ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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Having read a piece over at Passport( http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/3394), I am not so sure about your statement that those who took a position against the Iraq War have won any kudos.
Sure, those who were wrong have not been "punished" since they were so plenty but for your logic to hold there should be a reward for being right, something I have seen very few signs of.
The Economist claims:
"Those pundits who "got Iraq right" or "predicted the tech bubble collapse" are feted with speaking engagements and special television appearances, while those who made sensible-but-dull arguments labour in obscurity."
So _that's_ why Tom Friedman and Charles Krauthammer were fired by the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively, and the War Nerd and Greg Cochran hired in their place!
Is Brad "We don't have enough troops to take Baghdad!" DeLong actually complaining about this? If my head exploded as readily as his does they'd be hosing out my cubicle right now.
So who will be the first opportunistic journalist or pundit to say that global warming is a hoax?
All the pundits saying it right now are "sensible-but-dull".
but for your logic to hold there should be a reward for being right, something I have seen very few signs of.
Well, I suspect that it did play a role in the recent elections. Though at the same time very few of the initial skeptics professed reasons for skepticism have held true, either. Should people who opposed the war because they felt that there would be huge military losses in the initial invasion, or WMD attacks on soldiers and neighboring countries be rewarded, for example?
Matt asked:
Somewhat ironically, this documentary was aired some 13+x hours earlier :)
of course, it's nowhere near being the first one questioning "global warming" but it's the first time I see such a strong word in headlines.
(for me, 'swindle' seems even a bit stronger that 'hoax')
Optimal strategy: two pundits secretly pair up. One takes the optimistic extreme, the other the pessimistic extreme. Neither makes money as things go along the middle of the road. When an unusual event occurs, one scores big, and secretly makes a side payment to the other pundit. Both fare better than if they were making middle of the road forecasts.
I wonder who the secret pairs are. Roubini and Malpass? Krugman and Wesbury? Wouldn't it be fun to start a totally baseless rumor?
Its supply and demand...there is always a bigger payoff to bigger risk, simply because there are so many people who have common predictions, and so few (relatively) that have outlandish successful ones. I know I am stating the obvious but hey, what is wrong with that?
Along somewhat the same line as Paul Zrimsek, maybe if DeLong didn't isolate himself from contradictory viewpoints (i.e. deleting them from his blog's comments) he might not be surprised, puzzled, outraged, so often.