Recommended Readings, November 2023

Like a zillion other economists, I am fond of science fiction. I am also drawn to analyses — in a most amateur way — of how knowledge is accumulated, used, preserved, and sometimes?destroyed. Knowledge is very special in economics — it is unlike nearly all other things we produce. Once I know something, I can share it with you, and now you and I both know it. I cannot do that with a slice of cake, or a winter coat, or a haircut, or … most anything. It is also understood by economists to be the lone source of long-run growth in prosperity.

In my own lifetime, extreme "restarts" to knowledge (think of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s) have actually been attempted.?In the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, these two interests come together like peanut butter and jelly (bar none the apex sandwich our species has invented).?

Canticle also has a bit of personal resonance to me as a person in “late mid-career” who, like others in this place, sometimes wonder what “legacy” (as pompous as that sounds) they might leave. I suppose I know what it is not. It cannot be to be generally remembered (even that is an odd goal to begin with) — virtually no one gets that treatment. Do you recall who the last secretary of defense was? Or who was?in charge of the UK two prime ministers?ago? And I'm a normal?dude, so I don’t have much hope of being broadly remembered.?

But I think Canticle suggests a nice way forward: to be a steward (packrat?) and transmitter of competitively vetted knowledge. Not idiosyncratic knowledge. Not outlandish claims and provocative views. Indeed, for me it can be boiled down into the textbooks that are pictured on my phone screensaver: they summarize broadly what our profession knows at?the moment and tell me what I am supposed to know and convey to those around me who are curious.

Of course, knowledge may be revised wholesale. And that is ok, too, if that is what comes out of meaningful?crucibles. For anyone who specializes (in anything, whether it's economics, HVAC, curling, etc.) being able to say you’ve consistently pointed people to shared consensus/understanding in your chosen specialization is a way, in our non-post-apocalyptic world, to operate like our protagonist Liebowitz.

The breadth and timescale of A Canticle for Leibowitz are also something ... calming and terrifying by turns. And it really examines knowledge — through its entire life-cycle — as a social activity.

Here is the Wikipedia page to give?you an idea of what it's all?about.