This is what I intend to be the start of a sequence on economics. Almost two years ago while reading through Greg Mankiw’s macroeconomics textbook, I noticed the bizarre manner in which Mankiw’s analysis of banking simply presumed central banking, with free market banking entirely ignored. I looked around for an explanation of why the economics is done that way, and after realizing that there isn’t one, I decided to write a book about why economists support central banking and what banking regime the evidence actually supports.
Writing a book is slow and difficult, and I finally realized recently, even though my dad told me this from the beginning, that it would be much smarter to write out my thoughts in shorter articles and get immediate feedback on them, which is what I intend to do here.
I decided to try this on LessWrong because I really liked reading the sequences here and think there should be one on economics, and because the feedback I’ll get here is probably the best I could hope to get on the Internet anywhere.
I know there’s a community norm against discussing politics here, but this sequence is really supposed to be about the economics, not politics, although it is the curse of economics that it’s really hard to talk about what economics does and doesn’t say without inadvertently refuting half a dozen political ideologies in the process. For me my opinions about the desirability of central banking simply fell out of doing the economics, in much the same way that atheism ought to be a natural consequence of reaching a certain level of rationality. In any case, the sequence will mostly be about history, economics, and economists. Most of the articles individually won’t have anything to do with politics. And if my sequence is ignored because of its political connotations, or if the introduction of a bit of political discussion into LessWrong starts destroying the community here, I’ll go elsewhere.
My name is Benjamin Lyons. I’m a self-taught 20 year-old American currently serving as a volunteer soldier in the Israeli Defense Force, where I am a proud senior vice supply closet manager at an army-themed summer camp for the worst teenagers in the Middle East. Yes, I’m entirely self-taught in economics, so you’re free to be entirely skeptical of anything I have to say and you probably should be. However, the economics and history I’ll present in this sequence will be entirely orthodox mainstream stuff. I’ll differ from the mainstream in the conclusions I draw and don’t draw from the economics, not the economics itself. If there’s any exceptions I’ll highlight them.
Well, this might turn out to be a disaster but the whole point of doing this for me is to get a lot better at writing and to turn my thoughts and arguments into something that can become a book in a manner much faster than just trying to write a book.
I don’t know what kind of posting schedule I’ll be able to maintain. I’d like to do one per day but that may be impossible, especially in the army. Nevertheless that’s what I’ll shoot for.
I’m trying to become stronger quickly, so I definitely am looking for fierce criticism here. That sort of thing has never bothered me on a personal level, and I know I can count on the people at LessWrong to criticize what needs criticizing and to complement and encourage what deserves complements and encouragement.
I went to business school, studied some economics, even did well enough in a monetary policy competition to meet Bernanke.
And I can’t once recall having a conversation like the one you’ve just initiated. Even if your arguments end up invalid… I’m interested to see what you have to say.
I should start off by mentioning I’m as big a fan of free banking as the next libertarian (perhaps more; I’ve even gone far enough to pick a favorite economics professor specializing in free banking).
I know there’s a community norm against discussing politics here, but this sequence is really supposed to be about the economics, not politics, although it is the curse of economics that it’s really hard to talk about what economics does and doesn’t say without inadvertently refuting half a dozen political ideologies in the process.
I don’t see an easy way to discuss the content of the beliefs without it being a normal political discussion, which I don’t think is a good fit for LW. What seems more appropriate for LessWrong is the process that they use to reach those beliefs- but I don’t think there’s anything interesting going on besides normal political / self-serving close-mindedness. From my point of view, whether or not banking is centralized is an obviously political question about where power is stored, and progressives want the power centralized, and mainstream academic economics is progressive economics, so they recommend the power be centralized, and this looks like run of the mill motivated cognition.
For calibration: do you think the question of whether green house gas emissions cause climate change is a political question?
Edit: to clarify this question is directed to the writer the post I’m responding to and is not meant to solicit responses from all readers. It’s a post rather than a PM because I think the answer impacts the interpretation of the above post.
For calibration: do you think the question of whether green house gas emissions cause climate change is a political question?
I think discussions of it here would probably be, yes. I suspect it would be possible to have a discussion that wasn’t, but it would be much easier to do about some narrow subquestion, which would probably not be easy to identify.
The primary reason why I suspect that is I think most people don’t have the relevant backgrounds to comment on it, and the people who do have relevant backgrounds will have relevant backgrounds about different parts. The impression I get is that people who know a lot about simulations and dynamical systems (like myself) think that climate change modeling is mostly worthless on a technical level (i.e. by different choices of fudge factors they could get about any result they wanted from their models, and the current results are what seems reasonable to the culture of climate scientists), but I don’t know enough about climate science to know how significant a role the models play in their whole argument.
I’ll also point out that the primary discussion of a scientific subject (other than cognitive or decision science) here that comes to mind- the QM sequence- was, if I recall correctly, explicitly a question that is political in some parts of the world.
I’m a self-taught 20 year-old American currently serving as a volunteer soldier in the Israeli Defense Force, where I am a proud senior vice supply closet manager at an army-themed summer camp for the worst teenagers in the Middle East.
Are you American? A volunteer or aliyah? I have plans for the 4th but at the very least I’d like to warn you to stay the hell away from the Education Corps (it’s so embarrassing just writing that).
