tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post6822791590686162850..comments2024-03-28T22:33:29.066-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: A COMMENT ON A COMMENT ON A COMMENTRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-45647701270295009492014-06-05T11:29:17.542-04:002014-06-05T11:29:17.542-04:00Mainstream academic economists will try to block t...Mainstream academic economists will try to block that and push the gattopardo tactic. My prediction is “r minus g” arithmetic will make its way into the curriculum, with the profit rate explained as the marginal product of capital; Chicago School economists will counter the economy has mechanisms limiting prolonged wide divergence of r and g <a href="http://goo.gl/nHIIs9" rel="nofollow">vimax pills</a> ; and Harvard and MIT graduate students will have opportunities to do market failure research arguing the opposite. The net result is economics will be left essentially unchanged and even more difficult to change.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05434997324963337822noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-59179910772211633842014-04-25T00:36:23.304-04:002014-04-25T00:36:23.304-04:00Pertaining to social fads, it seems that the upper...Pertaining to social fads, it seems that the upper class is always mining the (true) lower class for lifestyle choices. Heroin use, tatoos, jazz music, etc. were all probably defense mechanisms against lower class misery, but the rich, always on the lookout for new kicks, thought there must be a positive experience there that they were missing. I have never understood the tatoo thing, which (when I was young) was popular only with enlisted navy personnel (usually from the lower class) and convicts. My favorite definition of a tatoo: A permanent reminder of a temporary feeling. The lower class can claim poverty-induced insanity, but the rich are just guilty of mindless stupidity.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13602650703114898406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-51399095203332478972014-04-24T12:36:01.633-04:002014-04-24T12:36:01.633-04:00Lord, I hope you are right [even if you do put a d...Lord, I hope you are right [even if you do put a dagger in my heart with the casual reference to "obscure blogs (such as this one)." :)Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-86780096605542749102014-04-24T11:36:41.794-04:002014-04-24T11:36:41.794-04:00You forget a new force which is changing the dynam...You forget a new force which is changing the dynamics you describe enormously. <br /><br />I live in a small country. When I was growing up, everyone watched the same television channels, read the same newspapers. Now the internet age is eradicating monoculture here, and everywhere else too. People discover others with the same tastes and interests online. They read obscure blogs (such as this one), full of ideas that don't get much space in their local public sphere. They chat with people who have completely different life experiences. They create and participate in communities that consist of people scattered throughout the world. <br /><br />For the first time ever, geographical location is no longer necessarily the all-dominant cultural influence in ordinary people's lives.<br /><br />Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen. For my part, I am optimistic. We may not have the intimate communal solidarity of previous generations, built through symbolism in shared physical space, but that solidarity always came at a cost. We now have something else, something pretty good, I think.Bjornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02698906609662554600noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-68521041829226630932014-04-24T11:33:50.056-04:002014-04-24T11:33:50.056-04:00And Krugman just blogged about the same post from ...And Krugman just blogged about the same post from Thomas Palley. Fun!Sethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16486234948199900568noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-83091018930723218822014-04-24T11:26:57.061-04:002014-04-24T11:26:57.061-04:00Seth, I quite agree. As Upton Sinclair famously s...Seth, I quite agree. As Upton Sinclair famously said, "it is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Nevertheless, I predict that Piketty's book will have a measurable effect, but only if men and women take hold of it and use it to organize. Professors of Economics are not going to suddenly notice that there is something fundamentally wrong with capitalism, anymore than the Pope, however lovely a man, will notice that there is something fundamentally wrong with religion.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-74750209360695758962014-04-24T10:35:25.873-04:002014-04-24T10:35:25.873-04:00I like Palley's remark because it is a good de...I like Palley's remark because it is a good description of the way repression (in the Freud/Marcuse sense) operates in the academy. Unsafe thoughts are assimilated into forms which help to "rationalize" them away. Not unlike the way our immune system attaches antibodies to foreign cells/macromolecules in order to convey them safely to the waste disposal system.Sethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16486234948199900568noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-22236463804154157402014-04-24T10:07:29.529-04:002014-04-24T10:07:29.529-04:00An amusing comment on Piketty from Thomas Palley:
...An amusing comment on Piketty from Thomas Palley:<br /><br />"Mainstream academic economists will try to block that and push the gattopardo tactic. My prediction is “r minus g” arithmetic will make its way into the curriculum, with the profit rate explained as the marginal product of capital; Chicago School economists will counter the economy has mechanisms limiting prolonged wide divergence of r and g; and Harvard and MIT graduate students will have opportunities to do market failure research arguing the opposite. The net result is economics will be left essentially unchanged and even more difficult to change."<br /><br />Link:<br /><br />http://www.thomaspalley.com/?p=422<br />Sethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16486234948199900568noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-12764619704234070072014-04-23T21:13:13.252-04:002014-04-23T21:13:13.252-04:00Dear Professor,
I wonder if you might say more ab...Dear Professor,<br /><br />I wonder if you might say more about the deeper history of the problem of the (sense of the) loss of social and moral 'unity' that JD and Bill Glenn, Jr. point to. After all, it is not a problem that only emerges in the late 20th Century (even if it does become more acute): it is already evident in the philosophical response in Germany to the French Revolution, for example - in their different ways the Romantics and the Idealists were trying to make sense of this sense of loss.<br /><br />TimAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08344190302931892131noreply@blogger.com