In your journey through the Econ Blogosphere, you will be beset by a great many curious and interesting species of EconoTroll. At first you may be intimidated by their voluminous use of insider jargon, their rough-and-tumble personal attacks, their strenuous insistence that you read the complete works of their movements' founders before participating in any discussion, and above all their sheer persistence and apparent surplus of spare time. But fear not, noble traveler, for I have taken it upon myself to create this Illustrated Bestiary, in order to prepare you for (most of) the characters you will encounter on your way...
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An Illustrated Bestiary of the Econ Blogworld
Libertarians
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter."
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: EconLog
Favorite dead economist: Milton Friedman
Will appear in response to posts regarding: Trade, the environment, third-world labor, patents, immigration, education, the environment, sugary soft drinks, anything really
Craziest idea: Eliminate public education and legalize crack
Special attack: Soaring rhetoric
Secret weakness: memories of the parties they didn't get invited to in college
Notes: This species of troll appears to be on the wane, as left-leaning college women have broadened their taste in men considerably, blunting the anti-liberal ressentiment that led to an explosion in the young angry libertarian male population...
Post Keynesians
"[I]t is always the outliers that are pushing back the curtain of ignorance. It's not the zebra in the middle of the herd, safely away from predators and mishaps, who finds the new food sources for the herd, or alerts the group to impending dangers."
"I'm not going to provide the links, but I called the crisis more precisely than any of those people."
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: Steve Keen's Debtwatch
Favorite dead economist: Hyman Minsky
Will appear in response to posts regarding: Who predicted the economic crisis first
Craziest idea: That anyone is listening
Special attack: Anger
Secret weakness: the fear that Paul Krugman has said everything they've thought of, but better
Notes: When not engaged in bitter denunciation of the "neoclassicals" who supposedly pushed them out of their once-hallowed place in the halls of academia, this species can actually have quite a lot of interesting things to say...
Market Monetarists
"NGDP, NGDP, NGDP, NGDP."
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: The Money Illusion
Favorite dead economist: No one. The spot is being reserved for Scott Sumner, along with thousands of life-sized terra cotta grad students.
Will appear in response to posts regarding: Monetary policy, macroeconomics, any word containing the letters "NGDP"
Craziest idea: Pegging the monetary policy of the world's leading nation to an obscure and highly illiquid futures market
Special attack: NGDP-style kung fu
Secret weakness: Supply shocks
Notes: Having now effectively swayed the Federal Reserve and won essentially all of the Econ Blogosphere to their way of thinking, the Market Monetarists can hardly be classified as "trolls" any longer...
Republicans
"[T]here are 47 percent...who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them...And so my job is not to worry about those people."
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: The Wall Street Journal editorial page
Favorite dead economist: Art Laffer
Will appear in response to posts regarding: taxes, politics, taxes
Craziest idea: Difficult to say, but probably a tie between bankrupting the country with debt, privatizing the prison system, invading Iraq, cutting funding for science, dishing out billions in pork to well-connected no-bid contractors, throwing millions of harmless marijuana users into nightmarish prisons, repressing gays, disenfranchising black voters, forcing millions of "illegal" immigrants into second-class citizen status, and blocking any sensible policy reform through the abuse of supermajority tactics in the Senate...
Special attack: Taking over the entire United States for three decades
Secret weaknesses: hot liberal chicks, fatty food
Notes: See also History, American, all
Austrians
"Cue hyperinflation in 5...4...3..."
"With real money backed by real gold, America experienced the greatest boom in any nation's history. Things were great and the American people flourished."
"No math needed. Read Rothbard. Economics (human action) is logic. Beautiful, simple logic."
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: Zero Hedge
Favorite dead economists: Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard
Will appear in response to posts regarding: Monetary policy, the gold standard, gold, and possibly pyrite
Craziest idea: That fractional reserve banking and fiat money are a conspiracy by the Rothschild family to take away people's freedom
Special attack: Real money, backed by real gold
Secret weakness: cannot withstand being subjected to intellectual contempt
Notes: For more on this odd and often frightening species of troll, please consult the fieldwork of the intrepid naturalist J. Bradford DeLong...
Modern Monetary Theorists
"Sorry, just to expand that further.....the currency would appreciate, but as there would be no market for government debt the govt would be forced to monetize. The increase in currency in circulation would offset the appreciation due to Acme share price increase. Assuming that the rise in Acme share price was due to the vast increase in demand for those shares as a consequence of the total rejection of govt debt as a savings vehicle, it is possible that the effect on the currency would be neutral..."
