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What The Economist doesn't tell you
- conjectures 7y agoBy half way through the article, I haven't seen one decent argument presented to justify the author's dislike of The Economist. Instead, this is just an invitation to go boo, hiss when the reader hears the wake-word 'liberal'.
- Etheryte 7y agoSearching the page for "liberal" gives 41 hits, searching for "economist" gives 42 hits. It's very hard to take the article seriously even after reading just the first sentence: > The publication has a sublime — even smug — self-confidence in its elite liberal worldview. What ever they're proposing may very well have merit, but in that tone, there's little interest to hear the case out.
- jonnypotty 7y agoThe person writting the article doesn't really know what the word sublime means for a start.
- lorenzhs 7y agoWell, I wouldn't be so quick with the accusations. One of the Cambridge Dictionary's example sentences for the word sublime is He possesses sublime self-confidence: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sublime https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sublime
- lorenzhs 7y agoAs a subscriber to the Economist, I fully concur with the line you take offense with. It is very self-assured in its worldview. Pointing that out should not be controversial.
- fsloth 7y agoYes, the fact that Economist has an obvious political stand should not be taken as a bug - it's a feature. Their fact-based journalism is excellent, and when they take a stand on an issue, it's obvious and not hidden inside some fake statistics or pseudoscience.
- capableweb 7y agoAs a sometime-reader I find the clear worldview refreshing. While clearly CNN has a particular worldview, they constantly try to remind people that they don't hold that worldview, in order to convince people they are impartial. Same goes for basically any media, the different is between if it's clear or if they are trying to seem impartial while not being so. I'd much rather news organizations be clear about their view, so I as a reader can keep that in mind and also look at the opposition view, because that other news organization would also be clear that they do hold the opposition view.
- joosters 7y agoIt's what frustrates me whenever I read an Economist piece. Their absolute certainty in declaring what should be done about any particular topic is jarring. The 'pretend you are God' line in the article is exactly the problem.
- fsloth 7y agoBut that is the exact description of the tone the magazine uses in its opinion pieces. Unlike most of the news outlets, they don't confuse facts with opinions. You know exactly which type of article you are reading thanks to that tone.
- mozey 7y agoHere's a link to an article from the economist: "We need a post-liberal order now The international, rules-based system is collapsing. Overhauling it means combining national identity with a global ethos, says Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and author" https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/26/we-need-a-post-liberal-order-now https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/26/we-need-a-p...
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- slavik81 7y agoI don't think that's an actual article from The Economist. They describe Open Future[1] as a festival in which you, "Hear discussions and debates mediated by journalists from The Economist and talks by prominent figures from across the political spectrum, as well as contributions from innovators, entrepreneurs, critics and connoisseurs." The Economist's own articles don't typically have bylines like that one does, and the "Copyright © Yuval Noah Harari 2018" at the bottom suggests to me that it was an outside contribution to their festival. Maybe as the topic starter for their online debate event? [1]: https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/04/16/a-letter-to-readers-from-the-editor https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/04/16/a-letter-to...
- ianleeclark 7y agoI don't know if only reading half of an article is a good strategy to measure the worth of the article. Noticeably before the half-way mark, I saw three things: support of slave-holding south, support of the Suharto regime, and support of Pinochet. I feel like throwing political opponents out of helicopters is a little more than "just an invitation to go boo, hiss when the reader hears the wake-word 'liberal'."
- ncmncm 7y agoThrowing opponents from helicopters is about the most extravagant means of execution short of keeping them on death row for decades. (But look which the US prefers.)
- Zeebrommer 7y agoWhataboutism, and totally uncalled for.
- ncmncm 7y agoMentioning the US slouching toward authoritarianism is "whataboutism", now? Nobody is throwing people out of helicopters now, but the US now tortures dissenters in solitary, while China is harvesting potential dissenters' organs for sale. None of it is pleasant to contemplate, but we in the US are at least in a better position to stop ours, if we care enough to.
- officialchicken 7y agoWhat the hell does this have to do with the advancement of computer science and the application of technologies in our lives?
- ahmedalsudani 7y agoWhat to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- luckylion 7y agoAnd of course, you can tell you're a good hacker by finding interesting whatever is posted. Or something like that.
- jonnypotty 7y ago"Hard headed" economics seems to be a particularly popular thing for us to pretend to know stuff about.
