Matthew Yglesias is leaving ThinkProgress and heading to Slate. The noted liberal blogger announced on Thursday that he will begin writing Slate’s Moneybox column later this month, covering economic policy and business. Yglesias is replacing Annie Lowrey, who left Slate for the New York Times. He’ll be based out of Slate’s Washington, D.C., office.
I have to admit that Elias Isquith from you-know-who’s favorite blog got me to hate Yglesias, even though I often agree with him. So smug.
Update. Interesting, here’s Yglesias on Slate three years ago (dead on, IMHO):
Similarly, if in order to be “interesting” and “provocative” your publication contains some articles in which heterodox liberals challenge liberal conventional wisdom and other articles in which conservatives challenge liberal conventional wisdom, then your publication is mostly publishing conservative content.
JGabriel
Damn, that’s gotta be the longest audition ever.
.
FlipYrWhig
Yglesias has one virtue, which is that he likes to find topics no one else in the blogosphere is talking about and noodle around with them. But oh my God is he insufferable. I’m not sure there’s ever been a better example of someone who’s so convinced he’s smarter than anyone else around that he doesn’t even entertain the possibility that his ideas could ever be flawed. He’s just, like, I’m a Harvard philosophy major, and that makes me King Of All Thinking.
srv
Next stop, Washington Post! I presume he already has a NPR gig.
Jenny
Someone with no background or education in economics or business will now be Slate’s economics and business columnist.
Perfect.
It’s just like when the New York Times hired Krugman to be their hockey beat writer.
JGabriel
@srv:
Maybe, but as I insinuated above, I get the feeling Slate was always (No Longer) Young Matt’s ultimate goal.
.
JGabriel
Jenny:
Just like The Atlantic.
.
Bizono
It’s perfect – Matty will be joining his annoying buddy, Davey Weigel.
Brian S
Yglesias lost all cred with me when he claimed Enterprise was a better show than Voyager. Some shit is too serious to get that wrong.
stannate
It’s only a matter of time before Yglesias gives into writing the knee-jerk contrarian, pageview-generating articles for which Slate is famous. The over/under for a future piece entitled, “What’s Wrong With A Little Child Pornography?” Late February 2012.
srv
@Dougie
He trolled his way to his dream, maybe you’re just jealous
kris
He is a smug twit, and typically of that class, often wrong on things really important. I would also not trust his competence when it comes to economics and business.
MikeJ
@stannate: “Look at mass market paperbacks, the VCR, the internet. So called “adult entertainment” was responsible for the rocket like growth in every new media format in the last hundred years. If America wants to maintain its lead, can it afford to deprive its children of entry level positions in new media?”
srv
@Brian S: Bonfire of the Inanities that is.
DougJ
@srv:
Made me laugh.
Tom Levenson
@JGabriel: What you say.
More to mock, I suppose.
sharl
Any old Paul Krugman or Dean Baker type can explain economic policy to you, but Yglesias will feel economic policy at you.*
And from his lofty youthful perch of a privileged life, he will not be encumbered by the biases that come with personally experienced sacrifices and deprivation.
Stand by for enlightenment, headed your way!
*h/t Colbert
Spaghetti Lee
I used to read him. His comment section was always so awful. And he had/has some good ideas, but he seemed to always leave one foot in the I’m-libertarian-by-which-I-mean-rich-and-privileged pond. When I think of him I find it easy to imagine why smug centrist neoliberalism just bothers some people more than balls-out right-wing fascism.
some guy
smug centrist neoliberals need hugs too.
Warren Terra
I’ve read Yglesias for many years – at least since his TPM days. I don’t join the hatred so often seen on the blogosphere, but I do understand it: he is awfully comfortable these days. He needs a little outrage, a little personal feeling.
some guy
what I like about Big Media Matt is how every spate of McMegan bashing across the Left blogosphere (but especially by tbogg) is always followed by a McMegan link a week or 10 days later in one of Matt’s posts.
nudge nudge wink wink to your friends, no matter how innumerate or idiotic they are, seems to be one of his weaknesses.
TheOtherWA
Since we’re back on the topic of the media, I have to bring up James Murdoch and his return appearance before a committee.
Yes, the Murdoch’s were spying on Members of Parliament. And I thought hiring investigators to get dirt on the lawyers representing hacking victim families, like the Dowlers, was going too far.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/10/james-murdoch-phone-hacking-myler-crone
What a fucked up family. And business.
Crusty Dem
I suppose it could be worse, he could be writing an NBA blog.
Wait, actually, with the NBA on strike, that would be perfect.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brian S:
Exqueeze me?
Enterprise better than Voyager?
Only a varuul would say such a thing.
It’s not that Voyager was all that great…although Seven of Nine and The Doctor were terrific, best characters on that show…but Enterprise was so disrespectful of the canon as to cause even Pakleds to look at it with some disdain. The decontamination scene in the first episode alone was an abomination. Not that I objected to seeing that much of Jolene Blalock, mind you, but as a Vulcan?
I knew Big Media Matt was flirting with being a full fledged Villager, but this…this…is an outrage.
If he doesn’t want to a close encounter with a bat’leth, don’t even think of dissing DS9. In the slightest.
paramedicx
Moneybox. Isn’t that what GOP staffers called Coulter in the 90s?
Anne Laurie
@some guy:
Fixed. (Like Megan’s would-be boyfriend.)
sb
Is Matt still big on education “reform”? God, what a twit.
Brian S
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah, I was gobsmacked when I saw it too. I mean, I get that DS9 fans and Voyager fans (which I am) look at each other with disdain most of the time, but we’re united in our hatred of Enterprise. One of my favorite Futurama moments was the one where Takei’s head smacks Bakula’s and says ” way to ruin the franchise.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Brian S:
I can’t blame any of the actors from Enterprise, they dealt with the writing they were given.
Now, that Braga idiot…don’t get me started…
Citizen Alan
So Yglesia’s going to Slate, huh? In other words, I’ll never read or hear about him again, since my doctor has forbidden me to visit that site for fear that a random encounter with a Mickey Kaus post will cause me to have an aneurysm.
MaximusNYC
Uh, every blogger on the internets?
I still don’t get the Yglesias hate here. He’s wrongheaded about education reform, but pretty solidly liberal on everything else.
He does write in a very calm and erudite tone, which maybe doesn’t play well if you like all your political writing to be of the fire-breathing populist variety.
But he’s not a neoliberal. He’s more of a liberal who specializes in quietly using the premises of neoliberal (and conservative) arguments to destroy those very arguments.
Try to see beyond his style — or other people’s disapproval of him — and pay attention to what he’s actually saying.
