6 ms·

I hate when these articles cite “outrage” by linking a tweet with 6 likes. I wish journalists had an ethics board that banned outlets from trying to stir up con

I hate when these articles cite “outrage” by linking a tweet with 6 likes. I wish journalists had an ethics board that banned outlets from trying to stir up controversy like this.

jacquesm 7y ago
You should check out the paper. It is 83 pages (a bit longer than a tweet) and very dense with math. It tries super hard to reduce a social issue to a mathematical one with an optimum solution and is probably the best example I've seen of a disconnect between science and real life consequences.
- nabla9 7y ago
  Are you saying that economists should not study subjects that can have negative consequences for some? The fact that productivity increases in big cities is not new finding. Economies of agglomeration is well studied subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration This study is modelling just one of the reasons why it is so little better.
  - rarecoil 7y ago
    Agree. This paper is just another attempt at modelling economies of agglomeration. It's a pretty well-studied bit of urban economics. This paper just sounds a little socially tone-deaf. The paper's primary policy points appear to be, using quotes from the paper: 1) CNR workers work better in "cognitive hubs" that specialise in this type of work. 2) "The main culprit of spatial misallocation is the existence of large occupation-specific externalities combined with potential distortions due to land use regulations." 3) Small towns are misguided in trying to lure "tech" to their cities, and should instead find a non-CNR industry to concentrate on that is not already concentrated in a specific city. ("the economics of the problem suggest that, with the appropriate transfers, small industrial cities in the U.S. should attract non-CNR workers and not try to become the next San Jose. The concentration of CNR workers in a few “cognitive hubs” should be encouraged, not scorned.") 4) CNR cities should be subsidizing non-CNR workers outside of the hub, at a UBI (wealth transfer) to non-CNR workers of about $17,000 a year per worker. ("CNR workers, who earn substantially more, end up paying a base transfer of $16,856. One interpretation of this base transfer is that of a 'universal basic income' paid to all non-CNR workers.") We can distill this further, to: a. In general, CNR workers work better around other CNR workers due to positive externalities of location. I think this is tough to deny, with SF/the Valley for tech, NYC for finance, LA for entertainment, Shenzhen for hardware manufacturing, et cetera. b. We should be removing any restrictions that stop this cycle from growing, from land use regulations, to stopping incentives and funding to small towns to create their own 'tech hubs', to just straight paying people to leave the city that are not part of that industry and stay out. It's the latter part of this everyone seems to be latching onto, however it's pretty common in economics to just model incentives as direct quantifiable costs. This also explains what is happening in the Bay Area right now: "Otherwise, cognitive hubs might use other indirect means of pushing out non-CNR workers such as, for example, housing supply constraints, zoning restrictions, or a lack of investment in transportation networks to aid commuting. Such efforts can generate occupational polarization across space without Pareto gains for all workers."
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    This is the exact kind of thinking that got you Trump. Keep in mind that by the time 'some' amounts to a substantial part of the voting public that the disenfranchised can turn around and throw a spanner in the works. It would be socially much more productive to study how to re-balance society in such a way that the gains are not realized locally. Think of it this way (very much simplified): If cities A and B create are producing 10 units of value each and small towns C, D, E and F are producing 3 each and you relocate all the 'important' (again, simplifying) people to A and B so they produce 20 units of value each while the small towns drop to 1 each you've according to the paper optimized and reduced the waste. After all 43 > 29. But from society's view this is a net loss. It would be much better to see how the small towns go from 3 to 5 each in order to reduce the gap. Of course this is super simplified and in the end wealth distribution is a complex subject but this paper strikes out for me.
    - nabla9 7y ago
      Inequality is separate issue. Inequality is best addressed by free healthcare, education and direct money transfers, not by slowing down things that create wealth and increase efficiencies.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        Nonsense. Inequality is best addressed by ensuring resources are spread equally so that chance is distributed equally. If you don't do that then you're simply locking in and further accelerating any advantage already there. That's a positive feedback loop which will eventually lead to vast inequality that no amount of free healthcare, education and money are going to solve.
        cousin_it 7y ago
        Paul Graham, who started this website, wrote: "Eliminating great variations in wealth would mean eliminating startups. And that doesn't seem a wise move." How would you respond to that?
        7y ago
caseysoftware 7y ago
That's totally unfair when the twitter user in question has thousands or even millions of followers.. checking this user.. oh, 42 followers. Unfortunately, this is modern "journalism". Check out any "fans outraged over X" story and you'll find that it was ~5 people who collectively have 50 followers, 48 of which are probably bots. That's why "critics say" and "some believe" are such meaningless and worthy-of-derision qualifiers. You can find anyone who believes anything if you dig deep enough and can search effectively.
- malandrew 7y ago
  Even if they have millions of followers, it can be totally unremarkable. For example, if Kim Kardashian tweeted on this issue, it would be just as dismissible as this person with 42 followers.
brokenkebab 7y ago
You obviously think of the internet as of one jurisdiction thing. P.S. I agree that's ugly manipulation on journalism's side here, but those manipulations happen through the whole history of organized news (which predates not only internet, but printing as well), and it seems that bans either do not work, or have a lot of sad consequences.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
While I agree with you, I'm not sure this is all that different from the older "man on the street" interviews that consisted of four or five seemingly random people with two or three sentences from each. It wouldn't be difficult to get the opinions you wanted to print by just asking people on the street until you enough of them said things you wanted to quote.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  When you have millions of men, on millions of streets, the tone changes. Instead of being beholden to limited people you could run into, even in a dense city, who would express a view in person, you get the attention-seeking tweets of the litteral world to choose your narritve from. The ease of creating a new account and attaining followers, legit or not, is worth mentioning as well. Its not even an easily manipulatable resource at that point, just a blank check for insanity.

