Comments on: A First Day Thought on "Truth on the Market"

By: ProfessorBainbridge.com

ProfessorBainbridge.com — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:59:18 +0000

The Power of Technology…

My email inbox has been overflowing today with missives from colleagues, sent for the most part to the entire faculty, about UCLAProfs.com, a site that purports to out extreme left-wing UCLA professors (earlier post here). This episode got me to…

By: Ideoblog

Ideoblog — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 21:12:57 +0000

The bloggers and the business journalists…

Thom Lambert has an interesting post on TOTM in which he says: For years, many of us have sat around frustrated as weâ€™ve watched professional journalists tell and re-tell the sorts of compelling stories that generate advertising revenue â€” e.g.,…

By: Geoffrey Manne

Geoffrey Manne — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:38:54 +0000

I have a one word optimistic response: Markets. Ok, Hayek said it first. And my dad has been clamoring in the wilderness lately about the topic (see http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2006/01/more_from_henry.html and his earlier post linked there). But as long as there is a mechanism for aggregation, the information will be processed. I admit that much of the information of the sort we’ll provide here will find its way into relevant markets through attenuated channels, but it will make it there nonetheless. I take the Sunstein-esque point that there is a danger of compartmentalization, but I think that concern seriously underplays the massive amounts of connectedness in our society; information-sharing exchanges may take place in surprising ways. Perhaps more on this later . . .

In the end, the real “truth” about markets is that they are truly remarkable in their success, for all the talk about their failures.

By: William Henderson

William Henderson — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:58:38 +0000

Congratulations on getting this blog off the ground. Based on my prior interactions with these bloggers, I expect lots of intellectual energy emanating from this forum. (And the fact that all are untenured is, IMHO, a plus.)

However, to properly kick-off the site, I have question at least one premise offer up by Thom Lambert.

Sure, sophisticated readers can finally one-up the MSM and pursue more rigorous and original lines of inquiry. But is it possible that the proliferating blogosphere could make truth more relativist?

For example, the LA Times, due to declining circulation, recently scrapped their national edition, and elite newspapers like the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal are also dealing with stagnant or declining print readership–the stuff that pays the bills.

Obviously, blogs (which often riff on MSM content) are supplanting some of this readership. Law Professors and other part-time pundits are willing to write original analysis for free — let’s be candid, there is a perception that blogs can generate external career benefits — while the media machine that does the expensive footwork of actually gathering (and CHECKING) facts struggles to reinvent its business model.

In the intense battle for eyeballs on the screen, public discourse can be fragmented. The risk is that everyone is talking — and, because of shoestring budgets, shooting from the hip — while nobody is really listening. Perhaps “truth” can be distilled from these disparate exchanges, but with so many agendas, will it get acted on?

Can someone at TOTM spin out an optimistic response?

By: doc

doc — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:53:01 +0000

Glad to see your blog in the PJ Media pantheon! Your criticism of the public sphere is spot on–the *massive* ignorance of economic fundamentals only reinforces the existing dysfunctionalities in the collective (i.e., political) decision process.

Coming attraction: Marquette Books has a book on the way called _Watching the Watchdog_; the last chapter is about the public sphere. It’ll get into the dynamics you mentioned in grafs 3 and 4.

(OK, OK, that’s shameless self-promotion. I’ll ‘fess up. But it sure is nice to see you getting into some of contrarian thoughts I’ve been having.)