4jkb4ia
Annie Lowrey got a gig at the NYT? Mazel Tov! Of course this is the entirely wrong place and I haven’t even congratulated Ezra on getting married yet. I am sure his heart is broken /s
Suffern ACE
I used to read Dan Gross when he was Moneybox. He seemed good at clarifying issues very consistently. I guess it is too much to ask for that.
eemom
dunno. Think I read him once or twice but not again. Too many boring bearded bloggers out there — they all start to look alike after a while.
some guy
he is calm, erudite, and witty. an excellent writer, no doubt, which is why I enjoy reading him almost every day, but he is pretty clearly a neoliberal who rarely, if ever, veers far from classical neoliberal economic theory.
imho
handy
@MaximusNYC:
Uhh, I dunno. TNC seems to hit the right tone for me as far as that goes.
Judas Escargot
Yglesias’ is the only comments section that ever banned me. After one post. Comprised of two sentences and a link, correcting some minor factual error (so minor, that I don’t even remember what it was).
That was really all I ever needed to know about Yglesias.
rec
Wow, never realized Big Media Matt was so hated round these quarters.
I skim his stuff more often than not, but I follow his feed and respect his thoughtfulness and choice of topics. Who the fuck cares if he’s smug? Is he supposed to be my drinking buddy? Either his ideas hold or they don’t, and I think (and apparently DougJ does too) that for the most part they do.
Tyro
he will begin writing Slate’s Moneybox column later this month, covering economic policy and business.
What qualifies him for this?
James E. Powell
Matt has been working hard to become an official Villager since I first read anything he wrote. He wants to be his generation’s Broder, but will probably be its Richard Cohen. He is a perfect example of the conventionally unconventional neo-neo-liberal. I am sure he will have a long and prosperous career.
Marc
Matt doesn’t engage with others when they disagree with him – whether his readers or other bloggers. It’s not that he’s always wrong – he can be insightful. It’s that he’s arrogant even when he’s clearly talking about things that he doesn’t know much about. Other things that grate on me are the libertarian undercurrent and the oddly mechanical dismissal of things that can’t be turned into numbers or profit. (Why would anyone care about how things look? The important thing is obviously to cram as many people into a given space as possible!)
And he has a terrible, terrible habit of making strained analogies which make little or no sense.
Dave Latchaw
I’m always getting my Friends of Megan confused. Is he the one who can’t spell?
James E. Powell
@Tyro:
There are many writers in American papers and magazines who are qualified only in thee sense that they were hired to write on that subject. What’s more, quite a few who are qualified in the academic/former employment sense write some of the dumbest stuff.
sharl
From the archives of Sadly, No!, Gavin M. presents:
Teh Megan, Matt, And Ezra Show
Redshift
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yeah, that was my experience. I used to read him sometimes, but his commenters were so supremely awful (think m_k having the first comment on every post), and somehow I couldn’t keep from looking. Atrios I read for longer because while the commenters were inbred and refused to engage in the actual topic of the post, you had to click to open up the comments, so they were easier to skip. Plus, ponies!
scav
@TheOtherWA: I love that Murdoch fils is going with the sudden onset amnesia & nobody tells me nuthin’ school of management and defense. It’s rarely so absolutely pleasurable to be 100% rooting for lawyers to stomp all over someone emphatically, with precision and grace notes. Crone and Myler look up to arranging it (at least they’re not shy so far and I doubt that firm would hire idiot lawyers so go Crone). Here’s to hoping. No mixed feelings WhatSoEver.
shecky
That smug bastard!
JenJen
Ouch. Now that one’s gonna leave a mark.
Alex S.
@Brian S:
Ok, that does it…
Well actually, I read him occasionally. I think he’s more autistic than smug. He has some insights every once in a while and covers a wide range of issues. He misses every once in a while, but I think that’s better than not trying at all (for this kind of highly active 20-posts-a-day blog.) You don’t have to agree with everything someone writes to like him.
Skipjack
Good lord he’s smarter than everyone here, perhaps combined. That’s not fanboyism, I don’t read him religiously, but the extraordinary mutual stroking that just erupted is staggering to me. Honestly, do you really think you are nearly so well versed (or even merely versed) in economics, municipal policy, transportation crapola, governmental institutional weaknesses vs strengths, or fuck it about any of the sharp and painful-to-the-hard-charging bits of knowledge I’ve picked up by merely grazing his blogification as he is? I’m terribly concerned now judging from the grass eating in the mere forty replies I’ve read that perhaps I’ve underestimated Megan McArdle.
To underline this, most of us, the vast majority would not easily understand that the real problem with government in this country, the critical path for progressive development and change in this country runs through and is blocked by the Senate filibuster without Matt Yglesias, just for starters. True story.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Dave Latchaw:
He’s the one.
Pamoya
I’m a fan of Matt Y too, and read him as often as I read this blog (I always avoid his comment section though — *shudder*). He doesn’t get everything right in my opinion, but who does? Since I don’t get everything right myself, it’s hard to tell. I do skim over his boring posts, but I like him for two particular reasons: 1) He has a lot of good insights into to structural issues (I agree with Skipjack that his harping on the filibuster is great). 2) He also explains flaws in conservative economic thinking in a way that I can understand.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
He also has a remarkable ability to take a good idea to its illogical conclusion. His hangup about professional licensing is a great example: just because doctors are using licensing to limit supply and drive up fees doesn’t mean that barbers are using licensing to do the same thing. It’s exactly the kind of crazy extrapolation from one bad regulation to all regulation being bad that libertarians specialize in, and it convinces me he’s going to be a full-bore libertarian in a couple of years.
Seanly
Uggh, he’s friends with the idiot McMegan and he thinks Enterprise was better than Voyager? The only thing that Enterprise got right was that the crew quarters on a starship would be small.
AnotherBruce
@Citizen Alan: Mickey Kaus? Is he still alive and blowing goats? I had no idea.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@AnotherBruce: He is over at Tucker Carlson’s vanity project, the Daily Caller, or whatever it’s called.
Roger Moore
@MaximusNYC:
He has liberal goals, but he’s completely out of touch with political reality. He’s very big on using market mechanisms to price important goods in ways that will be very regressive in practice, with the idea that we can use the money raised to fund new projects that will make up for the regressive effect of the market mechanism. That’s a nice idea, but anyone who has watched American politics for any length of time should know that in practice the regressive policy will be implemented first and then the money will be funneled into tax cuts for the rich or pork barrel spending on some boondoggle instead of the progressive make-up policy it’s supposed to fund. Anyone who seriously advocates those policies as a real-world solution to our problems is either hopelessly naive or disingenuous.
AnotherBruce
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I think they’re going to need more goats.