I hate when these articles cite “outrage” by linking a tweet with 6 likes. I wish journalists had an ethics board that banned outlets from trying to stir up controversy like this.

jacquesm 7y ago

You should check out the paper. It is 83 pages (a bit longer than a tweet) and very dense with math. It tries super hard to reduce a social issue to a mathematical one with an optimum solution and is probably the best example I've seen of a disconnect between science and real life consequences.

nabla9 7y ago
Are you saying that economists should not study subjects that can have negative consequences for some? The fact that productivity increases in big cities is not new finding. Economies of agglomeration is well studied subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration This study is modelling just one of the reasons why it is so little better.
- rarecoil 7y ago
  Agree. This paper is just another attempt at modelling economies of agglomeration. It's a pretty well-studied bit of urban economics. This paper just sounds a little socially tone-deaf. The paper's primary policy points appear to be, using quotes from the paper: 1) CNR workers work better in "cognitive hubs" that specialise in this type of work. 2) "The main culprit of spatial misallocation is the existence of large occupation-specific externalities combined with potential distortions due to land use regulations." 3) Small towns are misguided in trying to lure "tech" to their cities, and should instead find a non-CNR industry to concentrate on that is not already concentrated in a specific city. ("the economics of the problem suggest that, with the appropriate transfers, small industrial cities in the U.S. should attract non-CNR workers and not try to become the next San Jose. The concentration of CNR workers in a few “cognitive hubs” should be encouraged, not scorned.") 4) CNR cities should be subsidizing non-CNR workers outside of the hub, at a UBI (wealth transfer) to non-CNR workers of about $17,000 a year per worker. ("CNR workers, who earn substantially more, end up paying a base transfer of $16,856. One interpretation of this base transfer is that of a 'universal basic income' paid to all non-CNR workers.") We can distill this further, to: a. In general, CNR workers work better around other CNR workers due to positive externalities of location. I think this is tough to deny, with SF/the Valley for tech, NYC for finance, LA for entertainment, Shenzhen for hardware manufacturing, et cetera. b. We should be removing any restrictions that stop this cycle from growing, from land use regulations, to stopping incentives and funding to small towns to create their own 'tech hubs', to just straight paying people to leave the city that are not part of that industry and stay out. It's the latter part of this everyone seems to be latching onto, however it's pretty common in economics to just model incentives as direct quantifiable costs. This also explains what is happening in the Bay Area right now: "Otherwise, cognitive hubs might use other indirect means of pushing out non-CNR workers such as, for example, housing supply constraints, zoning restrictions, or a lack of investment in transportation networks to aid commuting. Such efforts can generate occupational polarization across space without Pareto gains for all workers."
- jacquesm 7y ago
  This is the exact kind of thinking that got you Trump. Keep in mind that by the time 'some' amounts to a substantial part of the voting public that the disenfranchised can turn around and throw a spanner in the works. It would be socially much more productive to study how to re-balance society in such a way that the gains are not realized locally. Think of it this way (very much simplified): If cities A and B create are producing 10 units of value each and small towns C, D, E and F are producing 3 each and you relocate all the 'important' (again, simplifying) people to A and B so they produce 20 units of value each while the small towns drop to 1 each you've according to the paper optimized and reduced the waste. After all 43 > 29. But from society's view this is a net loss. It would be much better to see how the small towns go from 3 to 5 each in order to reduce the gap. Of course this is super simplified and in the end wealth distribution is a complex subject but this paper strikes out for me.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    Inequality is separate issue. Inequality is best addressed by free healthcare, education and direct money transfers, not by slowing down things that create wealth and increase efficiencies.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Nonsense. Inequality is best addressed by ensuring resources are spread equally so that chance is distributed equally. If you don't do that then you're simply locking in and further accelerating any advantage already there. That's a positive feedback loop which will eventually lead to vast inequality that no amount of free healthcare, education and money are going to solve.
      - cousin_it 7y ago
        Paul Graham, who started this website, wrote: "Eliminating great variations in wealth would mean eliminating startups. And that doesn't seem a wise move." How would you respond to that?
        7y ago

caseysoftware 7y ago

That's totally unfair when the twitter user in question has thousands or even millions of followers.. checking this user.. oh, 42 followers. Unfortunately, this is modern "journalism". Check out any "fans outraged over X" story and you'll find that it was ~5 people who collectively have 50 followers, 48 of which are probably bots. That's why "critics say" and "some believe" are such meaningless and worthy-of-derision qualifiers. You can find anyone who believes anything if you dig deep enough and can search effectively.

malandrew 7y ago
Even if they have millions of followers, it can be totally unremarkable. For example, if Kim Kardashian tweeted on this issue, it would be just as dismissible as this person with 42 followers.

brokenkebab 7y ago

You obviously think of the internet as of one jurisdiction thing. P.S. I agree that's ugly manipulation on journalism's side here, but those manipulations happen through the whole history of organized news (which predates not only internet, but printing as well), and it seems that bans either do not work, or have a lot of sad consequences.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

While I agree with you, I'm not sure this is all that different from the older "man on the street" interviews that consisted of four or five seemingly random people with two or three sentences from each. It wouldn't be difficult to get the opinions you wanted to print by just asking people on the street until you enough of them said things you wanted to quote.

Jamwinner 7y ago
When you have millions of men, on millions of streets, the tone changes. Instead of being beholden to limited people you could run into, even in a dense city, who would express a view in person, you get the attention-seeking tweets of the litteral world to choose your narritve from. The ease of creating a new account and attaining followers, legit or not, is worth mentioning as well. Its not even an easily manipulatable resource at that point, just a blank check for insanity.