Recently by Simon Black: The Expat Widow
Apparently, all of us little people just need to sit down and keep quiet… so sayeth Kartik Athreya, senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
In a recent paper entitled “Economics is Hard. Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise,” Mr. Athreya chastised the world of bloggers, talking heads, and anyone else who isn’t named Kartik Athreya for speaking their minds about economic policy. Clearly, everyone else is too stupid to have an opinion.
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“Writers who have not taken a year of PhD coursework in a decent economics department (and passed their PhD qualifying exams), cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic policy,” wrote Athreya. “[I]t is exceedingly unlikely that these authors have anything interesting to say about economic policy.”
Yeah, OK, there are a lot of dimwits out there… but this sort of “shut up and do as you’re told” mentality is precisely what is so flawed about the system to begin with.
Let’s be honest, though, this isn’t indigenous just to the United States. The powers that be have been doing this for centuries. Even the Greeks, arguably among the more enlightened of early civilizations, sentenced Socrates to death for asking too many annoying questions.
Over the years, intellectual discourse has been squashed through fear and coercion, giving rise to such illustrious events as the Dark Ages and Inquisition. These days, if anyone gets out of hand, they send the cops out in their blackest, most intimidating paramilitary gear… just to send a message.
