I’m also excited that the book is currently being translated into isiXhosa and will be made available for free as a PDF. And there are even bigger plans in the works…

There will be minor changes to the blog, too. Regular readers would already notice a slight format change. From now on, I’ll start each Monday morning post with a summary of the previous week and some other useful links. Given that we’re all overloaded with emails, this is my attempt to streamline information, making it easier for readers to stay updated and access relevant content quickly. The usual Friday 10 am (SAST) posts will also switch to Thursdays at 3 pm.

One of the core lessons from our long walk to economic freedom is the need to keep experimenting with new ideas. Not all of these innovations will succeed, but those validated by the invisible hand of the market will not only have created value but attract more investment and competition. That is the process of creative destruction, and of progress. I am eager to expand these lessons from our past – and to see whether the market will reward my experiments in doing that this year.

‘The next step on Our Long Walk’ was first published on Our Long Walk. Support more such writing by signing up for a paid subscription. The image was created with Midjourney v5.2.