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: yours
Favorite dead economists: G.F. Knapp, Wynne Godley
Will appear in response to posts regarding: Government debt
Craziest idea: That all of economics can be derived from a few simple accounting identities
Special attack: Jargon, jargon, and more jargon
Secret weaknesses: Mark-to-market accounting, logic
Notes: It has been said of this species of EconoTroll that holding a discussion with one is akin to "administering a Turing Test to a computer designed to impersonate an acute schizophrenic." Travelers are advised to proceed with extreme caution. Fortunately, this dangerous species has many natural enemies, and often the clever wayfarer can escape in the fracas between a Modern Monetary Theorist and an Austrian, Republican, or New Classical.
Marxists
"[it is] simple self-evident reality that the international monetary system was created by, and remains founded on, US military power. ""capitalism will not be around for ever. An engine of infinite expansion and accumulation cannot, by definition, continue for ever in a finite world."
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: None. Blogs are tools of capitalist oppression. Comment trolls of the world, you have nothing to lose but your word verification!
Favorite dead economist: Marx, duh.
Will appear in response to posts regarding: (actually, not sure about this one)
Craziest idea: Take your pick
Special attack: David Graeber
Secret weakness: the Postmodernist Essay Generator
Notes: We have not seen this species around much in recent years, but the tales of their infestations in far earlier times still make for lively campfire entertainment...
Scientists
"[M]acro is mostly a 'science' without falsification. In other words, it is barely a science at all. Microeconomists know this. The educated public knows this. And that is why the prestige of the macro field is falling."
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: Noahpinion
Favorite dead economist: Are you kidding? That's the only good kind!
Will appear in response to posts regarding: Economic methodology, statistics, math
Craziest idea: That economists should do experiments
Special attack: the "economics isn't science" taunt
Secret weaknesses: bad posture, the knowledge that economists get paid more than they do
Notes: This troll, which periodically ventures into the Econ Blogworld, attempts to intimidate its enemies by the puffing up of its Physics Credentials in a strange sort of dominance display. This tactic can easily be defeated by immediately presenting the troll with a deceptively difficult or even insoluble math problem, and then ridiculing the troll for failing to solve it in short order.
New Classicals
"Krugman's blog post mainly tells us that his deficit in macro-knowledge persists."
"Get a life, Krugman!"
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: New Monetarist Economics
Favorite dead economists: Frederic Bastiat
Will appear in response to posts regarding: Macroeconomics, history of economics, fiscal policy, stimulus, monetary policy
Craziest idea: That recessions are caused by a combination of A) people forgetting technology, B) people suddenly deciding to take vacations, and C) fear of future socialism by liberal politicians
Special attack: Dissing you anonymously on Econ Job Market Rumors
Secret weakness: the econ job market
Notes: This type of troll, long confined to a series of deep caves in Minnesota, emerged into the surface world and began marauding the landscape in response to attacks by the wizard Krugman. It is the sworn duty of all New Classicals to hunt down their antagonist and make him pay for his crimes. This makes them relatively harmless to travelers not affiliated with this grudge battle...
Uncategorizable
"The magical policy is MY GUARANTEED INCOME plan to auction the unemployed we can put 30M people to work 40 hours per week in less than 1 year this platform immediately reduces the cost of organizing and rehabbing the 12M homes that ARE gong from being owner occupied to rentals and my plan SOLVES for immigration [truncated]"
How they see themselves:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: ...and how many times have you made a single argument against giving taxpayers the freedom to choose which government organizations they give their taxes to you've made ZERO arguments against tax choice don't you think it's just a little strange that you can't even make one argument [truncated]
Favorite dead economist: ...against tax choice? I don't think it's strange...you know why? Because I know that you really don't want to embarrass yourself. there is no argument about them taking our jobs because IF the employer could hire the cheaper subsidized American he would the left over jobs are ones where there is true unfilled demand [truncated]
Will appear in response to posts regarding: ...WHY DID YOU BLOCK ME mostly at the low end this field work that robots haven’t replaced yet by his definition my policy is magical bend to my will you haven’t proven yourself enough to get to take potshots why not just root for rampant fires to wipe out the unemployed [truncated]
Craziest Idea: ...when confronted with an insurmountable obstacle it's a good idea to break the obstacle down into smaller components that are easier to handle this is the divide and conquer strategy you'll never convince each and every taxpayer [truncated]
Special attack: ...you are just afraid to engage with my ideas because you know that i am intellectually as far beyond you as homo sapiens is beyond a slug why don't you come over here to boycott the entire government but you certainly will be able to convince every taxpayer to boycott at least one government organization [truncated]
Secret weakness: nerve gas
Notes: The less said about this most fearsome species of troll, the better.
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