I think you're right to draw attention to this mechanism. I bet more examples are hiding in plain sight.

Here is a thought experiment. Suppose one elite named HerrDoktor Professor Chris Dillow switched from looking through the people who serve him to some more respectful, not condescending, alternative. What would be the net macro effect of this change? What if N empowered people switched, simply for their own moral reasons. At what N can these micro respects be said to overthrow the endogenous ideological tyranny described in this article? (phase change? or gradual?)

Interesting thoughts Chris. I am interpreting what you wrote as you are playing up the parts of your view that contrast the most with Noah's, rather than portray ambiguity.

Would like to hear more from you on the external validity of economic experiments. I recall in my economic experiments CLASS in uni we read papers that were supposed to account for this. They would measure the effects with some expensive method, then measure with a cheap method, and show the robustness between the two. Then we can maybe extrapolate from the cheap method (e.g. extra credit points) to the expensive method (e.g. cash) in general.

@Redshift You are being wilfully ignorant. No progress or nothing interesting since Adam Smith? Game theory.

@Keith If your boss offers you a raise and pats you on the back for a job well done, you will accept it. = an economic certainty.

@Luis Enrique - Amazing. @Chris - You are right. Another example of this ignorant type of critique is that "People are different". Like, duh, what makes you think economists don't account for differences in taste?

I also remember as a student the following peeve: we do our optimization on the reals even though it's well known that integer optimization result in different argmax. I recall that my professor literally waved his hands and said it doesn't matter. Whereas I find the Akerlof/Yellen paper on small individual departures from rationality saying it does matter. That actually seems like a privileging of prejudice over results ("My answer should sound at least vaguely neoclassical, satisfy these assumptions and rhyme with Selfish Maximising Agents" being more important than agreement with theory or data)

This is just a guess, but the weakness of the profession may have to do with too much theory and not enough data. For example an undergraduate Physics major will do labs and measure the electron band structure of germanium http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html but in Intermediate Micro students just learn the theory and never test it. (But there are bigger things to get on to! Like applying the theory to international trade or energy policy.) I'm not saying that's a mortal sin but it does seem less than completely hard-headed.

Arthur Laffer's off-the-cuff observation that income tax revenue obtains a maximum SOMEWHERE with respect to rates is indisputable. That the maximum is below current rates does not follow from his reasoning about tax evasion. But there's a larger point to be made. The purpose of government is not to maximise revenue. It's supposed to perform certain duties in aid of social efficiency, like punishing fraud and murder. Optimising for tax "efficiency" (defined along this particular, narrow dimension) has about as much point as optimising the motor efficiency of the steps you take walking to the office. Sure, it may be "optimal" in some sense, but what's the point? The more important question is what services the government(s) should be providing.

The question shouldn't be: "Do or don't code", but how much. Teaching secondary students bound to study English Lit in college, a month of text processing skills, could help them find that reference they need. There is some efficient intersection for everyone between the time / opportunity costs of learning to operate a computer better and the PV[benefits] of that degree of knowledge.

This example is so good, it belongs in intro stat courses. Sure, the boxplots may be boring, but...they do show thedata.

I agree with everything you're saying except for this part: In a perfect world, every search would result in a page with a single item: exactly the thing you were looking for. If I search for "Ethiopian restaurants in my city", ideally I'd see all three restaurants, with photos of the interior, a relevant subsample of the menu items/prices, and some information about the service/quality/reviews. If I search for "buy car", I would like to see an array of options, like a matrix which guides me through the relevant tradeoffs (car specs, lease terms) and the $ cost of moving around in that tradeoff space. Even a "perfect" search engine isn't going to know (although it could presume/make assumptions about) what car I'm going to want, when I don't even know yet. Rather than trying to creepily prognosticate about what my answer's going to be, an ideal search engine would just lead me to the next logical question, along with the relevant info to answer it.

It never ceases to amaze me how much respect is given to intelligence. IQ is basically worthless, yet writers with very public voices never cease to praise how important it is. Just because Zuckerberg, Gates, and Griffin have high IQ's doesn't matter. Let's talk about other quantiles which someone has non-trivial odds of reaching. Let's talk about the income quantiles someone with a 140 IQ can range among. Most importantly, let's distinguish cunning from book-learning. Unless we're talking about tippy-top scholars like you two, the rewards to book-learning (acquired today, not 50 years ago) are small. As regards raising the incomes of the working class without creating a disincentive to work -- how about paying for more of their healthcare?

Karl Rove is a spinmeister. Should be unsurprising and not taken as representative of "Republicans".

Did you ever resolve this issue?