No, not YouTube drama, I could not care less about that right now, there are bigger fish a-fryin’ (so you know this is somehow REALLY BIG and really obscure at the same time ^.^).
This is BIG, not just because one of them is posting to the New York Fucking Times. This is ECONOMICS. Which means this is about how people perceive the slightly-less-pointy-end of political power (the pointier one being military/LEO force, but even that is driven by logistics, which is a subset of economics IMO). Which means that this is about ENTIRE WORLD VIEWS, which means there is more potential for Internet-wide e-peen waving than could ever be seen on YouTube! But I get ahead of myself.
Steve Keen and Paul Krugman are dishing on each other, and EVERYBODY HAS GOT TO CHIP IN (here’s a partial program, and here’s Krugman’s last, with Plinkington selectively quoting the way he claims Krugman does). IMO Krugman’s mostly on the losing side here, and you’ll find a far better description than I could have done as to why here and here Though I think both parties were playing a little fast and loose with definitions, and of tiny differences in premises colossal butthurt is made. Also, realize that this classic debate is being refought, which will only lead to tears.
I’ll be honest. This is mostly above my pay grade, but from the point of view of someone who works with things rather than models of things, the problem Krugman is having can be summed up very well by this joke here, cited from Steve Keen’s 2001 book Debunking Economics, Chapter 7:
Have you heard the joke about the chemist, physicist and economist who get wrecked on a desert isle, with a huge supply of canned baked beans as their only food ? The chemist says that he can start a fire using the neighbouring palm trees, and calculate the temperature at which a can will explode. The physicist says that she can work out the trajectory of each of the baked beans, so that they can be collected and eaten. The economist says “Hang on guys, you’re doing it the hard way. Let’s assume we have a can opener.”
Well that and an unwillingness to define his terms before engaging in the debate. Let this be a warning: live by the blog post, die by the blog post.