- HenryBemis 7y agoA few days ago I posted a bit of new from CNN about a student spotting a dagger/sword that was 5000 old. I really enjoyed spending some time going that rabbit hole (like that girl that found a sword on a lake etc.) Absolutely nothing to do with tech. Absolutely amazing stories that made the mind wander. This is a not a tech forum. (imho) this is an "open minded/interesting minds" people forum. I spend more time reading the comments (than the 2-3mins to read an article) as it opens my mind, activates me, motivates me, educates me. It is perhaps the best forum I've ever joined and I hope we all stick around for many years to come and enjoy the intellect!!! EDIT/addition: I was very pleasantly surprised a few days ago when a bartender commented on a threany/article on the unemployment due to COVID. It felt good to know that we got all sorts of skills/ professions contributing in these discussions.
- Angostura 7y agoThe thing about The Economist - there are small handful of topics, I do know something about. When The Economist writes about them, I tend to think "hey, that's a pretty good article". That tends to give me confidence in the quality of the rest of its coverage. I don't always agree with it, but it's at least well argued and thought provoking.
- lmm 7y agoProspect is quite possibly the only other magazine for which I'd say the same, to be fair.
- nabla9 7y agoI agree. It's really good magazine considering how wide the scope it covers. Economist is clearly has point of view I don't nessesarlily agree with, but it's not any less high quality journalism because of it. Their viewpoint comes mostly from omission of subjects, focus and weighting of different things. Something any intelligent reader can live with.
- gatestone 7y agoMichael Chrichton wrote about this syndrome. When the economist writes about my job, IT, it is usually pretty good. When it writes about my country, Finland, it is sometimes a bit shallow, but the facts are still right. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- fsloth 7y agoAs another Finn I don't think it's shallow - I would call it terse. The facts speak for themselves. Like when describing the rabid gambling problem our country has due to state monopoly and broken incentives on public safety versus financial gains.
- nielsole 7y agoJust to note, he writes about the exact opposite of what is happening here.
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- growlist 7y agoI seem to recall they came out in favour of the Iraq war, which in hindsight didn't turn out to be particularly astute. Surprised to see no mention of that.
- huffmsa 7y agoIt's in the article "The Economist has never seen a war it didn't like"
- ekianjo 7y agoThat sounds like a blanket statement that needs a few citations, to say the least.
- huffmsa 7y agoIt's right there in black and white > "As one outspoken foreign editor remarked at his retirement from the newspaper, the Economist has yet to see a war it does not like. Again and again, spreading and defending the benefits of western liberalism has offered justification for imperial adventure." Read the materials before you come to class.
- DangerousPie 7y agoDo you have a link to their coverage at the time? Would be interesting to see their reasoning.
- kristianc 7y agohttps://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2003/02/20/why-war-would-be-justified https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2003/... https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-war-revisited https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-wa...
- gatestone 7y agoI think the magazine actually apologized later. They said they were wrong about Iraq. But many others too, including me, genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein was going to continue using poison gas, and was trying to create a nuclear weapon. I actually believe that the CIA and US were genuinely believing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance
- ablation 7y agoOdd opinion piece hit job on The Economist. Wonder how often the author had pieces rejected.
- pjc50 7y agoI don't believe they do open submission. They have a small staff, and (almost uniquely) no bylines. Many pieces have multiple authors. The opinion writers are the same from week to week but under pseudonyms.
- dagw 7y agoThe opinion writers are the same from week to week but under pseudonyms. Also worth clarifying that while the opinion pieces are written under pseudonym they are not anonymous and they make no secret about who is behind each pseudonym.
- leto_ii 7y ago> Do read it. But don’t start with the leaders. Start at the back where the world often appears in a less tidy and more truly thought-provoking form. I think this is a good takeaway. I have been reading The Economist for ~ 10 years, a period in which my world view has shifted quite a bit. In the beginning, while still in high school, I essentially treated The Economist as the word of God (it's funny to see that that's actually what they were going for: when one young recruit was facing the challenge of composing their first leader, the advice they received from a senior editor was simple: “Pretend you are God.” ). I had no awareness that the publication followed an ideological line, I simply thought that that was the truth and everything going against it was simply wrong. After having left my native country to study and subsequently work in a bunch of different places, personal experience has clarified a lot of the misunderstandings I had about Western capitalist societies. I continue to read The Economist in its entirety every week, but I now see it partly as a source of information about current events and partly as the mouthpiece of the current ruling class. As long as you are able to correct for its biases and to not get too annoyed when they are blatantly partisan, The Economist is still a very useful and sometimes entertaining read.
