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Assorted links
1. Famous economists ranked by Google Trends
2. Fabio Rojas's most popular post
3. "Rent-an-American," German style
5. Assessment of cap-and-trade proposals
6. Review of Discover Your Inner Economist, from The Washington Post; the reviewer calls it "the most useful of the lot," though he is skeptical about the whole "Freakonomics trend."
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 29, 2007 at 07:27 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
That "Rent-an-American" article was dripping with a lot of vitriol and bias itself, in essentially saying that declaiming against America while it's "clutched in the crooked talons of the foul Dark Wizards Cheney and Bush" is the only POSSIBLE and NOBLE thing for those poor bereaved exchange students to do.
I'm no grand lover of the current _administration_ but I have a problem when an article takes a tone like that. There's more to distancing yourself from a government than saying "they're just completely dumb, we all hate them, secretly, but they won't let us talk about it on TV."
It galled me a lot to read those sorts of things from other students... as someone studying abroad currently, it especially bothered me... maybe in Germany there's no need to defend the democratic or capitalist system as much, it's been there for a significantly long time, but I know that in China and other Asian countries, if they hear "oh, in America our leaders are all as corrupt as yours and our governments are terrible" then what incentive does that give them to want to free up their own societies and economies?
Perhaps I'm overreacting, but was I really the only one bothered by a lot of the article's content?
Posted by: Neal at Jul 29, 2007 2:53:52 PM
I'm with you Neal. That article did suck, and was a great working example of confirmation bias. Nowhere was there any consideration that maybe people have good reason to disagree with European social democrats on certain policy questions. Why were the only examples of rented Americans the guilty ass-kissing variety?
Here are my answers to questions that the article discussed.
"But the students are unrelenting. Do you think it's good, the way Americans consume natural resources?"
Everybody consumes natural resources.
"Do you approve of the death penalty?"
I'm neutral.
"Do Americans support the Iraq war?"
Not as much as we supported World War 2.
Posted by: Keith at Jul 29, 2007 10:40:55 PM
Neal - you're probably not even checking the comments at this late stage, but the tone you noticed in that article is the norm in all German media. The media over here is very biased and selective (think the editorial page writers at the New York Times, times ten, on two pots of coffee a day) and most Germans will swallow any ridiculous claim about Americans.
Posted by: Neal at Jul 31, 2007 5:26:36 AM
大家好，我是臺灣人，從臺灣一個人搬家來到美國，環境很陌生，感覺很孤單。以前在臺灣幾家知名的徵信社工作過，我是一個優秀的徵信工作者，希望早點找到適合自己的工作。希望通過貴站，認識更多的朋友。
Posted by: 戰挺文 at Apr 1, 2008 2:45:48 AM
