Slashdot Mirror
Paul Krugman Awarded Nobel Prize For Economics
zogger writes in his journal, "The guy who put together the concept of geographical location combined with cheap transportation leading to 'like trades with like' and the rise of superindustrial trading blocs has won the Nobel economics science prize. He's a bigtime critic of a lot of this administration's policies, and is unabashedly an FDR-economy styled fella. Here is his blog at the NYTimes." Reader yoyoq adds that Krugman's career choice was inspired by reading Asimov's Foundation series at a young age.
I'm not saying that Paul Krugman does not deserve a Nobel Prize, but I would like to point out that the judging and awarding process of said prize is subject to the political agenda of those involved, just like the wording of this submission.
Of course others differ in their opinion of Krugman....
Krugman's Posthumous Nobel
And doesn't it make perfect sense that this assclown puts such stock in Asimov's Foundation books? A fictional story that makes zero sense unless one postulates a totally hypothetical science that allows sociologists to acually make valid predictions about human behaviour. That was what the books were about, an exploration of the consequences that would follow from such a discovery, i.e. it was typical of most hard SciFi then and now in that it postulates some new thing and explores the consequences.
Too bad a large portion of the left believes that it possesses the ability to do the sort of micro control today that would in reality only be possible after Hari Seldon created the tools.
Democrat delenda est
only serves to diminish the value of this award. IF he starts to link it to his political views, then he'll bring derision upon himself and the Nobel committee. But he doesn't need to, because in his prior life as an full-time economist he did work that was genuinely worthy of recognition. I've spoken with several conservative economists who admire that work, even as they wondered "what happened to him?"
Honestly, as long as you voice an opinion in some editorial form that serves more than a handful of national papers, you are inevitably tied to an agenda by someone else even if you don't claim one (that's not to say Krugman hides his agenda).
My point, of course, is that whining about agenda is a symptom of feeling the need crying bias about other people's ideas/opinions. Apparently we, intelligent beings, have come so far that we'd rather just bitch about bias than have a worthwhile discourse.
In summary, stop crying about political agenda; the longer we waste on it, the faster we continue to ignore the real problems that need serious critical thinking.
Even now unabashed Hayek/Friedman fanboi come out of the woodwork to passive aggressively promote the often failed free market scam.
Get a real economic clue, PLEASE, the planet can not afford more of the lies, fraud, and outright theft of failed ideologues. The Reagan clan has spawned devastating economic failure, again. How many more times must the ripoffs occur before y'all wake up? S&L, Enron, W/Cheney. Even Libertarians are FINALLY growing up and catching a ride on the Keynes cluetrain.
Yet another nobel winner for a mixed economy which offers the general public a hedge against the risks taken for, say, entrepreneurial endeavors, trade policies which encourage the retention of jobs and the continuation of a healthy middle class, and regulations which will insure at least a basic check on corporate malfeasance and market consolidation.
How many more politicians and faux-news talking heads will continue to push the pseudo-scientific religion that is reaganomics?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Does that mean the Nobel people endorse all their political viewpoints? Even though I might agree they were more deserving.
Krugman, is getting a nod for specific contributions to economic theory, not full approval of a progressive worldview. And in many specific areas of global free trade, Krugman is closer to Friedman than the duds who will be inheriting the current mess. (And likely to make it worse, I might add)
But Krugman's worthiness in economic theory should not be diminished just because he is a stinking liberal from a stinking party whose 8 years of invertebrate opposition to the dumbest president ever is getting rewarded with a mandate to control all branches of government. And the rise not of Clintonian Blue Dogs, but the reddest of greens. Yuk and woe unto the currency.
It's funny because most historians paint the New Deal as having helped the Great Depression, when in fact no such consensus exists among economists.
Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...
the issues involved are to some degree subjective. its not like physics where you can make a hard true or a hard false out of an issue
therefore, it is absolutely impossible to talk about economics without some sort of bias. of course there is blatant purposeful bias, and then there is an honest attempt at intellectual honesty, in spite of the bit of bias we all have
everyone serious realizes this. then there is sort of paranoid partisan type that sees agendas and bias everywhere they look. this kind of hysterical approach to the subject matter only cheapens you, so you need to lose your hypersensitivity to the issue of bias, you only make yourself look foolish
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People can agree on one thing while disagreeing on another.
Details at 11.
Agreed. The stock market is a direct indicator of the current balance between fear and greed. And since both of these are human emotions, they are very difficult to predict with any accuracy.
However, if you use technical charting, some statistical markers such as price point values can provide support and resistance to the price going through them. But again, it's people that push the price up or down through these. Is there enough fear to push it down through support, or enough greed to push it up through resistance? You can only take an educated guess. It's not deterministic.