M. Bouffant
I seldom pay any attention to the little creep, because if he can’t be bothered to proof a three or four paragraph item for the numerous errors he’s sure to have made he can go …*
But anyway, today he typed this:
Can you believe crap like that? What a condescending little snot. If I could have reached through the screen I would have slapped him sillier than he is.
“Allowed to save money.” Assuming you have any money to “save” after capitalism has destroyed the value of your house, savings & retirement acc’ts., & considering that capitalism hasn’t let you, the worker, see any of the increase in value that the increased productivity of the last 30 yrs. has resulted in, your wages having stayed at about the same level for those last 30 yrs.
*W/ a splintery broomstick.
ds
@Skipjack: Right. He was one of the earliest progressive writers to single out the filibuster as a disaster for governance, way back in 2005. I give him credit for that. At the time a lot of liberals jumped to the conclusion that the filibuster was somehow good because Bill Frist was trying to curb it.
If the people you elect aren’t able to deliver the progressive change they promised, the reason for that has more to do with our veto point-clogged system of governance than said politicians being evil neoliberal sellouts.
Bill E Pilgrim
A Slate writer is a liberal who was mugged walking home from Megan McCardle’s house.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JGabriel:
Nailed it with the first comment.
We keep making fun of people like him for being so mushy but they’re aiming directly at the chewy “center” the whole time knowing that’s where they keep the money, all rolled up in a sticky ball.
So even the liberal Matt Yglesias writes for even the liberal Slate, which shares stories with even the liberal Washington Post. We should shorten that to ETL or something rather than having to spell it out each time.
Xenos
@Bill E Pilgrim: Way to rub pink himalayan salt in the wounds…
Shalimar
@AnotherBruce: Luckily, Tucker’s only skill is goat procurement. They love smarmy fratboys.
Medrawt
He’s got weird hangups about occupational licensing, and always harps on barbers and hairstylists without ever noticing the people pointing out that those folks deal with potentially dangerous chemicals and disinfectants. He’s got this weird thing about teacher’s unions and educational reform. He’s more optimistic about capitalism than I am, or most of the people in this thread, a trait he shares with, gosh, my dad. My dad who still thinks the government should raise his taxes. And Yglesias also wants to raise my dad’s taxes. (My dad is, I guess, in the top 2%.) Yglesias also thinks we hould do more to redistribute wealth. He’s against the profligate use of the US military, and to my knowledge is the only person who was in favor of the Iraq war (for which some will never forgive him, a position I understand except that he was like 20 years old at the time) that almost immediately turned around and said it was an enormous mistake, that HE made an enormous mistake, and took the trouble to talk about why he was wrong (short version: “I trusted the wrong people and, in reflection, I was kind of a douchebag.”) He doesn’t make snide comments about Occupy Wall Street. One of his weird hangups is urban planning, on which I think he’s totally right. He’s right on the structural challenges and problems with our government, but probably goes too far in fetishizing parliamentary systems.
On 90% of the stuff I think matters, he’s on our side. I don’t get it. I also don’t think he’s smug, but I also did undergrad philosophy at a selective private school, so maybe we’re all just irreparably tainted.
Jenny
Even the liburel New York Times is throwing a fit over the environmental victory on the keystone pipeline.
H.E. Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
I’ll give him credit for being one of the first bloggers I read sometime after Bush took ofice. But he waffled a bit on Iraq. I remember he had a brief infatuation with The Clash and I pleaded with him Could you for the love of god summon your inner Joe Strummer and get on the right side and OPPOSE this fucking clusterfuck. Didn’t seem to have an effect. The idiot.
MikeJ
@Roger Moore:
It’s not just that he ignores political reality. It’s that he’s always looking for a solution that will make people say, “oo! how clever!” instead of using the perfectly acceptable tools that are lying around and are proven to work. I’ve worked with lots of programmers like that.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
vhh
Look, Matt Y is a slightly left of center version of Ross Douthat. Both acquired an educational patina and sense of lifelong entitlement by attending Harvard, neither of them have any real technical skills that I can see, and it appears, at least, that neither have ever worked at a real job—even as a journalist (by which I mean serious reporting on a city desk, as did Woodward/Bernstein in their young years, or in a nasty or seriously interesting foreign country, as George Packer and others like him have done). They even LOOK a bit similar, sort of sleekly well fed with a soupcon of beard. If their parents or wives buy them each a nice little magazine like National Review or TNR, they might become the 21st century versions of Bill Buckley and Marty Peretz. If not, well Russ is already the new David Brooks, he’s already unbearably tendentious (This may disqualify him from being the new WFB). Matt Y ought to be able to surpass Richard Cohen, let’s hope so.
Steeplejack
@H.E. Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
It is a hard thing for any of us to summon our inner Joe Strummer. I know it is for me.
But your point is taken nonetheless.
Steeplejack
@MikeJ:
Amen to that. Words to live by.
DougJ
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Win.
Ian
@Skipjack:
Every single bit of crap you just shoved down our mouths there (except the senate filibuster part) is crap. Utter village crap. Sorry our utter fails make you think we are retarted. For a bunch of liberal drunks, at least we make our point better than drunk Perry.
geg6
Huh. I would have thought Reason would be his next stop. He is a libertarian after all. Whether he admits it or not.
Oh well. I quit reading him years ago after a huge argument about that giant rip off monopoly run by all those rich barbers and beauticians.
Sakurazaki Setsuna
His comment section was awesome. Always good for hours of entertainment. Shame it got murdered when ThinkProgress started using those horrid facebook comments.
RSA
@Villago Delenda Est: Pretty damn funny.
I read Yglesias off and on, because he has interesting things to say on some topics. I’m not a regular reader, though, because he doesn’t get engaged in the discussions he starts. Not that I expect him to post comments–his comment section is often pretty douchey–but he doesn’t even seem to read what I see as plausible challenges to the positions he takes. His treatment of barbers and hair stylists is a good example.
But maybe I’m just bitter because I have no hope of ever becoming a yoga instructor.
WereBear
LOL! One thing I do believe is that he can sign off on a million dollars with the same emotions as extra cream in his coffee. It’s not that much money… to him.
And that alone distorts the reality field on ya.
Samara Morgan
O Mastertroll.
How the mighty have fallen.
sowwy i spoiled Kains come-to-Jesus tent revival for you and mixie and cole.
its a process, dude, Ygly going to Slate is just Kain going to Forbes.
Ygly is a libertarian, not a liberal. neoliberal==libertarian, dumbass.
And libertarians expect PAYMENT for pageclicks.
i guess you have forgotten about what you once said about the League of Incredibly Boring Glibertarians just before you pranktrolled them with “questions for conservatives”.
