by Degeneration of Bipartisan Blog Sites: Econbrowser This is probably just a whiny complaint of well-known and long running issues. Indeed for a long time most blog sites (not to mention most twitterspheres and Instogram Idiotspheres) have been mono-partisan in those who participate in their discussions/debates. This has been true for a long time for most sites in the Econoblogosphere, including this site, which clearly tilts “left,” even though we have always been open to comments from a wide variety of views. I have in mind here a particular blog site that I respect and have been spending a lot of time and attention at for some time. It is Econobrowser, initially set up by Jim Hamilton, now at UCSD, and a leading time-series econometrician, long viewed
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Degeneration of Bipartisan Blog Sites: Econbrowser
This is probably just a whiny complaint of well-known and long running issues. Indeed for a long time most blog sites (not to mention most twitterspheres and Instogram Idiotspheres) have been mono-partisan in those who participate in their discussions/debates. This has been true for a long time for most sites in the Econoblogosphere, including this site, which clearly tilts “left,” even though we have always been open to comments from a wide variety of views.
I have in mind here a particular blog site that I respect and have been spending a lot of time and attention at for some time. It is Econobrowser, initially set up by Jim Hamilton, now at UCSD, and a leading time-series econometrician, long viewed as a nonpartisan technocrat. Some years ago he brought in Menizie Chinn of UW-Madison as a co-blogger, with Menzie becoming the main poster recently, with Jim H only rarely now posting or commenting on anything.
This site has been for some time now one of the few among higher level economics sites where people from different partisan positions have been regularly posting, reasonably intelligently. It has been for some time tilting “left,” as Mr. Apolitical Jim H rarely posts, with Menzie Chinn dominating the site. He served for both both Clinton and G.W. Bush as staffer on the CEA, giving him a cred cover of bipartisanship, although since Trump came in he has clearly been negative on Trump.
However, various pro-Trump commenters remain there, of varying degrees of intelligence and credibility. But as even as some of them have disappeared (oh, where are you, Peak Trader?), some still hang on, even as the site has become dominated by leftist liberals, with me and this site’s pgl among the most active there.
But a bottom line here is that I do not wish to see the various misinformed and trollish right wingers completely disappear from the site. For its all its flaws, Econbrowser remains one of the few sites where one can encounter people making arguments from a variety of paradigmatic perspectives, and I am glad that they have achieved this, and I encourage them to continue with this useful public good.
Barkley RoSser