Showing posts with label The New Yorker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The New Yorker. Show all posts
Friday, March 5, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Pissed off and posting
I read something last night that filled me with so much rage that I dug out my economics text book from freshman year in college to look up a few things. That is a lot of rage. I am going to write about it now here, but maybe I'll do a little more reading and post something more informed and coherent later. What was it?
The New Yorker had a profile of Richard Posner, the judge and legal scholar who is one of the grand poobahs of the law and economics movement. This movement basically argues that laws should promote economic efficiency, and has produced a generation of conservative judges and legal thinkers. So what made me mad? Apparently Posner got around to reading a book recently which blew his mind in its clear and accurate description of how the economy accurately works. What is this brilliant cutting edge tome? JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES' GODDAMN GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT INTEREST AND MONEY.
I can not sufficiently express my rage, but I also don't want to overstate the case against Posner. So why am I mad? Keynes' book basically lays out how actions of the government and public sector can stabilize the economy. This book was basically the bible of economics for half of the 20th century, and this branch of economics is called, not coincidentally, Keynsian economics. I am no economist, and I have read this book, as well as a couple of Milton Friedman's, and if I started an intellectual movement aimed at eliminating legal justifications for government regulation I WOULD HAVE READ A WHOLE LOT MORE BOOKS ABOUT ECONOMICS, AND CERTAINLY THE SINGLE ONE PROVIDING THE JUSTIFICATION FOR WHAT I WAS TRYING TO DESTROY.
What kind of bullshit academic, or human being, does not read the books essential to other side of the argument? I am trying to think of a suitable analogy, but metaphors fail. It isn't quite like playing on an American League baseball team and not knowing what a designated hitter is, it isn't quite like starting an anti Catholic splinter sect without having gone to Mass, it isn't quite like throwing a temper tantrum insisting you hate brussel sprouts when you've never tasted them (although this is closest).
To be fair though, I am not really an expert in Law and Economics or law or economics, and I am not sure exactly to what extent Posner's current claim that he is born again Keynsian directly contradicts his earlier legal theory. I am not sure about what Law and Economics has to say about public policy, and maybe Keynsianism and Law and Economics-ism are more compatible than I think.
I'll back to you with an answer, but I don't think so.
For now, Posner, you are on my shitlist.
The New Yorker had a profile of Richard Posner, the judge and legal scholar who is one of the grand poobahs of the law and economics movement. This movement basically argues that laws should promote economic efficiency, and has produced a generation of conservative judges and legal thinkers. So what made me mad? Apparently Posner got around to reading a book recently which blew his mind in its clear and accurate description of how the economy accurately works. What is this brilliant cutting edge tome? JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES' GODDAMN GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT INTEREST AND MONEY.
I can not sufficiently express my rage, but I also don't want to overstate the case against Posner. So why am I mad? Keynes' book basically lays out how actions of the government and public sector can stabilize the economy. This book was basically the bible of economics for half of the 20th century, and this branch of economics is called, not coincidentally, Keynsian economics. I am no economist, and I have read this book, as well as a couple of Milton Friedman's, and if I started an intellectual movement aimed at eliminating legal justifications for government regulation I WOULD HAVE READ A WHOLE LOT MORE BOOKS ABOUT ECONOMICS, AND CERTAINLY THE SINGLE ONE PROVIDING THE JUSTIFICATION FOR WHAT I WAS TRYING TO DESTROY.
What kind of bullshit academic, or human being, does not read the books essential to other side of the argument? I am trying to think of a suitable analogy, but metaphors fail. It isn't quite like playing on an American League baseball team and not knowing what a designated hitter is, it isn't quite like starting an anti Catholic splinter sect without having gone to Mass, it isn't quite like throwing a temper tantrum insisting you hate brussel sprouts when you've never tasted them (although this is closest).
To be fair though, I am not really an expert in Law and Economics or law or economics, and I am not sure exactly to what extent Posner's current claim that he is born again Keynsian directly contradicts his earlier legal theory. I am not sure about what Law and Economics has to say about public policy, and maybe Keynsianism and Law and Economics-ism are more compatible than I think.
I'll back to you with an answer, but I don't think so.
For now, Posner, you are on my shitlist.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
A shout out to some real writers...
Although I love blogs, bloggers, the interwebs, the blogosphere and all that jazz (I seem to have just taken a position on the Oxford comma. Don't hold me to it) my favorite writers of non fiction are, and probably forever will remain normal, old fashioned journalists.
Don't get me wrong - I think there is phenomenal writing going on on the internet. In fact, the first three blogs on my RSS feed all got book deals. But isn't there something very different about being able to write well about something you are passionate about, and being able write well about something an editor assigns you to do? That said, my two favorite journalists are journalists of the long form article kind, almost certainly don't get assignments put on their desks by editors, and work for the same hallowed publications.
Without further ado, my two favorite non fiction writers debating a topic which until now was not near to my heart, but now is both near and dear: Canada, Nation or Notion? Watch the whole things folks (and then buy a book of either of their collected essays from your local independent bookstore). How great are those guys? In case you didn't watch it, it is Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell, who write for the New Yorker. In some ways, I like these writers for opposite reasons. Adam Gopnik, especially in his amazing articles he wrote from Paris, does an amazing job of taking anecdotes from his every day experiences and making nuanced, original and true-seeming assertions about greater issues - about governments, nations, people, cultures. Malcolm Gladwell finds incredible data and examples from the widest variety of sources in history, science, and the biographies of experts, and uses them to make points which - I wont say they aren't true, but can be somewhat out there. I love them both!
Don't get me wrong - I think there is phenomenal writing going on on the internet. In fact, the first three blogs on my RSS feed all got book deals. But isn't there something very different about being able to write well about something you are passionate about, and being able write well about something an editor assigns you to do? That said, my two favorite journalists are journalists of the long form article kind, almost certainly don't get assignments put on their desks by editors, and work for the same hallowed publications.
Without further ado, my two favorite non fiction writers debating a topic which until now was not near to my heart, but now is both near and dear: Canada, Nation or Notion? Watch the whole things folks (and then buy a book of either of their collected essays from your local independent bookstore). How great are those guys? In case you didn't watch it, it is Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell, who write for the New Yorker. In some ways, I like these writers for opposite reasons. Adam Gopnik, especially in his amazing articles he wrote from Paris, does an amazing job of taking anecdotes from his every day experiences and making nuanced, original and true-seeming assertions about greater issues - about governments, nations, people, cultures. Malcolm Gladwell finds incredible data and examples from the widest variety of sources in history, science, and the biographies of experts, and uses them to make points which - I wont say they aren't true, but can be somewhat out there. I love them both!
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