The problem is, the smartest things I’ve ever read by Cowen were libertarian cant. From there, it just gets worse.

P.S. I’ll back Tyler Cowen against Dan Simon in a chess match, any day of the week.

Me, too. Then again, there are computers that I’d back against Tyler Cowen. Neither of these points says much for or against my point that (at least when not playing chess) he’s an idiot.

The dumbest things I’ve ever seen Cowen say weren’t libertarian cant at all, but rather random musings that revealed him to be a man with the mind of a very average twelve-year-old…

Judging someone’s intelligence based on the dumbest things you hear them say seems like a terrible idea to me.

The lowest order statistic of many observations drawn from a distribution with high variance is very, very low indeed. I would be, personally, THRILLED if the dumbest thing I ever said paralleled the accomplishments of a very average twelve-year-old whose parents had overpraised him! If we’re to be judged on our dumbest sayings, those of us who say more will be judged dumber, on average, than those of us who say less. How’s that for corrupting the original meaning of “dumb”?

P.S. I’ll back Tyler Cowen against Dan Simon in a chess match, any day of the week.

Who am I going to believe, after all—Thomas Schelling, or my own lyin’ eyes?

By far the stupidest person I’ve ever met had a PhD. in mathematics from MIT. Appeals to authority are as useless in defense of someone’s intelligence as in defense of any other claim.

He IS so committed to ideological propositions that fit what we laughingly call the real world rather badly that he often needs to engage in contorted logic, to put it mildly.

It takes much, much more to be truly, monumentally stupid than just being dogmatic and wrong. Lots of reasonably smart people are blinded by dogma—take the folks here at Crooked Timber, for instance. (Well, maybe not Farrell and Quiggin, but the rest of them seem bright enough, overall, whatever their other flaws.)

No, to be truly and demonstrably stupid, one must shed the alibi of dogma, and embrace moronic assertions without partisan favor. The dumbest things I’ve ever seen Cowen say weren’t libertarian cant at all, but rather random musings that revealed him to be a man with the mind of a very average twelve-year-old, whose parents have told him a few times too often that he really is a very, very clever boy.

He IS so committed to ideological propositions that fit what we laughingly call the real world rather badly that he often needs to engage in contorted logic, to put it mildly. My own breaking point came while reading his arguement against taxing income from capital. He (and other right-wingers, such as Mankiw) have convinced themselves that this will result in so much new capital formation, which will raise the marginal product of labor so much, which will raise the income of labor so much, that wage-earners will be better off if this is done.

The facts that taxes on capital income have not been lower in a long time, while the rate of capital formation is also at a low and wages are stagnant (except at the very top, of course), fails to impress him. He is still sure that eventually the new capital will “kick in” (his phrase) and everything will be great.

About the time the bugs are worked out of communism and Russia becomes a proletarian paradise, IMHO. That’s the great thing about the long run; it means never having to say you’re sorry.

It’s in the nature of ordering that it’s done before the event (screening, publication, etc). How on earth do you “post-order”? The pre is totally redundant.

The “totally” in “totally redundant” is totally unnecessary.

Anyway, “pre-order” is essenitially short for “pre-release order.” We need some word to distinguish ordering a book that hasn’t been released from one which has. I think “pre-order” has served us well.

Why is the regular person/sociologist reason not a good one? It might not be rational, in a step-by-step kind of way, but I’m going to put my irrational, emotional hat on and say that the kind of person who spoils secrets and surprises is an arse. So don’t be an arse.

“What? I’m not blackmailing anybody.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m about to blackmail you, so I thought I’d bring it up.”

P.S.
But because many other people, including some whose writings I enjoy, are under the inexplicable illusion that Cowen isn’t an idiot…

That is my feeling about Jane Galt in a nutshell. I’m assuming it’s possible people only link to and talk about the stupid things she says, and I’m missing out on a wealth of brilliance… but I kinda doubt it.

Actually, it’s not even under the mattress. I don’t want you googling my mattress. It’s somewhere else.

It’s in the nature of ordering that it’s done before the event (screening, publication, etc). How on earth do you “post-order”? The pre is totally redundant.

Stop it, NOW.

I found it on my first attempt with the following words: “tyrone”, “marginal”, “secret” and “blog”. Just dumb luck that it came up as the third link.

Economists and libertarians of Tyler’s stripe do not commend to people the pursuit of narrow self-interest. Rather, they often try for parsimony’s sake to explain a situation in terms only of individuals’ prudence.

Understandably, non-economists are rankled when they catch wind of a theory about rational crime or whatever. It seems like economists are calling law-abiding citizens “suckers.” That sort of seeming implication is what motivated this post, I take it.

But if I’m more cynical than most about others’ motivations, that doesn’t make it incumbent on me to give you a selfish reason to play nice.

Yes, I see there’s a small irony in a cynic betting on the good will of his readers, but it’s only a small one. The thrust of this post and some of the comments is that libertarians are normally selfish people, so it’s surprising they’d go along with the secrecy. Also, if they are defying our simplistic characterizations, let’s spoil their fun by acting like what we take them to be: jerks.

Huh?

Santa is fun. Spilling the beans about Santa lessens the fun.