Paul Krugman says that the public sphere—even the good part of the public sphere—has gone wrong because of the threat and the menace that is twitter: Paul Krugman: Monopsony, Rigidity, and the Wage Puzzle: "This discussion is taking place marks a kind of new frontier in the mechanics of scientific communication–and, I think, an unfortunate one...
...Once upon a time economic debate took place in the pages of refereed journals, but that stopped being true at least 30 years ago, with working papers becoming the principal means of communication. Even that turned out to be too slow in the face of rapid change; so during the crisis years, say from 2008-2013, a lot of discussion and debate moved to blogs, which I’d say worked very well. In retrospect, the debates we all had over leverage, monetary policy, fiscal policy and more were really classic–the 21st-century equivalent of, say, Keynes vs. Ohlin on trade balances and relative prices.
But this latest debate has taken place largely through dueling Twitter threads–which is, I’d say, awful. The economists involved are very smart, and the threads very informative; but for people trying to keep track, including students, this is really a mess. If you want an entry point, you might try this tweet by Nick Bunker https://twitter.com/nick_bunker/status/996006320871497728. But guys, we really need something like, you know, articles–blog posts would do the trick—that summarize your positions...
#shouldread
#publicsphere
#internet