Dude, there are no “reasonable-conservatives”. Like there are no honest libertarians.
i cant believe the Master of subtle trolling is writing this crap.
Samara Morgan
I guess you have also forgotten how Isquith godwinned you when Kain went all Jennifer Rubin on Utoya.
/spit
this blog is teh suxxor.
cleek
he’s a climber, that’s for sure.
Samara Morgan
And conservative content is uniformly crap.
its the endless horserace handicapping. Even the Great Nate Silver does it.
Instead of ruthlessly mocking the empty purse that is modern conservatism, pundits and media whores give equal time to bad, stupid, illformed and unjust conservative memes.
Because it sells.
No one pays to see a one horse race.
Samara Morgan
And now cue some random juicer to pop up and say im a rude hateful amoral person for pointing this out.
bob h
Regrettably Slate is in that category of left blogosphere blogs that I never frequent, like Sullivan’s.
When my MacBook crashed and I lost all my old bookmarks, I didn’t even bother putting Yglesias in the new list.
gelfling545
@sb: It was this, more than anything, that caused me to stop reading Yglesias. I would find myself wondering if he’d ever really ever been to school. Then I realized that he had certainly never been to the kind that needed “reform”. I’ve known 9th graders (in some of those “bad” schools”) who had a more sophisticated & nuanced view of what was needed to help poor schools.
El Cid
I used to enjoy how he’d so tritely mention that, yeah, this or that policy (trade, whatever) embraced as somehow modernizing and liberalizing the economy would throw a lot of people out of work, but, hey, he supported a stronger social safety net, and, gosh, we all hope that happens, but the point is to do the first part and for the latter part something or other might happen, or not, feh.
iriedc
Never read Yglesias regularly, I still can’t figure out the excitement over him. *shrugs* Guess I still won’t since Slate bores me to tears as a rule. They often read like high school freshman who just discovered the Fountainhead in AP English class. Meh.
Barry
@FlipYrWhig: “But oh my God is he insufferable. I’m not sure there’s ever been a better example of someone who’s so convinced he’s smarter than anyone else around that he doesn’t even entertain the possibility that his ideas could ever be flawed. He’s just, like, I’m a Harvard philosophy major, and that makes me King Of All Thinking.”
He’s a data point in support of the theory that Harvard undergraduate education is more about networking than anything else.
Barry
@stannate: “The over/under for a future piece entitled, “What’s Wrong With A Little Child Pornography?” Late February 2012.”
Nah, more like ‘why liberals should support child pornography’, for the required liberal-bashing cred.
Amir Khalid
Matt Yglesias to Slate? Hmm. Not much there worth reading for me, except maybe Dahlia Lithwick for legal issues and Fred — Kagan? Kaplan? — for American foreign policy. Haven’t read Yglesias in yonks. His sloppy spelling and grammar is annoying, and he has nothing to say that I couldn’t easily find elsewhere.
@Samara Morgan:
You should see a doctor and find out what’s causing your problem with excessive saliva production.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: dont you think it bien amusant that DougJ whining about Ygly mirrors his own conversion to Friend-of-the-LoOGies?
i do.
;)
Doc Sportello
I haven’t had Slate as a bookmark since I can’t remember. Weigel gets his own, and Matty Glesias will, too.
I’m surprised at the Matty-hate, especially at his perceived arrogance and sense of entitlement. I didn’t notice, because I guess I just don’t care.
Losing Dan Gross, though, was significant.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Not particularly. But I do find it amat melucukan that you see imagined friends of the League of Ordinary Gentlemen pretty much everywhere you cast your baleful gaze.
FlipYrWhig
@Skipjack:
It took Matt Fucking Yglesias for you to understand that filibuster abuse was a problem? Whatever that is, it’s not a compliment about Yglesias.
FlipYrWhig
@Medrawt:
Pretty much.
Bob
This is a very strange comments section – mot of them seem to be on the topic of the original post. Very strange.
Michael
Well, FlipYrWhig, Yglesias was actually way ahead of the curve on that, calling for killing the filibuster when most on the left were clamoring to save it.
I also don’t understand the hate here; I’m a long-time lurker who only posts very occasionally, but I only read two blogs regularly: this one and Yglesias. And I consider reading the comments section here a big part of reading this blog.
You seem like such natural allies (to me, at least), and a few regulars in the thread seem to agree. I don’t agree with him on everything, for sure, but then again, I don’t agree with all the frontpagers here either.
Matt certainly is not the only blogger who is convinced he’s right on all matters. He also is not a firebreathing populist, but then again, neither was Hilzoy (over at Obsidian Wings) and she was awesome. Are people really that put off by someone who writes with an even-handed, academic tone?
Michael
Then again, like Medrawt, I also was a philosophy major at a small selective liberal arts college. Maybe that is my problem.
Libby
I don’t have any strong feelings about Matt, one way or the other. But this does bring up something I’ve noticed in the last few weeks. There’s been a lot of shuffling around, not just among the internet stars, but the legacy media too. It’s like a big game of musical chairs, except they never take one away, so at the end of the game, everyone still has a seat.
Gin & Tonic
@Michael: Three data points is enough for a trend.
Gin & Tonic
@FlipYrWhig: Funny, I read that as snark, and thought it was pretty funny that way.
Turbulence
I’m with Michael and WarrenTerra and the other Yglesias defenders. He’s not right about everything, but I really don’t understand the hate. And I’m an engineer, not a liberal arts philosophy major.
Robert Waldmann
This twitter fight is also very ironic now
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/11/and-slate-hires-matthew-yglesias.html
Mark S.
Ha, I love how I’m not the only one who hated his comments section. It was teh suck.
handsmile
@Michael: (#95)
In solidarity, I suppose I should out myself as among the tiny cabal of potential fifth columnists around here who were “philosophy major[s] at a small selective liberal arts college.”
I was perplexed, however, by something you wrote. You claim to be a regular reader of this blog and its comments and yet you still ask:
FlipYrWhig
@Michael: I don’t think it’s “tone.” His best asset is the diversity of topics he addresses. But he SO RARELY reassesses his opinions. He’s weird about education and weirder about issues of land use and cartels. But he has such an apparent lack of imagination that he refuses to see, for instance, that not every human being has a big round head that can be clipped with trimmers from the Target grooming section, and thus it might be reasonable for the state to have a public-health interest in ensuring that barbers and stylists use chemicals responsibly and maintain hygienic practices. And no matter how many times it’s brought up, he just bellyaches about cartels again. And that’s not on one issue. It’s on every damn issue.
From all appearances, he thinks that, because _he_ has thought what he has thought, and he’s as smart as it gets, he has anticipated all arguments and dismissed them so thoroughly through force of superior logic within his own head that he never even has to consider them. He’s already considered them, thanks, instantaneously, and they’re all wrong.
