But if the comments he responds to in his latest column are the best he received, and if he really thinks his responses are the best possible responses to those comments, I have to wonder what the editors of Forbes are doing both to choose such economically ignorant columnists and thus adversely select for a readership that mostly doesn't think deeply about economics. Steve Denning still seems mostly to write his columns to tout his latest pop-lit management book rather than to encourage readers to think deeply about economic policy. Again, I have to point out that the well established economic law of comparative advantage,
aptly described as "one proposition in all of the social sciences which is both true and non-trivial," shows that all countries, and all consumers, gain if producers in various countries TRADE and exchange what they have a comparative advantage--however derived--in producing for other goods that other producers have a comparative advantage in producing. Americans own a lot of Kindles. Many other Americans can afford Kindles if they ever decide to buy one. The manufacturing workers who produce Kindle components in various places around the world work in their workplaces mostly because they think that offers a better trade-off of money for time than some other kind of work they can do where they live. The world gains in prosperity year after year, both in the aggregate and on a per-capita basis, because countries trade and because enterprises decide what to produce based on what they can produce most advantageously to trade for something else.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907187
But if the comments he responds to in his latest column are the best he received, and if he really thinks his responses are the best possible responses to those comments, I have to wonder what the editors of Forbes are doing both to choose such economically ignorant columnists and thus adversely select for a readership that mostly doesn't think deeply about economics. Steve Denning still seems mostly to write his columns to tout his latest pop-lit management book rather than to encourage readers to think deeply about economic policy. Again, I have to point out that the well established economic law of comparative advantage,
http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/cadv_e.htm
http://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadv...
http://www.unc.edu/depts/econ/byrns_web/Economicae/Essays/AB...
aptly described as "one proposition in all of the social sciences which is both true and non-trivial," shows that all countries, and all consumers, gain if producers in various countries TRADE and exchange what they have a comparative advantage--however derived--in producing for other goods that other producers have a comparative advantage in producing. Americans own a lot of Kindles. Many other Americans can afford Kindles if they ever decide to buy one. The manufacturing workers who produce Kindle components in various places around the world work in their workplaces mostly because they think that offers a better trade-off of money for time than some other kind of work they can do where they live. The world gains in prosperity year after year, both in the aggregate and on a per-capita basis, because countries trade and because enterprises decide what to produce based on what they can produce most advantageously to trade for something else.