Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman worry that too often economists are not just failing to see the forest for the trees, they're lost in the weeds.
It's become commonplace to criticize the “Occupy” movement for failing to offer an alternative vision. But the thousands of activists in the streets of New York and London aren’t the only ones lacking perspective: economists, to whom we might expect to turn for such vision, have long since given up thinking in terms of economic systems — and we are all the worse for it.
The vision of economists has become so static, that they rarely imagine anything beyond a little tinkering at the boundaries. It's as if a theory of driving required that you keep plowing straight ahead, even if there's an oncoming train.
Course lists from economics departments used to be filled with offerings in “comparative economic systems,” contrasting capitalism and socialism or comparing the French, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon models of capitalism.
Such courses arose in the context of the cold war, when the battle with the Soviet Union was about showing that our system was better than theirs. But with the demise of the Soviet Union, that motivation disappeared. Globalization, so it is claimed, has created a single system of capitalism driven by international competition (ignoring the very real differences between, say, China and the United States). We now have an economics profession that hardly ever discusses its fundamental subject, “capitalism.”
In an age where the problems are large, why can't economists take their eyes away from the microscope and look at the big picture? There's certainly a demand for economic specialists, and perhaps that's the area of greatest benefit, but it seems like this is a time when someone should pull out the economic telescope and look out to places we haven't been before.
Frank Bruni bounces across a series of media subjects... and concludes that the media seems more interested in ginning up outrage than in relating facts. What's outrageous is how much space in the NYT Bruni wastes saying nothing. Oh, and since Bruni spends most of his column talking about Kim Kardashian (and Charles McGrath spends all of his allotted space on the editorial page talking about Lindsay Lohan and Maureen Dowd decides that the most important concern facing the public this week is agressive shoe-shopping. Really.) it's a bit hard to make a case that other media outlets are being any more lax than the Times. In fact, outside of the Backhouse and Bateman piece, this week's NYT editorial page could serve as an example of how pundits, just like economists, are so busy talking about trivia, they don't have time to tell a larger story.
On the other hand, maybe all our problems got solved while I wasn't looking, and the NYT didn't think we'd mind that most of their columnists turned in slap-dash applications of meaningless pop-culture pablum. Jesus.
Ross Douthat returns to the theme of meritocracy as a far from untarnished good. But of course, Douthat being Douthat, he can't make it through without putting brains on trial and longing for the days when people earned their positions the old fashioned way... by inheriting them.
In hereditary aristocracies, debacles tend to flow from stupidity and pigheadedness: think of the Charge of the Light Brigade or the Battle of the Somme. In one-party states, they tend to flow from ideological mania: think of China’s Great Leap Forward, or Stalin’s experiment with “Lysenkoist” agriculture.
In meritocracies, though, it’s the very intelligence of our leaders that creates the worst disasters. Convinced that their own skills are equal to any task or challenge, meritocrats take risks than lower-wattage elites would never even contemplate, embark on more hubristic projects, and become infatuated with statistical models that hold out the promise of a perfectly rational and frictionless world.
Douthat wants humble smart guys, which are the two qualities most lacking in the GOP ranks.
The New York Times editorial highlights what has to be the biggest display of both hubris and ignorance to be flashed before the public in a long time. Informed that the Justice Department was investigating the effect of Alabama's draconian immigration laws on access to education, the state's aptly named Attorney General, Luther Strange, responded.
Instead of acknowledging that the Supreme Court has upheld every child’s right to a public education regardless of immigration status, and that the new law requires schools to collect the information that the government was seeking, Mr. Strange sent Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, an ultimatum.
“I was perplexed and troubled to learn that you have personally written to Alabama’s school superintendents demanding information related to the pending litigation,” he wrote. “Your letter does not state your legal authority to demand the information or to compel its production. If you have such legal authority, please provide it to me by noon Central Standard Time on Friday, November 4, 2011. Otherwise, I will assume that you have none and will proceed accordingly.”
Mr. Perez’s reply, sent Friday, was to the point. He cited Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act. He also reminded Mr. Strange of an array of other laws that federal agencies would be considering when investigating possible violations in Alabama: the Fair Housing Act, the Safe Streets Act, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “among others.”
Mr. Strange may have to go to a textbook to look some of those up. I'd suggest he try one not printed in Alabama.
Kathleen Parker proves that she's taken her Ayn Rand prescription with a meaningless ramble equating President Obama with Robin Hood, sighing over the need to get the poor "more invested" in the nation, and warning against class warfare. In other words: more taxes on the poor, less taxes on the rich, shift more burden away from the "job creators," and everything bad is Obama's fault.
Marc Theissen notes that GOP kingmaker Jim Demint is refusing to hand out a crown this year, despite having endorsed Romney in 2008. Why is Demint standing back? Well, there's the fact that Romney is hated by the same people Demint appeals to, and the conservatives that Demint might back are losers. Any way he goes, Demint would just undermine his own brand with an endorsement. Instead, Demint will concentrate on replacing merely hard right Congressmen and Senators with fanatically loony triple-hard right Congressmen and Senators. After all, he's had luck with that (see: Paul, Rand)
Leonard Pitts looks at the sudden outbreak of racial sensitivity over questions to Herman Cain.
Liberals, [Coulter] said, detest black conservatives, but the truth is, “our blacks are so much better than their blacks.”
“Our” blacks? Really?
...
This would be the same Cain who not so long ago said racism was no longer a significant obstacle for African Americans. This would be the same right wing that is conspicuous by its silence, its hostility or its complicity when the injustice system imposes mass incarceration on young black men, when the number of hate groups in this country spikes to over a thousand, when the black unemployment rate stands at twice the national average, when the president is called “uppity” and “boy.”
But they scream in pious racial indignation when Cain is asked questions he doesn’t want to answer.
A “high tech lynching,” said blogger Brent Bozell.
“Racially stereotypical,” sniffed Rush Limbaugh.
“I believe the answer is yes,” said Cain himself when asked on Fox if race was the cause of his woes, adding honestly, if hilariously, that he has no evidence whatsoever to back that up.
Update your score cards: signs with President Obama dressed up like a witch doctor? Not racist. Questions to Herman Cain about tax policy, or foriegn policy or... well, anything really. Racist.
If you thought that Quantum Mechanics was becoming one bit less strange, think again. This week: how what looks like just weird results from a measurement can be used to trick reality.
In other words, we are measuring the number of photons, but getting an answer that is wrong by several orders of magnitude. The truly weird thing: nature believes us rather than reality.
Ah, quantum. You never cease to give me hope that time travel, warp drive, free energy, and low calorie chocolate are hidden somewhere in your mysteries.
Meanwhile, green tea turns out to hold a possible treatment for Alzheimer's... but maybe not as the tabloids would have you think.
The team bathed brain cells containing beta-amyloid in epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) - a green-tea extract known to have beta-amyloid inhibiting properties - at the same time as stimulating the cells with red light. Beta-amyloid in the cells reduced by around 60 per cent.
That's right, soaking your brain in green tea and, um, shining a red laser inside your skull, can clear up the plaques related to Alzheimer's, but needless to say, getting this to an actual treatment is still a ways off.