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@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa To be honest, I think one of the unstated assumptions in these debates is: mainstream economics *deserves* a higher level of initial buy-in investment to understand than MMT. MMT is a 'marginal' theory and thus a new student/interested person should only be asked/expected to 1/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa invest a minimal amount of time to understand it - hence all of the irritated economists and pundits saying "where is my one go-to article, preferably under 150 words". They think it's insulting to expect them to do a deep dive into a literature where the ideas are presented 2/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa across multiple papers, with variation and different emphases by different proponents, etc. Because in their mind it's not a school of thought or an entire disciplinary paradigm, it's a 'concept' that should be reducible to a single paper like other concepts can/are *within* 3/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa the paradigms that they work in. "Oh, sticky prices? Ricardian equivalence? I can find you a single paper explaining that concept. Why can't MMT do the same for its ideas?". By contrast, they believe it's entirely reasonable for orthodox macro to have 'undergrad' intro texts 4/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa that are not representative of the overall body of work, to leave certain nuance/wrinkles to specific models only introduced in advanced graduate programs and that only the top-level professionals working the paradigm are familiar with, for for individual economists working 5/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa in orthodox tradition to exclude specific concepts in their models, or fail to grapple with entirety of the theoretical framework while still producing useful contributions on specific elements of that framework, etc. & of course, the endless complaining when MMTers point out 6/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa that criticisms being directed at it have actually been addressed elsewhere in the literature, as though requiring people to engage in rigorous and comprehensive literature reviews is unfair/unreasonable/some sort of 'cultish' defensive tactic, even as such expectations are 7/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa of course standard fare in any regular academic discipline and undergird the entire way that macro is typically taught in top grad econ programs. It all boils down to the idea that MMT doesn't warrant the kind of rigorous, sustained engagement that 'real' schools/paradigms 8/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa get today. Now, this may be a fair default starting point as a general methodological heuristic - there are far too many crank schools and theoretical dead ends out there to give them all equal shrift, so some filtering mechanisms are necessary. But the corollary of that is 9/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa an individual's hueristic framework is a subjective thing, and a fallible aspect of one's broader epistemology. Which means it's entirely possible that an individual, or a group of individuals operating with a similar hueristic approach, may systematically fail to recognize 10/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa and properly invest in learning a new, truly revolutionary paradigm during its ascendancy because they have (rationally) stopped listening/engaging with disruptive new paradigmatic challenegers at such an early levels of their development given other constraints/interests. 11/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa And thats probably a good thing! It allows more mature representatives of existing paradigms to focus on what they know best, and also leaves space for younger, hungrier, and less intellectually pre-committed groups to add value by scouring those bleeding edges of idea space 12/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa And jumping onto new big things early as a way of bypassing hierarchical and ossified power structures within existing intellectual space. But if that's actually what's going on here (and i think it is), we can't be surprised the old guard is resisting the change - it's 13/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa an inherently threatening development and it's their *job* structurally speaking to resist it as much as they can until the new paradigm demonstrates its internal coherence, viability as a comprehensive alternative paradigm, and political power to smash existing consensus 14/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa But simultaneously it's the job of new guard not to accept that defensiveness as prima facie valid/true/reasonable, or to get psyched out by those dismissals. If they did, there'd never be any new idea/paradigm that wasn't pre-approved by the ancient regime that preceded it 15/x
@RomanchukBrian @dandolfa Which is a far more reactionary and stilted mode of intellectual development than one where dominant paradigms have to occasionally entertain attacks from new paradigms that may or may not be viable/superior in capacity to improve social outcomes/answer questions. 16/16.