And, in all honesty, I do think it’s not uncharacteristic for philosophy majors to act like that. I was a comparative literature major at a fancy-pants school myself. I can be pretty self-regarding when I unleash it. But philosophy majors are in a different category. I guess I’m prejudiced about it. Anyone who begins a sentence “Consider” or “But suppose” is immediately on my personal shitlist. :P I’m a rabid anti-philosophist.
Mayur
@Skipjack:
Yes. I have actual economics degrees, I went to an equally elite class of school, and I can write long paragraphs without numerous spelling and punctuation errors.
Yglesias doesn’t write ANYTHING about economics or urban policy that isn’t obvious to anyone who’s made even a cursory study of those fields, EXCEPT when he decides to adopt an entirely uninformed stance, at which point his statements are indeed non-obvious… because they’re incorrect in some way.
“Making parking inexpensive in urban downtowns leads to increased congestion and a less walkable downtown” isn’t a brilliant insight. It’s practically a truism.
daveNYC
I could see hiring him, but economic policy and business are not his strengths. Neither is proofreading, some of his posts read like he turned the autocomplete up to eleven and only typed three-quarters of each word.
Elias Isquith
I guess I might as well stop sitting by the phone, waiting for Ezra to gimme a call and invite me over to McMegan’s to watch the latest episode of Iron Chef with her, Suderman, Ygge, and Weigel.
Juice Box Mafia/Kew Kids Club is a No Elias’s Establishment.
:(
lettucefactory
@Libby That’s what’s been on my mind, as well. Matt Y is Ezra Klein’s good buddy and Ezra’s wife Annie just got a job at the NYT so Matt gets her seat at Slate, alongside their buddy Wiegel…musical chairs. Among a close-knit group of people.
Which isn’t necessarily evil – all of these individuals are talented in their way, especially Ezra. I don’t think Yglesias is brilliant but I don’t think he’s terrible, either, and I like reading him. It just feels like a close, select little bubble. And bubbles are not an optimal environment for journalism to happen.
MBunge
“Honestly, do you really think you are nearly so well versed (or even merely versed) in economics, municipal policy, transportation crapola, governmental institutional weaknesses vs strengths, or fuck it about any of the sharp and painful-to-the-hard-charging bits of knowledge I’ve picked up by merely grazing his blogification as he is?”
If you think Yglesias is exceptionally smart, that’s pretty sad. If you think he’s exceptionally well informed, that’s even sadder.
I think others have nailed it well with young MattY. He has some weird neoliberal preoccupations, but his primary weakness is that he’s about as introspective as Jonah Goldberg. Let me give you an example.
A while back he was on a tear about how America should have a parliamentary system of government. Every single thing he said on the subject, EVERY SINGLE THING, used successful European parliaments as a reference point. When it was brought up that there are plenty of parliaments (Italy, India, Japan) that don’t conform to his “parliament = better goverment” theory, he completely ignored the point.
Mike
Chet
@Medrawt:
Come on. Are we still talking about this like it’s true? Regardless how dangerous you think a jar full of combs in alcohol can be, it’s nevertheless the case that a barber’s license isn’t a license to use chemicals and disinfectants. Barbers don’t use anything you need a license to use.
The license is for being paid money to cut and style hair, and there’s zero compelling public safety justification for that. It’s just business and government colluding to artificially restrict the supply of barbers.
That’s happening, often under the guise of “public safety”, but what’s the public safety justification for licensing florists? Interior decorators? It’s regulatory capture. And liberals should be paying more attention to it. I’m glad Yglesias is.
Chet
@MBunge:
I would say that’s to his credit, because that’s a completely idiotic way to respond to his argument.
Elias Isquith
BTW I’ve been a longtime reader of his — for years — and often thought of him as my favorite blogger.
But I do feel like something has changed for the worse in his work since he left the Atlantic and started becoming a Serious Think Tank Intellectual. (And I’m sure it’s simply that I’ve changed as a reader, too.)
But I’m not so enamored with getting economic analysis from a dude without any specialized knowledge in the field that hasn’t come from being in DC at a think tank and being privy to bending various pundits, academics, and fellow-think tankers’ ears. Not coincidentally, I think he’s also moved ever more towards libertarianism-by-numbers-styled analysis and a general kind of nominally center-left Villager-ism distinctive to his generation and milieu.
I worry that in 15 years, young whippersnapper liberals will be asking people like me why in god’s name we ever liked that guy Yglesias over at the Washington Post anyway. For the time being, he’s still with the angels — but moving to Slate (especially after previously ragging on it so effectively) is a dark omen.
FlipYrWhig
@Chet:
Damn right! It’s not like plants can be toxic!
The moment there’s a mass arrest of rogue barbers under Operation Sweeney Todd, this will begin to be a legitimate complaint.
FlipYrWhig
@Elias Isquith: There are huge differences between (1) being smart, (2) being informed, and (3) being an expert. At best Yglesias is (1). But he thinks he’s (1), (2), and (3). He’s a general-purpose pundit who thinks he’s a solon of the realm. In short, he philosophizes.
Chet
@FlipYrWhig: Seriously? Certainly plants can be mildly toxic but the job of florists isn’t to eat them, it’s to arrange them.
Be less stupid, please. I don’t see why it’s impossible for you to believe that there’s anti-competitive collusion going on here in a market where it’s not uncommon to pay $120 for a dozen roses.
MaximusNYC
@FlipYrWhig:
Again: Doesn’t every blogger on the internets think this?
irregardless
DougJ. Nice Nina Simone reference.
MBunge
@Chet: “I would say that’s to his credit, because that’s a completely idiotic way to respond to his argument.”
When arguing for the virtues of parliamentary democracy, I think it’s completely valid to point out when the argument is based exclusively on parliaments in only one particular part of the world and totally ignores the practice and result of parliamentary democracy everywhere else.
Mike
MBunge
@Chet: “Certainly plants can be mildly toxic but the job of florists isn’t to eat them, it’s to arrange them.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever sent flowers to anyone but most folks who have, really want their florist to know which plants are toxic or not. Floral arrangements getting nibbled on by kids or the family pet is not exactly unheard of.
We should actually thank Chet for giving us a great demonstration of Yglesiasm in action. Take a not unreasonable proposition and become so utterly consumed by it that you’re incapable of recognizing even the most obvious exceptions to and arguments against it.
