I Started Blogging 20 Years Ago Today

Jul 26, 2024

In the summer of 2004, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok invited me to guest blog for their new Marginal Revolution. MR was less than a year old then. And while I started sidelining for listservs back in 1993, insiders told me that blogging was something new. So exactly 20 years ago I gave it a try — and it transformed my life. By 2005, I was blogging full-time for EconLog. And I’m still going strong. False modesty aside, I have more ideas than I could ever hope to actually write up.

Without blogging, I doubt my academic work would have received a fifth of the attention it’s enjoyed. Never mind the incredible opportunities I’ve had to make friends and speak all over the world. Whenever I hear people blame the Internet for anything, my inner reaction is always, “The Internet is an amazing tool that you can use for good or ill. Whenever people use the Internet for ill, Social Desirability Bias leads us to blame the tool. Yet the harsh reality is that all the blame properly rests squarely on the shoulders of the humans who misuse it.”

Looking back 20 years ago, what was on my mind? Here are all my original guest posts, plus commentary.

“Evolution in One Lesson.” A short review essay on Graham Bell’s Selection: The Mechanism of Evolution. “Did you know that biologists have deliberately tried to breed the biggest mice on earth? It only took 35 generations to increase average weight by 7 standard deviations, from 25g to 43 g.”
”Terror Betting Markets and the 9/11 Commission.” A post-mortem of the terrorism betting markets scandal. Two big lessons: (a) Ordinary financial markets already allow terrorists to profit from terrorism via short selling, but the 9/11 Commission found no evidence that this actually happened, and (b) “even if the 9/11 Commission had found evidence of a terror/stock market connection, there would still be almost no case against the original plan for terrorism betting markets. The maximum bet was under $100.”
“The Freedom of a Confucian.” What philosopher Rod Long says about libertarianism in classical Chinese philosophy. “[W]ho said that Chinese intellectuals had no appreciation for the merchant class? Few Western thinkers match Sima’s appreciation of entrepreneurship…”
“Whittaker Chambers and the Idea Trap.” A brief intro to my “idea trap” model, illustrated by Chambers’ youthful embrace of Marxism-Leninism. “Think about the inter-war period. The problems of war and economic crisis loom large. So what happens in the world of ideas? People flock to a new viewpoint almost guaranteed to make both problems vastly worse!”
“On the Contradictions of the People.” Public opinion contradicts itself. Not just on the inheritance and income taxes, but a wide range of issues. “The big lesson is that public opinion is not just wrong, but downright silly.” Bartels, who provided the jumping-off point for the piece, followed up with another one of my favorite pieces, though I think he misinterprets his own results.
“The Eye of the Needle.” Tyler wonders why intellectuals sympathized with Stalinism. I reply with a blockquote from U.S. Ambassador Joseph Davies’ Mission to Moscow. Long story short: “This all makes me very glad that Liberation Theology did not come along earlier. A Christian Marxism would have fared far better with the common man.”
“Nerd Pride.” Did you know that Dr. Seuss coined the word “nerd”? Tabarrok says that the rising education premium drove nerd pride, but I say the Internet mattered far more. “Communication, not economic success, is the foundation of group identity. Lots of non-nerdy sub-cultures have profited from the free-fall in the cost of social interaction. But in contrast to most other sub-cultures, nerds are virtually 100% computer literate. The Internet has been the One Ring of nerddom.”
“Paul Krugman, Guilty Pleasure.” In the late 90s, one of my closest friends told me that Krugman’s goal was to be the archetype of a “high-quality economist.” The same friend now scoffs at Krugman’s descent into leftist fanaticism. I agreed both times, but I refuse to rewrite history. Krugman used to be really good.
“Gratitude Journals and Loewenstein’s Challenge.” The idea that behavioral economics support leftist policies is largely confirmation bias. Want to make people happy? Tell them to feel grateful for what they have, not angry that government doesn’t give them more. “Almost all redistributive rhetoric urges people to dwell on the negative – you or other people aren’t getting what is due. This in turn makes people want to ‘do something’ about the problem. And you can rest assured that no matter how much redistribution there is, egalitarians will never say ‘OK, life’s fair now. We’re done complaining.’”
“The Movie Review Index Fund.” I concluded my guest MR stint with the one piece that feels very dated today. Back in 2004, I was amazed by movie review aggregators. While I was of course right, this reads like a guy in 1910 talking about how his Ford is a huge improvement over a horse.

It’s a small sample, but my first ten guest posts capture most of the range of my subsequent interests: evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, political irrationality, betting, radical libertarian philosophy, public opinion, behavioral economics, economic education, nerd pride, and pop culture. You might think that blogging would distract me from more serious academic work, but when I started, I didn’t have a single book to my name. Now I’ve got five, plus another five books of essays. At least for me, blogging was a great way to try new ideas on for size. Sometimes a single post was enough. Other times, the more I wrote, the more I realized there was to say. I don’t think I’d even heard of Social Desirability Bias in 2004. Now I’m two-thirds done with a whole book on the topic.

The world has changed a lot since 2004. Globally, we’ve seen massive economic and technological progress — and due to CPI bias, progress is considerably faster than official statistics claim. Culturally, change has been a mixed bag at best. Even if you love the decline of traditional values, can you honestly say that these gains outweigh the harm of falling global fertility? Politically, I think the world peaked soon after the Cold War. Per Adam Smith, there is much ruin in a planet, but if I were writing a history of world politics over the last thirty years, I would struggle to name any big good political development. I wasn’t shocked by the Covid pandemic, but I still struggle to believe that the panic lasted more than two weeks. ADHD, which usually saves us from political hysteria, failed us all. That said, I roll my eyes at anyone who says we’re in a new Cold War, much less a low-level World War III.

My life has changed tremendously over the last two decades, too. When I started blogging for MR, my twin sons were just one year old. Later this year, they’ll be applying for Ph.D. programs. In the meanwhile, my commitment to natalism has given me two more wonderful children. During Covid, I homeschooled all four of them. I’ve managed to keep all but one of my closest friends from 2004, and made dozens more. Two of the biggest career shockers: I got Princeton University Press to publish The Case Against Education, and I wrote a New York Times Bestselling graphic novel.

As Kierkegaard remarked, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Some of the biggest events in my life would have happened even if guest blogging for Marginal Revolution didn’t set me on a new path. But even with the full benefit of hindsight, I really wonder how much.