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Comment by spindritf | Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing this is about Tyler Cowen's Average is over? (The site is down currently.)

If so, there are other ways of looking at the same data that Cowen uses to determine, and then extrapolate, a trend of increasing inequality, http://cafehayek.com/2013/11/when-facts-arent-facts.html

Russ Roberts (the author of the above piece) also interviewed Tyler Cowen on EconTalk where they discussed the case of compensation to (book) writers, http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/tyler_cowen_on.html Cowen argues that superstars eat an ever larger share of the total compensation while Roberts notes that the average is being dragged down by the fact that there are few, if any, barriers to entry for new writers and writers who would have done well in the past (due to their talent, education, ability) still do well today.

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The first link is a very interesting article in its own right, and a good lesson on taking statistics at face value.

Cowen has no credibility on economics: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1880544

How does the fact that Austrian economists disagree with Cowen about his criticism of Austrian economics, translate to Cowen having no credibility?

Well, we could talk about something substantive and then see... I think that anyone who is buying into Cowen's new piece should also read The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality by Mises especially regarding automation.

Posting things for other people to read, is not the same as having a substantive discussion. In fact, criticizing Cowen's credibility rather than his arguments is not a product way to argue in the first place.

The paper is a resounding refutation of Cowen's other work. Given how terrible he has proven himself in the past, I am happy to reject this new work out of hand. From what little I read, I again suggest people to read Mises' Anti-Capitalistic Mentality regarding the ludicrous notion that machines are a bad thing.

But the fact remains that your argument against Cowen is merely and simply an appeal to authority.

The intellectually honest comment to have made in the first place would have been "Certain economic theorists assert that Cowen [has no credibility|is an idiot|whatever they assert]".

That might have been a useful start to a discussion. Or not. Who knows. YMMV.

As it is, the comment is nothing more than gainsaying based on information you are either unwilling or incapable of summarizing and sharing.

It's really not much better than "Cowen's an idiot, neeyah".

In the interests of full disclosure, I know next to nothing about the OP and the topics discussed between the OP and this comment.

Sadly, I don't need to in order to comment usefully on your comments, so empty of content they were. Nothing personal, eh?

I did not make an appeal to authority. That would be if I said Cowen is wrong merely because Block and Barnett said so. I am saying that Cowen is a joke for the reasons spelled out in Block and Barnett's paper. Those reasons are not merely "neeyah" and the arguments therein are not somehow invalid or cease to exist because I don't care to regurgitate them for you.

Pity that it's the Austrian school that has little credibility left in economics, as they have a few interesting things to say.

Non-argument; you just said absolutely nothing. The "best" economists in the world at the Fed are incapable of predicting and preventing things like the '08 collapse, yet they have credibility to you? Mainstream economists have no job prospects outside of academia or government because they are pseudoscientists a la alchemists capable of nothing more than reassurance of the king that printing ever more money will bring about prosperity the next time.

Given your username it appears that you may be an Austrian in your economic views. Citing one paper that purports to dispute one paper of Cowen hardly qualifies as enough evidence that he has no credibility on economics. Perhaps a bias in you is at work and that this bias leads you to your claim.

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