Paul Krugman's Anti-Biography

Paul Krugman, Nobel Winner in Economics

Here's food for thought. It's a counterpoint to the “global food crisis” Paul Krugman discusses in his post that seeded this ideas. But hopefully, it offers insights into the interplay of rising food prices, weather disruptions and why the usual suspects go wild.

If  food goes up, is it inflation--or the weather in Brazil, the world's number one producer of oranges and soybeans, among other foods? Why ask? Because we overlook in our search for truth that stories embellished have an older half-life, a greater social power, and have historically eclipsed the parables--and paradoxes--truth. Truth once was directly observed; market goods were stacked. Stories embellished and altered what we all knew was the truth underneath. There was a clear difference between truth and the stories that entertained us.

In a society of 300 million, that underlying truth is hard to find. So we substitute our personal untethered versions. Our need for mindless entertainment has exploded. Last week I read many of posts of the Krugman ancillary entertainment industry, the legions of columnists, blogs, comments, and web sites whose raison d'etre is to strike at Paul Krugman not through examining his conclusions or invalidating his reasoning, but by saying “he's wrong because we all know he is wrong (wink or stare or angry scrawl) and this example and interpretation proves unequivocally in its fallacy he is unhappy, washed up, over the hill, failed, Keynesian” and in Paul's words, “evil.”

Of course, I disagree. But it was eye opening to read the sheer volume of vitriol and fantasy that a single person could generate. Especially one who currently holds no public position in government, works in a classroom and writes for the paper we are reading. The stories outsize his influence on government and policy. So while Paul speaks truth (mostly! we disagree on China's errancy and his framing of cultural issues as moral), he has greater value as an invention, as a story. He is a means of entertaining the fears and jeers of many.

He is a target for the public illogic that deflates our fair pride and devalues the important nuances of civil duty. His hard truths make him an easy target. So Paul is a straw man inflated for those whose political appetites include a hearty portion of bread and circuses.

Paul's personal metrics show our dominant passion is fear. Paul's bokors with their deadening brew sanitize his examples, smash the supporting detail and model building, and weighing of pros and cons. They juryrig the timeline comparisons and taunted the crafted logic that are the character of his posts. The wrong impuned is not a simple omission; Paul's ideas are framed as dangerous and leading to a perilous slide. This cultural formula undergrids the policy battles. But how can there be honest debate, if no view is thought sincere? And all differences are met with scorn?

No matter the economic state, rising or falling, until we recognize and learn from our history, we are condemned to restore the old insanity. If we continue to allow the pursuit of power through money and deceit, our comfort will come from the wrong means and will bring about bad ends. Right now, we would do well to remember the unexpected dangers and delusions that lay in freedom.