03 Oct 2016

Nomination

Humor, Market Monetarism, Scott Sumner 6 Comments

I put forward my own name for Best Troll on an Economics Blog in 2016. Here’s but one example.

Now look, there are some master trolls who hang out at Landsburg’s blog, and there are arguable professionals at Marginal Revolution. So I’m not asking that I win. All I ask, is that you don’t ding me since I’m already up for Best Economics Blogger in 2016. That’s really not fair to say I can only be one or the other.

6 Responses to “Nomination”

  1. Andrew_FL says:

    E Harding is clearly the Best/Worst Troll on an Economics Blog, though.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Yeah… I mean, he presumably has a comeback, along the lines of, “Even existing holders of dollar-denominated assets benefit financially from my plan, so there are no net losers,” but that’s not the same thing as saying it’s costless. By the same token, Krugman could say fiscal policy has no net losers, because even taxpayers benefit from stimulus spending blah blah blah.

      • Major.Freedom says:

        The claim of “virtually costless” stems from the mainstream neoclassical treatment of costs, namely, the marginal revenue doctrine.

        Sure, adding digital zeroes is almost costless…on the margin…but the FULL costs cannot be ignored. The costs of socialist banking include the costs of maintaining entire states. States are after all necessary to enforce centralized, monopolized counterfeiting. The costs entire states are not virtually zero. Quite the opposite. They are in fact the most expensive institution in the world.

        Then add to this the costs of malinvestment, opportunity costs, depressions, the psychological inversion of the population’s dependency on states rather than states dependent on the population, and “only” adding a few zeroes becomes a very, VERY expensive proposition.

        • Major.Freedom says:

          …and we can say that costs exceed the benefits to billions of individuals, since central banking is predicted on coercion, not consent.

  2. Tel says:

    Out of curiosity, does this nomination lead towards some voting process to determine the winner?

    Principled libertarians would not participate, and that might advantage some Trolls over others.

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