Charlie Stross, Paul Krugman Discuss the Future

Peripatetic Entrepreneur writes "At the Science Fiction World Convention in Montreal, Hugo Award winning author Charlie Stross and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman opened the show with a 75-minute, wide-ranging conversation on stage. From flying cars to decoding the genome of the Pacific Ocean to vat-grown Long Pig, it's all there. Audio is also available — video soon."

The most interesting segment is at the end

[For a Free Internet]

Krugman theorizes that the Third World could develop by providing long term stabilized individual and group labor contracts to multinational corporations. This has the chance to restore profitability and competitiveness while incentivizing labor through different reward systems, like food and shelter, since the money supply is so irrationally tightened in the wake of the AIG mess.

Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha

[Loadmaster]

Krugman is of the opinion that the economic crisis will come back when the government spending is done. You're thinking of Jim Cramer who thinks it's over.

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10569659/1/cramers-mad-money-recap-cramer-vs-krugman-update-1.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA [thestreet.com]

Sorry, don't have the original article by Krugman, don't really follow him, but the relevant part is at the beginning.

"He [Cramer] refuted an article by noted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who argued the economy is slowly getting worse.
According to Krugman and others skeptical of the market's recent rally, the economy is simply being propped up by government spending and will return to March lows as that spending wanes. But Cramer asked his viewers pointedly, 'Are things slowing getting worse for you?'"

It seems "experts" in economics, uh, aren't. At least not all the time.

Re:Yummy!

[Zerth]

It isn't intended for consumption. It's just that if some muscle grafts fail QC for internal use, you might as well fry it up. Plus, PETA has a reward out for "vat grown meat", but they didn't specify the species.

Human flesh that hasn't been abused for 30 years is probabally quite tasty. Or at least it smells pretty good when cooked by accident, so it might taste good when cooked on purpose.

Especially if there isn't any same-species viral concerns.

Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha

[cowmix]

Yes, it couldn't have been the artificially low interest rates, which means they are increasing the monetary supply much more than they should, which caused the housing bubble (not to mention the NASDAQ bubble), its that darn "deregulation," which of course means different regulations and happened over the course of 3 decades.

Of course, Krugman actually advocated created a housing bubble in 2002.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html [nytimes.com]

Krugman is just an organ for the Federal Reserve and the state.

I just reread that post and I don't understand how in that op-ed piece Krugman advocated creating the housing bubble.

Can you explain this to me?

thanks

The box

[Animats]

but the big thing was the freight container.

He's right. There's a great book called "The Box", which is a history of modern shipping containers. Containerization reduced the cost of ocean shipping of manufactured goods by about 90%. Breakage and theft went way down, too.

A few decades ago, if you went down to the docks in New York or San Francisco, there were thousands of big guys lifting and carrying stuff. Not only did containers end that, they ended the ports of New York and San Francisco - both were replaced with new ports in New Jersey and Oakland. If you go to a container port today, you see very few people around.

The other big development that made international trade work was fax machines. With fax machines, you could send ordinary business paperwork to people far away. Even if they didn't speak your language, they could probably figure out a purchase order. So you could do the basics of commerce at a distance. This cut out many of the expensive middlemen in international trade. It used to be that to import something, you had to deal with an importer, who dealt with an exporter at the sending end, who dealt with the manufacturer, possibly with a wholesaler and a warehouse company somewhere in the chain. With fax machines and containers, you cut the deal with the manufacturer by fax, they filled a container, and the container came to you without any intermediaries who cared what was in the box.

Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha

[Trepidity]

The problem with Krugman is that he is relentlessly political and that is a bad trait for an economist.

Do you apply that to all politically outspoken economists, across the spectrum? So you would say, for example, that Milton Friedman was a bad economist?

Krugman - before and after his NY Times column

[br00tus]

Before getting a New York Times column Krugman was not overtly political, and used to praise some of the ideas Milton Friedman came up with, while also praising Keynes's ideas. Another thing is prior to the NY Times column, very importantly, Krugman was a mainstream, well respected economist. Not that I think that means much, but he was not some hack with no economic background like so many people spouting op-eds in the Wall Street Journal or CNBC.

Once he got the Times column, he began analyzing Bush's budgets and saying the numbers did not add up because they were wildly over-optimistic. This brought him into the political arena more.

Also - what mainstream economist does NOT argue for intervention in the economy? Milton Friedman who is supposed to be the free market guru supported a government/Fed run expansionary money policy. This is a capitalist economy, do the capitalists who run it and own it pay attention to any economists who don't advocate government control over at least money? The answer is no. In fact, the capitalists who run this capitalist economy were who advocated the bailout of the banks and all of this.

Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha

[Attila Dimedici]

The difference is that Krugman changes his recommendations based on the political party of the politician backing the economic policies. There were economic policies that he supported when the Clinton Administration proposed them and opposed when the Bush Administration proposed them. If he had said that he used to support such policies but now realized that they were wrong, it would have been one thing, but he instead wrote as if he had always opposed such policies and only an idiot would support them.

Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha

[MagicMerlin]

That's a very fair point. I'll say this though: most libertarian economists warn about the dangers of governments using policy to direct economic matters. This criticism is very well founded; generally things start out well, but inevitably things go wrong and the perpetrators end up blaming the free market for all the problems. There are of course examples and counter examples on both sides, so things are completely black/white, but as a general trend it rings true. While libertarian economists (to use a stereotype) are political in the sense that they look at the economic problems resulting from political issues, they tend to think that economic policy should be apolitical...that is, get politicians of all striped out of the money business. Krugman is the nemesis of that line of thinking.

Re:Revisions revisions

[julesh]

He'll come back to it sooner or later, I'm sure. It just might take him a while. I understand his problem with writing more... he's started with a beginning that promises a particular kind of ending, and it's hard to wrap your head around how he can get to that ending. That doesn't mean it's impossible, though, and I'll bet one day he'll come up with an answer...

Re:This is satire, right?

[nedlohs]

No it's not.

Seriously what is government intervention to pump money into the economy when the economy looks like it is starting a downward trend, if it isn't stock standard Keynesian IS/LM curve shifting?

Sure Greenspan called himself a free-marketer, but actions speak louder.

Re:The box

[jsebrech]

Alain de Botton wrote a book about modern day work that (among other things) covers the process of shipping tuna from where it is caught to where it is eaten.

http://www.alaindebotton.com/work/ [alaindebotton.com]

Remarkable stuff, and it flies entirely under the radar even of the people who buy it. Highly recommend that book to anyone wanting to get some insight on the fabric of modern society.