
Tyler Cowen interviews Larry Summers on Macroeconomics, Mentorship, Complacency - objections
https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-larry-summers-blog-secular-stagnation-twitter-421a69ed84c8
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crdoconnor
Summers is probably one of the worst economists/apparatchiks America has ever
had. His achievements include:

* Working with the Reagan administration to promote supply side economics.

* Advising post soviet states on a transition to a market economy which led to finanicial crisis, a 60% collapse in GDP, a spike in suicide rates and the privatization of state assets at firesale prices and the creation of an oligarch class.

* Working to de-regulate CDSes and derivatives.

* Calling Africa under-polluted.

* Attributing women's underrepresentation in math and science to natural genetic inferiority.

[http://exiledonline.com/larry-summers-a-suicidal-
choice/](http://exiledonline.com/larry-summers-a-suicidal-choice/)

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dang
Even if you're right, these sort of boilerplate talking points don't serve
good conversation, which is the goal HN threads should be shooting for. So
would you please not post like this here? I'm sure there are substantive and
specific things one could respond to about this article. Generic dismissals
make for poor and generic discussion.

(I hope it's clear that this is not a defense of Summers but a defense of good
conversation.)

~~~
crdoconnor
>Even if you're right, these sort of boilerplate talking points don't serve
good conversation

This criticism makes no sense. If these were "boilerplate talking points" they
would be somewhat well known and you would probably be at least vaguely aware
of their veracity.

>I hope it's clear that this is not a defense of Summers

Explicit condemnation of the sharing of a series of contextual facts about a
public figure under discussion in the name of the _vaguest_ of vague ideals -
"good conversation"?

It actually does seem like a defense of Larry Summers.

~~~
dang
I don't care about Larry Summers; the problem is on a different level than
that. If someone shows up with a prefab list about anything, that's not good
conversation, it's just reading from a list. It doesn't take the listener into
account.

