Some of my blog readers asked me to say more about my intellectual influences so I’ve been writing a series of posts that haven’t gone up yet about that and what I notice is the longest post I’ve written is about the Freddie Mac career which, because I learned more in those you know half a dozen years in business than I learned in my undergraduate and graduate economics. I mean in some ways the learning was complementary but if you had to throw out one it would be the classical economics. Because you know one of the things that first you know hits you if you work in business and all you’ve done is study economics is these things that that a business is supposed to optimize – like it’s supposed to minimize costs or maximize profits, you know solving a calculus problem. That’s not the problem at all. You don’t even- you don’t know – your challenge is to figure out what’s going on, and beyond that if you were in a large organization the challenge is to get the large organization to function.
Apologies for the issue with the transcripts!
I have edited them and they are now in presentable shape.
Thanks,
Joe
The discussion about the populist elite versus anti-elite axis was very interesting and worth developing further. The other post today is in many ways about this new axis as well. One wonders if the topic might be cast in more fundamental terms such as the USA Declaration of Independence: “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Progressives, conservatives, and liberals all take the consent of the governed as a given for different reasons which can be summed up as “the governed bloody well need governing.”. The populists, on the othet hand ask maybe the consent of the governed is conditional and the governed are not mere serfs. As democracy continues to be increasingly suppressed and marginalized (witness the elite spending orgy that is the covid relief bill), perhaps the question of consent deserves the attention that populists suggest might be appropriate.