Mike
Elias Isquith
@MaximusNYC: I’m a blogger and I think there’s a ton of stuff I don’t know anything about and on which I have little of value to contribute. I think the people here at BJ would co-sign, as would TNC, people at LGM, and, really, countless places. What you’re describing as inherent to blogging is instead common among a certain class and style of bloggers. Bloggers aren’t one thing any more than any other type of writer — you wouldn’t say all novelists or biographers are the same, would you?
Christian Sieber
I have posted this before, but I genuinely don’t comprehend the Yglesias hate, and I consider myself to be pretty left wing on any issue you could think of. Since I started following politics closely again in ~2007 his has been one of the very few blogs I have read consistently, along with BJ, Sullivan, and (during the Hilzoy era) Obsidian Wings.
I just don’t get it. I read everything he writes and he seems to usually have the better of his critics. That includes other pundits whose writing I enjoy, like Freddie’s scathing denunciations of him on education policy. I don’t comprehend the hate nor do I comprehend how people label him as “centrist” or some kind of sellout.
Can anyone point me to Yglesias takedowns in the same vein as the McArdle takedowns that Tom publishes so regularly? Because I’ve never seen stuff like that and it seems like people are just bitching about him because they don’t like his tone/spelling or dislike his association with the “education reform” “movement” whatever that is.
Can someone explain this Balloon-Juice-wide hate to me in small words and without the inane vitriol that is permeating half of the comments?
Ohio Mom
If his new beat means that Matt won’t be writing about education anymore, I say the world is a slightly better place. Very few big name bloggers talk about the school deform movement so his completely wrong-headed ideas in its favor didn’t get challenged much. Except by a few commentators he completely ignored.
fasteddie9318
Never cared all that much for Matt, but I read a lot of his stuff because I have ThinkProgress in my news feed. I won’t read Slate so I guess I won’t read his stuff anymore. Oh well.
I don’t hate the guy, but any blogger who tends to write Grand Ruminations on the Complex Troubles of the Land As Conceived and Solved Via the Awesome Powers of My Mighty Intellect just starts to bore me after a while, because really that blogger is just Some Dude writing about Stuff that he may or may not know anything about, but it’s presented as Authoritative Truth from a Superior Mind. It’s a tone thing, to be sure, and it’s the same thing that bothered me about Kain when he was here and bothers me about Ezra sometimes.
Marc
I know plenty of smart people. I’m a scientist and I know a lot of folks who are pretty far up the bell curve on that measure. I know no one, however, who knows a lot about everything and who is never wrong. Brilliant people can say stupid things on subjects where they are either ill-informed or blinded by their own prejudices.
An essential part of being wise is to recognize your own limitations and to be willing to rethink your opinions in the face of evidence. Yglesias completely fails on that score – he is almost never willing to acknowledge that his initial hunch was misinformed. Instead he reaches for progressively more wrong-headed analogies to defend what he initially said.
See
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/the-perils-of-analogies/247624/
or
http://leagueofdemocraticvoters.org/news/rhetorical-stupid-analogies-political-discourse
for a concrete example of this failing by young Matt.
Joel
@FlipYrWhig: I like Yglesias. Not so much that I’ll follow him to Slate, however. He did turn me on to ThinkProgress, a positive for me, although some of their stuff is a little too partisan for my tastes (note: I said partisan, not liberal).
Barry
@Gin & Tonic: “Three data points is enough for a trend.”
Actually, 2 is. 1, if you assume a zero-intercept model. 3 points gives you a degree of freedom for the error term (which, unfortunately, will give a t with 1 df, and we all know what that is).
FlipYrWhig
@fasteddie9318:
+1. I would exempt Ezra Klein, though, because when he doesn’t know something, he puts his head down and finds shit out. Yglesias never does that. It’s all just lofty, empty pronouncements–ones he never, ever reconsiders. And, no, not every blogger does that. John has opinions about things, shares them, gets screamed at, screams back, and then adapts. Whether he changes his mind or not, he has engaged in a dialogue. Yglesias _almost never_ does that. Then, on top of that, he has wonk/technocrat tendencies but doesn’t do numbers or evaluate outcomes. He’s more like a Wise Man–and I have no idea why he thinks he has earned that, and even less idea why he keeps getting paid (presumably handsomely) to do it.
MBunge
@FlipYrWhig: “even less idea why he keeps getting paid (presumably handsomely) to do it.”
I doubt the lefty version of wingnut welfare is too cushy. MattY’s family money is the major reason he’s been able to have the education/career track he’s had so far. Of course, when you remember where that money came from it only makes his views on intellectual property even more asinine.
Mike
Samara Morgan
@Elias Isquith:
why on earth would Ezra ever do that?you are a C-list blogger at the League of Incredibly Boring Glibertarians.
Sully has never linked you even once.
dadanarchist
Anybody read the funnily misanthropic Who is Ioz? blog.
He’s had knives out for Yglesias for a long, long time.
dadanarchist
This describes, like, 80% of what “policy bloggers” do…
Elias Isquith
@Samara Morgan: Sully’s linked to me three times — and two of those three were block-quotes!
It is absolutely worthwhile for me to engage you in conversation!!
Samara Morgan
@Elias Isquith:
you say that like you are proud of it! hahaha
lool, i guess i dont read sully enuff anymore since he turned conservative shill.
relly, Mr. Godwin?
you wont change my mind about you.
you are still a C-list blogger at a dull glibertarian blog.
;)
Samara Morgan
see what i did there, Mastertroll?
hahahahahahaha
ABT
Elias Isquith
I’ll happily take C list; that makes me the Michael Ian Black of my time.
Chet
@MBunge:
100% wrong. The argument isn’t that it’s impossible to do a parliamentary democracy wrong, it’s that it’s impossible to do a presidential democracy right.
There’s nothing you can’t argue against if the mere existence of a failure of implementation is a reason not to even try.
Samara Morgan
@Elias Isquith: hahaha, most people here dont like Sully much since he went full frontal Ryan.
you are just sleazing around here for pageclicks like Kain and de Bore.
run on back to the league and debate whether Game of Thrones is “xian” influenced literature and other riveting topics.
Chet
And… do they? Does the licensing requirement for florists require training in toxobotany? Does it require them to know anything beyond what could be easily looked up in a handbook or Googled?
A licensing requirement doesn’t inherently address these public safety concerns, especially given the fact that existing florists are simply grandfathered in. And if there was an epidemic of people’s pets and kids being poisoned by tasteful flower arrangements, it went completely unreported. What appears to be the case, however, is that there was an epidemic of cut and arranged flowers being too inexpensive.
You can’t just say “oh, but barbers use chemicals so licensing keeps us safe” if the licensing requirement doesn’t require chemical handling training.
MBunge
@Chet: “100% wrong. The argument isn’t that it’s impossible to do a parliamentary democracy wrong, it’s that it’s impossible to do a presidential democracy right.”
