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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.
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.
Huh. I wonder if you understand the difference between "inspired to go into the field" and "puts stock in". Just kidding, I already know the answer.
I mean seriously, what if he said he was inspired to go into aerospace engineering by the same books? Would you complain that he puts too much stock in books that require hypothetical FTL drives to be invented, and that his ambitions to eventually people a colony on mars requires science we don't have yet?
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
Does that mean the Nobel people endorse all their political viewpoints?
Since Al Gore and Yasir Arafat, it seems like political viewpoint is the most important thing for consideration for a Nobel prize.
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> The foundation series, and the robot series as well, both have this nasty premise
> that people should be manipulated by the characters that Asimov considers superior.
Asimov was a socialist. Of course this was from a time when all right thinking people believed socialism was the future, but he never appears to have totally freed his mind from many of the basic assumptions that underlie the system of ideas we lump under the word. In his case the notions behind 'scientific socialism' seems to have been deeply engrained into him. The idea that scientists and assorted elite intellectuals were the rightful ruling class; that under their enlightened rule the lot of the masses would be improved was pervasive during his formative years and carried over into much of his work. It doesn't take much imagination to see how the idea of the new soviet man morphed into the all knowing benevolent rule of the robots in his later works. It became obvious to all thinking creatures that no human could know enough, be just enough, etc. to actually be entrusted with the sort of absolute power fascism/socialism/communism implied, thus his later works substituited robots.
Notice how his later books reveal the robots to have absolutely taken over all important aspects of human society, but that we are told that this isn't a totalitarian distopia, nay the future projected in the book is virtually a utopia. We are carefully lead to believe we are still in control because we have a need to believe we are free people who are in control of our destiny, but that it is a carefully maintained fiction,
More importantly, a careful reader can see that the whole system is already blowing itself to hell. The robots have already discarded the laws of robotics, substituiting for them a notion that they should generally follow the laws in terms of protecting humans as a group if not as individuals, but hey! ya gotta break a few eggs to mame an omelette. They allow humans to die, both by acts of omission and commission in the name of their new greater mission to serve humanity by ruling them. Where have we heard that crap before?
Democrat delenda est
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
More importantly, a careful reader can see that the whole system is already blowing itself to hell. The robots have already discarded the laws of robotics, substituiting for them a notion that they should generally follow the laws in terms of protecting humans as a group if not as individuals, but hey! ya gotta break a few eggs to mame an omelette. They allow humans to die, both by acts of omission and commission in the name of their new greater mission to serve humanity by ruling them. Where have we heard that crap before?
It doesn't take careful reading at all to see the system is blowing itself to hell. The failure of the 3 Laws begins in the second short story of I, Robot, and by the end of the same book the robots control everything and are already sacrificing individuals for the "good of the whole". The entire point of the book is that he hypothesizes these perfect laws that you can somehow program a robot to never violate, and then proceeds to show all the ways these "perfect" laws fail and yield undesirable results.
So given that he goes out of his way to show you how the system fails in rather deliberate and obvious ways, I'm not sure how you conclude that his point was that totalitarian socialism works as long as you have perfect beings in control. Is it that there are characters who argue in favor of the system, without being overtly evil like O'Brien of 1984? That's not Asimov's style.
I suppose you would also say the point of Foundation is that once you have invented psychohistory, you can control the future perfectly and the masses will simply do what you want with no need for individualism, even though at every point in time it took daring and creative individuals a great deal of effort to actually overcome the obstacles?
The enemies of Democracy are
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
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.
The Peace Prize is usually awarded for a recent achievement, or for a lifetime of achievement that is sort of continuing to the present day. If you look at the winners you'll see that they almost always fall into one of these two camps.
As for Arafat, as usual this complaint is provided with no context. I'm not sure how many of the people that raise this issue even know the context, I suspect they just have heard it mentioned and have no idea what the circumstances were. Arafat was awarded the prize jointly with Shimon Peres and Yitzak Rabin after the Oslo Accords were made. It was awarded for a specific and very recent achievement, and while the peace process has not exactly been successful most of the elements in those agreements are still being worked towards. This is the same reason Henry Kissinger won the award, for negotiating peace with Vietnam.
So while you might argue that only really nice people should get the award, the reality is that people that can significantly affect peace in the world are often gigantic assholes. If you refused to recognize them then then you'd be unable to recognize major achievements in peace. Either way has some merit, I don't see anything particularly unreasonable about the path the Peace Prize has taken.
Point is, you can't do that based on the assertion that other depressions were "typically over in two years or less". At 23 years, the Long Depression is a counterexample to this assertion - and the wik also notes the Depression of 1807 (7 years), the Panics of 1819 (5 years), 1837 (6 years), 1857 (3 years), 1873 (6 years), and 1893 (3 years), and the Post WWI recession (3 years). In fact, it lists only one recession/depression of less than two years prior to 1930, the Panic of 1907. So I don't know where you're getting your assertion from.
If the Great Depression was a phenomenon of the same order as the Long Depression, it could have lasted for over two decades without intervention.
Looking at this graph of employment, it sure looks like the New Deal was having a positive impact, and had just about pulled employment back to pre-Depression levels when there came the sudden drop of the Recession of 1937.
That recession was caused by a premature start in ramping down New Deal programs. So if you want to argue that FDR prolonged the depression by weakening the New Deal, there might be an argument there, but I get the impression that's not the gist of the argument you'd like to make.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Your Flame definitely shows the integrity (or lack thereof) of your arguments. I note that you condemn Yasir Arafat and not Shimon Peres or Yitzak Rabin.