Hacker News Reader

You said programmers are unaware of contributing to weapons, suggesting a parallel to economists, and then say that economists don’t want to to know that they’re doing something bad. If you’re unaware how could you have something to hide?

The most influential economists are paid to.. make rich people richer? Who? Which? Economists are largely academics, which are paid by universities to teach and research without editorial control. If you have damning evidence of explicit corruption, please cite that versus some generality. It would also be good to know (with sources) the prevalence versus a one off.

If you look at NBER’s latest research (https://www.nber.org), which is a top economist think tank / affiliated with Harvard, I’m not seeing anything that (to me) supports anything you’re saying.

I have dated a powerful economist and hung around in those circles, and never have I heard anything remotely like what you’re describing. But it is true that I’m not an economist myself nor am deeply embedded to have certainty.

> The most influential economists are paid to.. make rich people richer?

In a trial like this, a "star witness" was almost certainly paid for their testimony. Not to suggest that their opinions were altered by the payment but that businesses generally need an incentive for someone like this to go on the stand.

It's not an accident that this person said a bunch of things which were positive for Google, because they would have specifically looked for someone who would say such things.

Finding someone who will back a specific claim in a given lawsuit is hardly suggestive of an entire field of social scientists bent on making rich people richer.

> hardly suggestive of an entire field

This is shifting the goalposts. The parent commenter is talking about the "most influential" and it's likely that those who want to be influential will make public appearances and statements. Those are the sort in a field who are paid by large companies to publicly agree with them.

Ok the entire top of the field then. I’d love to see the evidence that the top of the field of economists are working to make rich people richer. The original comment cited trickle down economics (which really means supply-side economics), which is policy oriented (and thus most impactful) versus being an expert for a lawsuit here or there.

Google continuing to exist or blowing up won’t fundamentally change the economic outlook of the US at a broad population level. Changing taxation, regulation, and import/export policies will.

> Ok the entire top of the field then.

This seems to be focusing too much on the fact that it was initially phrased as "the most successful and influential" -- kinda suggesting "all of the most ..." -- and that's not really a claim I would support. I don't think that's really what the other commenter meant, either. Apologies for the confusion.

> Google continuing to exist or blowing up won’t fundamentally change the economic outlook of the US at a broad population level. Changing taxation, regulation, and import/export policies will.

Right, this is what the FTC is attempting to do with this lawsuit. A person who testified against them in court is an economist who has won both an Emmy and a Nobel Prize. That seems like at least one who's at or near the top in their field seemingly attempting to influence policy at a high level.

I once watched a trial where a professor emeritus from the computer engineering department of a major CS school, who had been one of the founders of the department there, was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an IEEE Fellow, had been a major figure in the development of integrated circuits, had many highly cited papers, and I think a major textbook or two, testify that it is common in the industry for the term "RAM cache" to include data that is stored on a hard disk, and explained that "RAM" means random access memory, and hard disks are random access and are memory. Hence, when people say "RAM" they mean to include hard disks.

I was doing some work for the other side, and asked one of their lawyers why that professor would testify to something so ridiculous. Wasn't he worried that this would damage his reputation?

The lawyer told me that all the people in academics and industry know about the expert witness gig. If they see that the professor emeritus said something ridiculous at a trial they will assume that he wanted a new RV or boat or to remodel his house or something like that, and was offered enough money to pay for that in exchange for reading the claims in the case, spending maybe a few days writing up a report in support of the side that hired him, and spending maybe 30 minutes to an hour on the stand testifying about that report.

I then asked one of their expert witnesses what he was doing with his pay for his report and hour on the stand. He told me he was buying a Tesla Roadster which at the time was launching soon and sold for around $100k, and it was being paid for entirely from that one expert witness gig.

> I bet you haven't. It's like asking a programmer if designing weapons is their primary imperative - nearly everyone will say no. But when you examine the number of people that make contributions that could be weaponized or is abused as a weapon by their superiors, the statistics tell a different story.

Just because one's work can be used as a weapon doesn't mean that designing weapons is one's primary imperative. "primary imperative" isn't about outcomes, it's about objectives. I'm pretty sure the primary imperative of the Wright Brothers was to get something into the air, not to design a weapon.

> the most successful and influential ones are certainly being used as adversaries to pro-consumer economic policy because that's why these people are paid in the first place

What do you think the economists at the FTC are doing?

They sure aren't playing defense against nobody.

So they are playing defense for everybody?

> sure aren't playing defense against nobody

What?

I believe "pro-consumer economic policy" would be the FTC and "the most successful and influential [economists]" would be playing adversary to the FTC, hence "they [the FTC] sure aren't play defense against nobody" to support their previous assertion.

Except what economists are against the FTC? Usually it’s companies suing them, or vice versa. Maybe like 1 guy at the Heritage Foundation or something?

> what economists are against the FTC?

Very few. Non-competitive markets are a well known market failure [1] and a condition that an unchecked political economy tends towards.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

Unless I'm mistaken, this comment was posted in the comment section for an article talking about an economist who testified in court in opposition to the DoJ in a case that was brought by the FTC.