Public Sphere/Journamalism: Some Fairly Recent Must- and Should-Reads
I think that this is a very important thing to remember. The Fed View—and the zero-marginal-product workers view—and a lot of other pessimistic views about the economy's non-inflationary speed limit for recovery and growth were totally, catastrophically wrong over the past decade. The people who strongly advocated for such views thus had a badly-flawed Vision of the Cosmic All. Thus I think there is no reason to put a weight higher than zero on their current views of how the world works—unless they have publicly and substantially done the work to mark their beliefs to market. Certainly the Federal Reserve has not yet done so: Timothy B. Lee: "Every additional month of strong employment growth and weak wage growth makes people who said we were near full employment in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 look wronger..."
Kevin Drum: We Need to Figure Out How to Fight Weaponized Disinformation: "I’ve been blogging for 15 years, and there’s never been a day when I wanted to stop...
I think Daniel Walden gets this right: the idea that there is some single "civilization" running Gilgamesh-Hammurabi-Moses-David-Athens-Sparta-Jesus-Rome-Charlemagne-Renaissance-Glorious Revolution-Representative Government-Industrial Revolution-Democracy is a rather peculiar fiction. Better to remember that M. Tullius Cicero thought Britain was not worth the bones of a single Tuscan centurion, for there was not an ounce of silver on the whole island and the Britons were too stupid and uneducated for it to be worthwhile selling them as slaves: Daniel Walden: Dismantling the “West”: "What is this mysterious entity called “the West” anyway?...
Yes, Stanford has a very serious quality control problem with its Hoover Institution: Brian Contreras, Ada Statler, and Courtney Douglas: Leaked emails show Hoover academic conspiring with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on student: "Emails between the Hoover Institution’s Niall Ferguson and well-known Republican student activists John Rice-Cameron ’20 and Max Minshull ’20 reveal coordination on 'opposition research' against progressive activist Michael Ocon ’20...
Not all conservatives are Milo. Very few conservatives are Milo, in fact: Rakesh Bhandari: "Some conservative Cal students have falsely complained that they are penalized by GSI's or Profs for their political views. One student falsely said an econ prof forced him to write in favor of open borders; another complained that he was penalized for a realism paper in IR...
Another piece worrying that human beings are simply unequipped to deal with an advertising supported internet, in which money flows to those who hack your brain to glue your eyeballs to the screen: Ben Popken: As algorithms take over, YouTube's recommendations highlight a human problem: "A supercomputer playing chess against your mind to get you to keep watching...
OK, Ben: how do we write regulations that constrain aggregators that want to hack our brain and attention and empower platforms that enable us to accomplish what we prudently judge our purposes to be when we are in our best selves? How was it that printing managed to, eventually, generate a less-unhealthy public sphere? Young Habermas, where are you now that we need you?: Ben Thompson: Tech’s Two Philosophies: "Apple and Microsoft, the two 'bicycle of the mind” companies'... had broadly similar business models... platforms.
Economists Behaving Badly: A Question I Asked a Much Shorter Version of...: "I have a question for Alan Auerbach: a question hinted at in his slide that contrasted the analyses of the tax cuts from economists from those from “economists“..."
Brad DeLong (2012): Ahem! Niall Ferguson Fire-His-Ass-from-NewsBeast-Now Department: Niall Ferguson writes
Absolutely brilliant from Henry Farrell. If being muted by Jonathan Chait were to regularly produce such good thought, Chait should mute everybody immediately!: Henry Farrell: We’re all going to need safe spaces: "What Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China have discovered is that the best antidote to more speech is bad speech...
Chris Dillow: Economists in public: "There was a debate on Twitter this morning about how economists can better engage with the public...
Simon Wren-Lewis, Tony Yates, and Dan Davies: "Journalists need a place they can go to get an idea of what the balance of opinion is on any issue, and why economists think that way...
William Easterly: Review: Going Beyond the Limits of the Earth With ‘The Wizard and the Prophet’: "Even though the explosion of population and living standards that Vogt feared did occur, the famines he expected never did...
Nicole Cliffe: @nicole_cliffe on Twitter: "It’s come to my attention that a legacy print magazine is planning to publish a piece 'outing' the woman who started the Shitty Media Men list...
Ezra Klein: “Trump country” stories help explain our politics, not the next election: "Michael Kruse’s Politico story revisiting diehard Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania...
