Top Economist Blogs: Congrats to the Captain

EconomicsDegree.Net – Guide to 110+ Accredited Economics Degrees – recently elected Captain Capitalism as one of the top 100 economics bloggers.  Congrats, I say; it’s well deserved.

As many of you know already, I’m a huge fan of the Captain’s content.  There’s his book Worthless, a wonderful contribution to the young of today which might just save their economic futures.  There’s his deep-posts full of charty-goodness, often confirming his earlier off-the-cuff predictions.  But my favourite thing about him?  His basic, “Econ 101” posts; not only are they entertaining for the seasoned social critic, not only are they approachable for the economically illiterate, but they often come up with a hilarious and insightful conclusion which isn’t so obvious on the surface.

I’d like to draw your attention to one of his recent posts: An Exercise in Liberal Economic Thought.  He starts with a non-sequitor in the Alt-Right:

Without taking too many liberties (and simplifying things down a lot) the average non-economist American liberal is more prone to believe in a watered down Keynesian version of economics that goes something like this –

“Productivity doesn’t matter, activity matters – any activity.

Actually, non-sequitor is too strong of a word.  Most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what the Average American’s thoughts are on the economy – we’re writing tirades against Paul Krugman, while a very different battle of the half-wits is going on in the Newspapers.  He nails it when he points out that most people imagine Economics to be a type of esoteric voodoo, where it makes sense for people asks questions like “Who will create more jobs, Romney or Obama?”  Essays peppered with obscure acronyms enforce this; the Captain manages to use a single term – GDP – and he concisely explains it for the Naive Reader.

“Industries” or “jobs” that require no skill and no effort, and are PURELY there, in an economically ass-backwards way, to serve the worker and not the customer.  And understand the logic here.  If it isn’t going to be up to the customer as to what is produced, then the choice of what to produce defaults to the employee/producer (this goes along way in explaining why so many idiot children major in the liberal arts).

These quick-and-dirty quotations are all pretty obvious so far, but they have some VERY interesting consequences – consequences which are hilarious in their hubris.  I’m not going to ruin it for you, you’re going to have to go over there to read it.

So all of this is entertaining, worth a chuckle, and it’s probably something you haven’t noticed before; all of which is great, but there’s more to this than just that.

It’s Economics 101 – and it’s written so that it’s approachable by the mass audience.

This is the sort of article you link your friends and relatives to.  The Red Pill wisdom is deeply buried under a candy-coated exterior, designed for slow release in the digestive track.  This is the sort of article you send to a kid you know taking PoliSci, or some other useless degree; it hammers on the same buttons of Cultural Guilt which are usually used to justify the nonsense.  The Captain flips the script, and turns their own Won’t somebody think of the Chiiiiiildren! mantra to make them out to be the selfish bastards.

It’s one of his better pieces: entertaining to us, and earth-shattering for the conveniently ignorant.  Do us all a favour and go link it to some of the idiots you know.  It’s what Less Wrong refers to as “Raising the sanity waterline.”

This is why he’s one of the top 100; his blog raises the level of discourse in our society.