Ben Casnocha's Review on Tyler Cowen's New Book

My friend and once (and maybe future) classmate, Ben Casnocha, has a review and essay in my favorite magazine, The American, about a book by my favorite blogger, Tyler Cowen. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and dining with Professor Cowen at a Kauffman Foundation-sponsored economic bloggers conference. I facebook messaged Professor Cowen asking him for a copy of his book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World and thus far, I have found it an engaging read. I found Ben's review, though, to be a bit too focused on well, Ben Casnocha, and not enough on the book or the serious ideas embedded with it. He focuses on the roll of blogs in helping people to learn, but doesn't seriously probe the trade-offs, dismissing them as some kind of cranky "myth of focused people" that is skeptical of all things progress.

A stronger review would have asked what kind of society or democracy we're getting when people get information instantly, as opposed to having to struggle -- and thereby exercise their mind and strengthen their neural connections -- to learn new things. Ben confesses that he never read the books necessary to be a good libertarian, but that he subscribed to a few blogs dealing casually with libertarian topics and suggests that that might be enough. It isn't. It's the work of sophists and it will have real consequences for our society if the people who are our punditocracy, a position Ben is trying to achieve, don't read the classics or delve into the real deep problems that afflict us. A mile wide and an inch deep, a phrase Ben often repeats, is still shallow, after all.