Krugman is huge scifi nerd. He chose to study economics because it was the closest thing to psycohistory in real life.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/01/the-deflationis...
The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#22Krugman? This is the Nobel laureate that said the stock market would NEVER recover from Trump's election.
What is really odd about the statement is that Krugman is one of a handful of economists who think trade protectionism is a good idea. We might soon get to test these theories as Trump is all about trade protectionism.
> Krugman is one of a handful of economists who think trade protectionism is a good idea.
No, he's not. He has occasionally made the point that certain arguments against protectionism are misstated, but AFAICT consistently does so alongside saying that protectionism remains harmful, a time a minimum because it reduces efficiency and aggregate output. [0]
[0] e.g., http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2016/03/04/the-mitt-...
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#23"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." -Paul Krugman Paul does not have the best track record.
but but nobel prize! seriously though, Krugman is a moron, completely out of touch with reality
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#24"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." -Paul Krugman Paul does not have the best track record.
It is a joke article. It is a serious economic analysis on a funny topic.
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#25Any discussion of interstellar trade deserves a mention of the fantastic Charles Stross book "Neptune's Brood". I went into it expecting more or less a sequel to "Saturn's Children" but what I got was a treatise on monetary policy for economies that span multiple star systems. The concept of slow and fast money and its implications is utterly fascinating and the book is worth reading just for its explorations of the topic (the plot isn't too bad either).
A quick Google search brought me to this post by Krugman[0]:
I’m reading an advance copy of Charlie Stross’s Neptune’s Brood. (Hey, I have connections!)
And it is the best thing by far written on the subject to date, partly because it is, as far
as I know, the only thing written on the subject to date.
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#26"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." -Paul Krugman Paul does not have the best track record.
Somebody will be tempted to defend him saying: "Well, he takes risks, it's expected that he will fail sometimes." The problem is not that he fails. The problem is that he never acknowledges his failures nor questions his assumptions behind the failed predictions -- he just mixes them up and say something in the lines of "I was right all the time".
He does talk about "getting it wrong" on his blog fairly regularly. Example: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2015/06/10/the-decad...
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#27"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." -Paul Krugman Paul does not have the best track record.
Somebody will be tempted to defend him saying: "Well, he takes risks, it's expected that he will fail sometimes." The problem is not that he fails. The problem is that he never acknowledges his failures nor questions his assumptions behind the failed predictions -- he just mixes them up and say something in the lines of "I was right all the time".
That's not true. In fact, he's even brought up underestimating the impact of the internet multiple times as an example of when he was wrong. For instance:
"And what about me personally? I don’t have a turban and crystal ball hidden in a back room, and I’ve made some pretty wrong predictions in my time. The thing, however, is that all of these bad predictions involved stepping outside the models I understood. I underestimated the payoff to the internet; well, I was speculating about technology, and while that’s my right, I don’t have any special expertise."[1]
[1] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/non-prophet-econ...
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#28I'd be interested to know what possible commodity would be worth trading among star systems -- even if some star system has a planet made entirely of diamonds, surely it would take far less energy to made them here than to ship them between stars? Likewise, it seems that endless amounts of gold (platinum, rhodium, whatever) could be harvested from our own solar system before it's worth shipping here.
Even if there's some alien truffle delicacy that only grows in the shade of a tree bathed in UV light from an alien star, surely that could be cultivated here in an artificial habitat far easier than shipping it light years across the galaxy?
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#29Link to the original PDF that does not endlessly nag you to subscribe to the newsletter:
Re: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (1978)
#30I'd be interested to know what possible commodity would be worth trading among star systems -- even if some star system has a planet made entirely of diamonds, surely it would take far less energy to made them here than to ship them between stars? Likewise, it seems that endless amounts of gold (platinum, rhodium, whatever) could be harvested from our own solar system before it's worth shipping here. Even if there's…
Information.
Personally I imagine we're better off when we share information for free, but I haven't tested the hypothesis.