I gotta cut this in half, somehow, before Wednesday night; 2023 Navin Narayan Memorial Lecture; Harvard College Committee on Degrees in Social Studies; Cambridge MA
Thanks. Very helpful, especially for people trying to figure out how to understand, how to create a necessarily simplified mental model of a steadily changing reality/system. I think of economics that way too -- not that the old guys were all that far off -- it is just that what they wrote fit their world better than ours. While the talk is tailored for an academic audience and their constant problem of optimizing their reading lists I think many non-academics will enjoy it as I did.
Frankly, this is hopelessly bad. The problem, I think, is you are trying (and keep trying to in varying contexts) to condense your 600 page book into a 30 or 60 minute lecture. It doesn't work. Unfortunately, you don't have time to tear it up and start over. (As the famous quote goes, "This letter would have been shorter if I had had more time to write it.")
Couple of narrow points:
I agree with TLH that:
-- The summa and 1/500,000,000 paras. come across as crass. (In a way, disrespectful to the memory of the lecture's namesake.)
-- This condensation of your book is indeed likely to come across as stuffed with a lot of what is not much more than name dropping. You know what you mean, and readers of Slouching already know what you mean. Others get subjected to a mind-numbing index.
Very uninformed reactions. I do not understand the context at all But “..where angel fear to tread”
I don’t see the point of informing people that you were a suma.
Don’t put up the historical growth numbers until after you give the reason. It should NOT be a professional quirk. And besides, hasn’t your audience a vague idea of your book, anyway?
“But policies biased toward full employment bring on at least moderate inflation. And even moderate inflation is seen by nearly everyone as a breakdown of government competence and a violation of the contract between the government and the people.”
_Because_ wages and some other prices cannot adjust downward when real demand or supply shocks require changes in relative prices. The monetary authority then must allow some inflation to maintain full employment. Is this necessarily more than “moderate” amount that everyone sees as minimal government competence? Would it be everyone already understood what you are just about to explain to them about the optimal rate of inflation that balances unemployment against creating additional uncertainty about future relative prices?
From here on, above my pay grade. Are you _sure_ it will not come across as name dropping?
Thanks. Very helpful, especially for people trying to figure out how to understand, how to create a necessarily simplified mental model of a steadily changing reality/system. I think of economics that way too -- not that the old guys were all that far off -- it is just that what they wrote fit their world better than ours. While the talk is tailored for an academic audience and their constant problem of optimizing their reading lists I think many non-academics will enjoy it as I did.
Frankly, this is hopelessly bad. The problem, I think, is you are trying (and keep trying to in varying contexts) to condense your 600 page book into a 30 or 60 minute lecture. It doesn't work. Unfortunately, you don't have time to tear it up and start over. (As the famous quote goes, "This letter would have been shorter if I had had more time to write it.")
Couple of narrow points:
I agree with TLH that:
-- The summa and 1/500,000,000 paras. come across as crass. (In a way, disrespectful to the memory of the lecture's namesake.)
-- This condensation of your book is indeed likely to come across as stuffed with a lot of what is not much more than name dropping. You know what you mean, and readers of Slouching already know what you mean. Others get subjected to a mind-numbing index.
Very uninformed reactions. I do not understand the context at all But “..where angel fear to tread”
I don’t see the point of informing people that you were a suma.
Don’t put up the historical growth numbers until after you give the reason. It should NOT be a professional quirk. And besides, hasn’t your audience a vague idea of your book, anyway?
“But policies biased toward full employment bring on at least moderate inflation. And even moderate inflation is seen by nearly everyone as a breakdown of government competence and a violation of the contract between the government and the people.”
_Because_ wages and some other prices cannot adjust downward when real demand or supply shocks require changes in relative prices. The monetary authority then must allow some inflation to maintain full employment. Is this necessarily more than “moderate” amount that everyone sees as minimal government competence? Would it be everyone already understood what you are just about to explain to them about the optimal rate of inflation that balances unemployment against creating additional uncertainty about future relative prices?
From here on, above my pay grade. Are you _sure_ it will not come across as name dropping?