- debuggerpk 7y agowhat do you mean "able to correct its bias"?
- leto_ii 7y agoI used the expression to correct for bias, which is a collocation coming out of, I would guess, statistics (see for example: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/142875/what-does-to-correct-for-the-fact-that-mean-is-the-verb-correct-intransitiv https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/142875/what-does-to-... ). What I meant was that if you're aware that The Economist has a clear ideological lens through which it sees the world you can take that into account and take its comments with a grain of salt. Initially I was not aware of their clear ideological stance and I took it to be an objective publication. This being said it's probably not possible to have an objective publication, so it's better to read one that is written competently and subsequently correct for its bias.
- pjc50 7y agoThe Economist is a very good illustration of two distinctions: - "liberal" is not the same as "left", even if both of them have often been aligned against "Toryism" - "ideological bias" and "intellectual dishonesty" are not the same thing The liberal pro-market bias of the Economist is something they don't hide, and is fundamental both to their opinion pieces and the subjects they cover. However, they generally haven't surrendered to the temptation to make stuff up or ignore inconvenient facts. They don't really do demonisation of opponents or scapegoats. They are capable of reviewing their own coverage in retrospect (things like predicting the last thirteen of two housing price crashes). It's possible to read an economist article where you disagree with their angle but still feel that you've learned something and they've made a useful contribution to the discussion. The number of news sources where this is true has shrunk dramatically; the only other one I'd name from US-UK media is the FT. Honorable mention to the Irish Times.
- q-base 7y agoOn the topic of The Economist. I have been a subscriber twice, but each time cancelled because I was endlessly behind on the huge number of quality articles. I am however yet again considering subscription. But are there any other good physical magazines to consider? I have considered The New Yorker as well, but I need to research whether I can have that delivered to Denmark. But any other suggestions given that I really like in depth articles on diverse topics. Not necessarily latest news also just interesting long-form stories.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoI was the same. Once I paid for it I felt I had to get my moneys worth but there is a lot to get through every week. I tend to read it at the library now (well until the thing arrived on our shores).
- q-base 7y agoYes, even though I am a very active reader, I felt that I almost had a month worth of reading every week.
- jkmcf 7y agoThe Economist is my favorite reading material when flying, which I don't do enough to sustain a subscription. I wish they (and others!) would release an essentials podcast w/ a reasonable subscription -- a succinct (1-2h?) presentation capturing the important articles' facts, theses, and arguments.
- slavik81 7y agoI've heard good things about "Delayed Gratification." It's a quarterly magazine that "revisits the events of the last three months to offer in-depth, independent journalism in an increasingly frantic world."
- q-base 7y agoThat looked too interesting to pass. I signed up immediately for the print magazine delivered to my door, every quarter. Thanks a lot for mentioning that. I really look forward to seeing it in person!
- ekianjo 7y ago> The Economist was founded by the liberal Scottish banker James Wilson as a mouthpiece of the movement for free trade. I like how they make spreading ideals of Freedom sound like a bad thing.
- redis_mlc 7y agoHow's that working out with ventilators and masks? Not so peachy.
- pjc50 7y agoYou could carry on to the next sentences: > This was originally a broad church stretching from radicals like Richard Cobden and John Bright to the cotton interests of Manchester. But that coalition frayed as Wilson opposed assistance to Ireland during the famine and backed the authoritarian usurper Napoleon III following the 1848 revolution in France. "Free trade" tends to mean a very specific kind of freedom for a very specific set of people.
- LordN00b 7y agoThis article has all the qualities of a first year degree takedown. Interrogative opening sentence, desperate latching on to Historical precedent(vis a vi Germany and China, use of the word Bromide and or idolatory and conflating Government policies and political movements by dint of shared temporal space. The economist is broad magazine, the book was written about the editorial the leaders, and the review is an attack of convserative led liberal thinking. In my expert opinion (of nothing), this article is yucky.
- flicken 7y agoThe article seems to summarize, but doesn't name, Alexander Zevin's book, Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52105758-liberalism-at-large https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52105758-liberalism-at-l... ).
- kyuudou 7y agoI wouldn't have put Keynes and Hayek in the same group but I guess that's partly the point the author is trying to make. The 2 couldn't be more different from each other.
- sunstone 7y agoLooks like there's an organized "smug attack" going on against The Economist. I wonder who's trying to undermine its credibility? I've been reading the Economist for a couple of decades and while it's not perfect smugness is not prominent amongst its vices.