So, Chet, your goal here is to be so stupid that you make MattY look good by comparison? ‘Cause saying it’s impossible to do a presidential democracy right when talking about a country that has a presidential democracy that’s functioned reasonably well for over 2 centuries sets a new standard in oblivious idiocy.
Which has nothing to do with the flaw in MattY’s original argument, which is that there’s no reason an American parliament would be more like a successful European one instead of like Japan’s, India’s or Italy’s.
Mike
MBunge
@Chet: “And… do they?”
I don’t think anyone has ever argued that current licensing regimes are perfect and in need of no improvement, but that’s because neither MattY nor you are arguing for better or more practical licensing. MattY just goes off on these jeremiads against the very concept of licensing, apparently cheered on by you, and when his commentors point out various and sundry realities and/or possiblities that his argument overlooks or ignores, MattY pays not a whit of attention and keeps on making the same flawed pronouncements.
Mike
Chet
Well, but that’s the point – it doesn’t function well. Ours has survived only on the basis of an extraordinary culture of comity that no longer exists, hasn’t for decades, was supported only at the great expense of women, minorities, and indigenous peoples, and shows zero signs of ever returning. And there are zero examples of other presidential democracies even one-tenth as successful as ours.
But I’m just covering ground Yglesias has already tread. Please, continue to act like this hasn’t already been covered.
Chet
What’s to pay attention to? You’ve just admitted that there’s no public safety justification for licensing florists; there could be, if we decided to do the licensing that way, but we don’t so there’s not.
Which raises the question – if we don’t license florists and barbers out of genuine public safety concerns, why do we license them at all? And the answer, manifestly, is that they’ve colluded with local and state government to erect barriers to the entry of new florists. What florist licensing accomplishes on Earth 2 is irrelevant to that; what it accomplishes in this reality, we’ve both agreed, is transfer wealth to entrenched floral businesses at the expense of consumers and people who want to be florists, too.
Is that earth-shaking stuff? No, of course not, but it’s certainly as important as puppy mills or the NCAA cartel. The notion that Yglesias has sweepingly dismissed all occupational licensing is risible. Just specific instances where business interests are piggy-backing on the public’s acceptance of public-safety licensing to erect barriers to entry. Like, as has been shown, barbers and florists.
Chet
And even more risible, I think, is the notion that Yglesisas somehow Betrays the Internet by failing to “respond” to the notion that we license florists because, in an alternate universe, all flowers are so toxic that to cut and arrange them requires a degree in botany.
MBunge
“Well, but that’s the point – it doesn’t function well”
Saying something doesn’t make it so. And if you think
America has had a culture of comity and other societies don’t, you’re only again demonsrating that you don’t understand these issues nearly as well as you assume. If you think the ruling structures of other societies weren’t also built at the expense of “the other”, you don’t understand these issues nearly as well as you assume. And if you’re reduced to pleading “Why can’t we be like everybody else?”, even you know you’ve lost the argument.
Mike
Chet
I don’t think that. If you’ll go back and read, only this time for comprehension, then you’ll see that I was simply asserting that a system that provides for endless single-actor veto points survives only by comity. But you can’t maintain comity when all the incentives are against it.
Why? It’s not unreasonable to wonder (for instance) why we can’t have a better health care system than the one with the greatest costs and middling outcomes; why we can’t have something a little more like what the other guys have.
Be exactly like everybody else? Nice strawman, but nobody’s talking about that.
geg6
@Chet:
MBunge
@Chet: “You’ve just admitted that there’s no public safety justification for licensing florists”
And you’re lying about MattY’s argument, which isn’t to point out and criticize specific instances of unneeded licensing but to use those examples to support a generalized disdain for licensing. This is why people think MattY’s going to end up a full blown libertarian because the “Anecdote X proves my Universal Theory Y” is straight out of their playbook.
Mike
MBunge
@Chet: “And even more risible, I think, is the notion that Yglesisas somehow Betrays the Internet”
Matt’s never going to fuck you, Chet.
Mike
MBunge
@Chet: “I was simply asserting that a system that provides for endless single-actor veto points survives only by comity.”
Which illustrates how foolish you are because any and every system only survives by comity. For example, if you’d bother to actually look at the European parliaments that have so entranced you and MattY, you’d notice that when parties fall out of power, they don’t behave the way the Republicans have during the Obama Adminstration. If they did, those systems would start to break down just like America’s, though not in the same exact manner.
And by the way, thanks for admitting that this is really abot nothing more than your silly belief that an American parliament would produce policies more to your liking, thereby proving my point about an American parliament being more like Italy, India or Japan than Europe was entirely on point. Think a little bit harder next time before you prove the other guy right.
Mike
Gin & Tonic
@Barry: Um, I know that. It was a fucking joke, a throw-away line, not Intro to Statistics.
Gin & Tonic
@Chet:
This was news to me, so I looked it up. Louisiana is the only state in the union to require a florist’s license. Quite the hill to die on, eh?
flyerhawk
I’ve liked this blog and the comments can be very informative.
But the media ankle-biting sometimes gets a little excessive.
There are people truly worth criticism. But when I see people compare Matt Yglesias to Jonah freaking Goldberg it is clear to me that some of you have lost the plot.
Whether Yglesias is a liberal, a neo-liberal, a crypto-libertarian or whatever label you prefer, he still writes interesting stuff worth reading. I don’t need to agree with Daniel Larison to respect his commentary.
SectarianSofa
@DougJ and @FlipYrWhig:
Maybe I have Asperger’s or something — I never felt much smugness. Or maybe he used to just throw in some self-deprecation and he’s stopped doing that, er, in the last couple of years. I haven’t read him often lately, since his blog writings were more only philosophy-esque, in that the writing was smart but didn’t seem to deal deeply enough with things as they actually work. Also, he’s not a front pager here, so I don’t have time to read him.
SectarianSofa
@flyerhawk:
Agree. Don’t really understand the Yglesias hate. Then again, I’ve gone off before on Josh Marshall, Pharyngula, this and that (I’ve forgotten the third one), and I’m back to reading them regularly again. (Just not TPM commenters — they seem to be broken.)
SectarianSofa
@some guy:
I can’t really hate him for that. Maybe I should? It’s not like McMegan is Mussolini or JoePa or anything.
Good lord though, I did hear McMegan on, I think, Moneybags with Kai Ryssdal the other day, and I tried to listen, really did, but couldn’t make it through 30 seconds. I think I shut it off at a couple of points to take deep breaths to make it that far. She sounded like a high school student (and not one with a point).