I intend to live forever, or die trying. - Groucho Marx
I don't think you read the article. It did highlight a few of the nonsensical remarks he's made over the past decade, and those were what I was referring to. No, I haven't followed him, but that doesn't mean I haven't read a few of his remarks. Also, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I concluded that "he's a douchebag." I believe the words I used were "hint of douchebaggery," which could be interpreted as "indication," not "definite proof." Lastly, you can say what you want about some alleged bias that reality has towards "liberals", but given the virulent nature of Krugman's recent political opinions, it's very hard to ignore the political aspect of his being chosen.
Where was your fanboy-ism for the Nobel when the Austrian School types were winning it?
What's plainly idiotic about your post is that despite Krugman's other political views, the work in which he won his Nobel for advocated for free trade heavily. He was in part rejected for a job in the first Clinton Administration because he thought their early protectionist views were disastrous, and he lobbied for free trade policies in the 90's.
I'm no fan of the man, and he does advocate some uncomfortably nanny-state views on some subjects, but in economics, the very theories that the man won his prize for laid some of the very foundation for "Reaganomics", as you like to put it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
No. Everything you are crediting him with saying was WRONG.
In fact the US is the #1 manufacturer in the world, more than twice as much as #2, and several times ahead of the likes of China.
The notion that we are a nation that makes nothing but houses, is idiotic. Go anywhere in the world, and you'll see mostly US-made airplanes (Boeing), turbines (GE, Pratt&Whitney), heavy construction equipment (CAT, Mack, Peterbuilt, etc.), et al.
Nothing here predicts the US bank and lending market collapse. Quite the opposite really. In fact foreign lenders got the short end of the stick this time around, so they were the un-safe ones. He's only right that prices were ridiculously high, but that's a bit like predicting the sky will be blue in the future...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Topics here have certainly been getting much more politicized than I recall them ever being before, and diverging from factual and technical discussion more than they used to. It's not over the past few weeks, however, it's been long in coming. There were complaints about the process a couple years ago. Introducing the YRO section just made the editors feel better about doing it more and more, and seemingly sped-up the process...
Technical discussions have become similarly undermined as well, as the demographics of /. have changed... With 90% of comments on technical stories being jokes, mindless anecdotes, and other clearly baseless nonsense that gets modded up.
But in both cases, for every 100 morons, there is still one very well informed individual occasionally posting a comment, and shedding important new light and context on a subject... So, IMHO, it's still worth staying, even as a signal-to-noise slowly increases.
I've seen repeated phases like this in the past as well. A few years ago, the trolls and flamers were winning, and discussions were even worse than they are now. It's just that now there seems little way to combat it, and it's rather condoned and encouraged by the editors, for the sake of more page views I assume. Hence the regular banalization of stories here.
But as I said, despite the increasing quantities of smoke, I'd still say the
That seems a strange comment to make. The hard core left-wing crowd that mindlessly bash everything from the right is just as bad, and, at least appear to be, far more numerous.
There are good ideas and bad ideas on both sides. But picking the good from the bad requires the kind of intelligent discussion of policy issues we haven't seen here in some time. Of course if you're buying into the political party nonsense, it's easy to think that everyone on the other side of an issue are drooling morons, while your side is always right...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And 1 billion people still shit in the water they drink. What does it say about the richest country on Earth when people sleep under bridges? What does it say about us as people when we are so willing to turn our backs on the less fortunate? The measure of a nation is not in how it treats the powerful and the wealthy, but the poor and unfortunate. And by that measure we have failed.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Most of those billion poor can best be helped by a few well placed bullets. The US tried shipping them grain, she tried building them pumps and sending economic advisors, The US government and US citizens gave massive amounts of aid for hundreds of years. Change only started when the right tin-pot dictators died.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Slashdot long ago ceded the technical discussion high ground, simply because it lacks focus. It's difficult for any forum to maintain quality of both breadth and depth, and Slashdot has clearly gone for breadth.
The issue with economics as a science is that it is very difficult to conduct experiments. The methodology and math is fine, and there are plenty of folks who work hard to be rigorous, but you fundamentally can't take one United States, and hold the money supply constant, and take another and allow the money supply to grow. As such, you are limited to after the fact analysis, often comparing situations that aren't strictly alike.
Is this science? I don't know that we need to measure the angels on the head of that pin. Is it important, and susceptible to thoughtful study? I hope we all agree that it is.
I studied econ in college, and am of the opinion that it is not possible to make educated political decisions without a solid understanding of macro and micro economics. Political history is rich with examples. Take the hyperinflation in various world economies, for example. Knowing what happened in Argentina, Mexico, pre-revolutionary France, and pre WWII Germany, I'll tell you this, now. The US is likely to undergo serious, double digit inflation for several years, in the next ten years, because printing money is the only way the US government can work its way out from under the debt and entitlement burdens we are taking on. Is it science that underlies this conclusion? Or is it just history, analysis, and a theory of the relationship between the money supply, interest rates and price levels? If I am right, does this become an experiment, and thus make econ science?
I don't really care, but I'll tell you that I'm not investing in bonds or other dollar denominated investments.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
and Endless September dawns upon another soul.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.