Howdy.
This is what I intend to be the start of a sequence on economics. Almost two years ago while reading through Greg Mankiw’s macroeconomics textbook, I noticed the bizarre manner in which Mankiw’s analysis of banking simply presumed central banking, with free market banking entirely ignored. I looked around for an explanation of why the economics is done that way, and after realizing that there isn’t one, I decided to write a book about why economists support central banking and what banking regime the evidence actually supports.
Writing a book is slow and difficult, and I finally realized recently, even though my dad told me this from the beginning, that it would be much smarter to write out my thoughts in shorter articles and get immediate feedback on them, which is what I intend to do here.
I decided to try this on LessWrong because I really liked reading the sequences here and think there should be one on economics, and because the feedback I’ll get here is probably the best I could hope to get on the Internet anywhere.
I know there’s a community norm against discussing politics here, but this sequence is really supposed to be about the economics, not politics, although it is the curse of economics that it’s really hard to talk about what economics does and doesn’t say without inadvertently refuting half a dozen political ideologies in the process. For me my opinions about the desirability of central banking simply fell out of doing the economics, in much the same way that atheism ought to be a natural consequence of reaching a certain level of rationality. In any case, the sequence will mostly be about history, economics, and economists. Most of the articles individually won’t have anything to do with politics. And if my sequence is ignored because of its political connotations, or if the introduction of a bit of political discussion into LessWrong starts destroying the community here, I’ll go elsewhere.
My name is Benjamin Lyons. I’m a self-taught 20 year-old American currently serving as a volunteer soldier in the Israeli Defense Force, where I am a proud senior vice supply closet manager at an army-themed summer camp for the worst teenagers in the Middle East. Yes, I’m entirely self-taught in economics, so you’re free to be entirely skeptical of anything I have to say and you probably should be. However, the economics and history I’ll present in this sequence will be entirely orthodox mainstream stuff. I’ll differ from the mainstream in the conclusions I draw and don’t draw from the economics, not the economics itself. If there’s any exceptions I’ll highlight them.
Well, this might turn out to be a disaster but the whole point of doing this for me is to get a lot better at writing and to turn my thoughts and arguments into something that can become a book in a manner much faster than just trying to write a book.
I don’t know what kind of posting schedule I’ll be able to maintain. I’d like to do one per day but that may be impossible, especially in the army. Nevertheless that’s what I’ll shoot for.
I’m trying to become stronger quickly, so I definitely am looking for fierce criticism here. That sort of thing has never bothered me on a personal level, and I know I can count on the people at LessWrong to criticize what needs criticizing and to complement and encourage what deserves complements and encouragement.
It’s funny.
I went to business school, studied some economics, even did well enough in a monetary policy competition to meet Bernanke.
And I can’t once recall having a conversation like the one you’ve just initiated. Even if your arguments end up invalid… I’m interested to see what you have to say.
It’ll be an adventure.
I should start off by mentioning I’m as big a fan of free banking as the next libertarian (perhaps more; I’ve even gone far enough to pick a favorite economics professor specializing in free banking).
I don’t see an easy way to discuss the content of the beliefs without it being a normal political discussion, which I don’t think is a good fit for LW. What seems more appropriate for LessWrong is the process that they use to reach those beliefs- but I don’t think there’s anything interesting going on besides normal political / self-serving close-mindedness. From my point of view, whether or not banking is centralized is an obviously political question about where power is stored, and progressives want the power centralized, and mainstream academic economics is progressive economics, so they recommend the power be centralized, and this looks like run of the mill motivated cognition.
For calibration: do you think the question of whether green house gas emissions cause climate change is a political question?
Edit: to clarify this question is directed to the writer the post I’m responding to and is not meant to solicit responses from all readers. It’s a post rather than a PM because I think the answer impacts the interpretation of the above post.
I think discussions of it here would probably be, yes. I suspect it would be possible to have a discussion that wasn’t, but it would be much easier to do about some narrow subquestion, which would probably not be easy to identify.
The primary reason why I suspect that is I think most people don’t have the relevant backgrounds to comment on it, and the people who do have relevant backgrounds will have relevant backgrounds about different parts. The impression I get is that people who know a lot about simulations and dynamical systems (like myself) think that climate change modeling is mostly worthless on a technical level (i.e. by different choices of fudge factors they could get about any result they wanted from their models, and the current results are what seems reasonable to the culture of climate scientists), but I don’t know enough about climate science to know how significant a role the models play in their whole argument.
I’ll also point out that the primary discussion of a scientific subject (other than cognitive or decision science) here that comes to mind- the QM sequence- was, if I recall correctly, explicitly a question that is political in some parts of the world.
Gadna, I presume?
Dammit why do you know what that is.
BerryPick is one bad apple.
:D
My sister was a Gadna instructor. She got all the crazy Russian kids who would fill their canteens with Vodka.
I get drafted in a few weeks. If you have a day off, I think LW Israel is meeting on July 4th, you should join us!
Are you American? A volunteer or aliyah? I have plans for the 4th but at the very least I’d like to warn you to stay the hell away from the Education Corps (it’s so embarrassing just writing that).
Yes, we’re meeting. The Google Group we used for organizing is: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/lesswrong-tel-aviv
Should do a meetup post...