Chet
Well, great. But again the licensing doesn’t do that. As I said before you can’t justify restraint of trade by recourse to what the licenses require in an alternate universe. The point is that a lot of the business licensing we have – as opposed to that which can be justified – is for the purpose of erecting anti-competitive barriers in the marketplace.
Chet
No, you’re lying about Matt’s argument. Can you find a single post of his that is hostile to, say, licensing of doctors or pharmacists?
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Chet
Because they can’t. They’re not given that power under their systems of government.
It’s not a matter of having the power but also having the restraint not to use it – i.e., comity – it’s a matter of the minority party simply not having the power to fully obstruct the majority party. It has nothing to do with comity, and everything to do with not structuring your legislature in such a way that if the minority opts to pursue their rational interest and behave without comity, your entire government isn’t paralyzed as a result.
Chet
It’s just one example.
But if someone can find me evidence that the rest of the 49 states are suffering from a mass epidemic of flower poisoning due to unlicensed florists, then you’ll certainly have proven.. um.. not sure what.
FlipYrWhig
@SectarianSofa:
You’re right, he does it all the time. He appears to be proud of it. Ergo, smug-a-riffic.
And, yes, the licensing thing is a prime example of his philosophy wank-a-thons. Yes, it’s all a conspiracy to keep unlicensed gypsy barbers from being able to give Matt Yglesias’s bald head an even cheaper, less attentive haircut. And then he goes out of his way to be even more annoying about it whenever possible. Good job, Slate, you’re reinforcing your position as the Axe Body Spray of the blogosphere.
FlipYrWhig
@Chet:
No, it isn’t. It’s because the government had decided there’s a public interest in credentialing people to do certain tasks. Is the effect of that to “erect anti-competitive barriers”? If you’re a self-congratulatory glibertarian, you think, “Obviously, and because you don’t see it, you’re part of the problem.” If you’re any other kind of person, you think, “Am I really being lectured about barbers and interior design by a sloppy bald guy who’s never really had a job?”
Chet
So he’s not wrong, just an asshole about it?
Is that like how Matt Taibbi’s takedown of Goldman Sacks was “technically true, but collectively nonsense”? Good thing we have people like you to show us a better blogosphere – one untroubled by the incivility of actually thinking one is correct, and saying so.
Chet
In literally every case? Even in cases where there’s no discernible public interest in licensing, like florists or interior decorators?
Why on Earth do you think that? I mean you can just ask the industry groups that are now pressing for licensure, like graphic designers, why they want it. It’s not because they think the public is being harmed by poorly-designed brochures and signage, that people will be killed by clashing fonts, that children will be maimed by improper kerning. It’s that they think too many people practice graphic design, and it would be better for them if less designers were allowed to design.
SectarianSofa
@FlipYrWhig:
Heh. I figured he just knew his limits, and just stuck to what he could do. I can’t tell if I’m kidding.
Marc
@Chet:
We certainly can’t have workers organizing to protect their own interests, can we?
It might interfere with libertarians getting the things they care about as cheaply as possible. But folks like Matt and Chet are definitely in favor of compensating by throwing pennies at the unemployed, so everything will even out in the end.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Finally, a backwater tepid enough to showcase Mr. Yglesiass’s lack of talent.
.
.
Samara Morgan
@Chet: chet, chet, chet.
Surely you hung out at TAS the Glibertarian Hivemind long enough to understand how this works…..or didnt you?
Didnt you read enough Jim Manzi?
The system is too complex, yah dig? So we must needs experiment. That is how America became a giant skinner maze for federalism (localized mob rule). No one needs training or licensing until they demonstrate they do– the Glorious Freed Market sees all knows all….from arranging flowers to arranging plumbing and electricity, no license, no criteria, no training a’tall.
Now your argument is flower arranging is so low skilled that it is indistinguishable from car washing or grocery bagging.
fine.
draw the line there.
But dont pretend arranging flowers is the same as cutting hair or wiring houses.
Indeed, in Japan it is an artform.
Samara Morgan
@Marc: Matt is a libertarian.
Is Chet?
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Oh there you are Samara; I was looking for you.
Did you notice this article at Sci Am?
It’s very much in the spirit of earlier research by people like Gregory S Paul.
matt
Chet(158):
It seems like common sense that if America is going to devote an above-average share of output to medical care while having close to the highest per capita output, we should have an above average number of doctors. Instead, we’re way below average. The upshot seems pretty clear to me. We need more doctors and we need more ways to get by without doctors. That means expanding what nurses are allowed to do without a doctor’s supervision, it means expanding the number of slots in American medical schools, and it means establishing clear paths for foreign-trained doctors to immigrate to the United States.
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/11/10/366219/america-needs-more-doctor/
matt
chet(158):
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/05/26/201125/legalize-self-employed-dental-hygenists/
Jonathan
They only person I’ve seen Matt Y openly mock on his blog is Jonah Goldberg, and let’s face it, Jonah deserves every bit of it and then some.
Yet here we are commenting on a blog post that mocks Matt, and we’re all having a chuckle pointing out how smug he is, and that he has friends like McMegan. (Don’t we all?)
I read Balloon-Juice daily, and I enjoy this blog, but let’s face it, there’s nothing like hard-core analysis or original thinking going on at this blog, not on any consistent basis anyway. It’s basically links to other people’s writing with a few observations thrown along with that link, or posts on living life. Matt at least try’s to offer up his own ideas on a daily basis on a number of issues… he’s not batting 1.000, but he’s putting himself out there.
MBunge
@Chet: “No, you’re lying about Matt’s argument. Can you find a single post of his that is hostile to, say, licensing of doctors or pharmacists?”
Chet, you’ve proven you’re not worth responding to. Admittedly, that’s not a very high bar here at Baloon Juice or blogs in general. So I’m not going to bother giving you any links. But I can say I’ve seen MattY argue against the licensing of cab drivers and interior designers. I pointed out that you kind of want to prevent chronic drunk drivers from driving cabs and it’s far easier to deal with that issue at the licensing stage. Someone else pointed out that interior designers are not interior decoraters, which MattY apparently assumed they were. Interior designers can do remodeling work which include tearing down internal walls and other electrical and plumbing work, things for which you obviously should have to have some minimum level of education or training.
As Gin and Tonic pointed out, what the hell is the point of MattY blogging about Lousiana florist licensing if it’s not part of an overall and broader argument?
Mike
MBunge
@Jonathan: “I read Balloon-Juice daily, and I enjoy this blog, but let’s face it, there’s nothing like hard-core analysis or original thinking going on at this blog”
Perhaps, but there’s no Balloon Juice version of Chet, is there? Is there anybody from here who not only blindly defends any of the front pagers, but goes on extended campaigns to blindly defend them on other blog comment threads?
Mike