Re: open forum about pkt

[Herbert Gintis <gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jamie writes:
....
>I recognize and respect the view, expressed by bill mitchell quite some time
>ago, that these lists are best seen and enjoyed as 'cocktail party chatter.'
> I'm not much of a cocktail-party person. My own preference would be for the
>lists to be used sparingly, for careful professional discussion, such as
>does happen quite successfully in the 'seminar' threads. I would like to see
>comments aimed at the whole list of 400 persons, so as to solicit responses
>from a wider range of participants. And I'd like to see fewer postings from
>any one person, each time I collect my mail.
>
	I feel the same way. I am not interested in someone's opinion,
but rather in empirical facts and references to the literature on a
topic. I also don't like the fact that people who write frequently
tend to gang up on views they jointly dislike. This is intimidating to
people who have real information to offer, but don't like getting flamed.

One partial solution is to become a newsgroup rather than a list. This
keeps the mailbox from filling up.  It's also to write a kill file for
a usenet group than for a list, so you don't have to look at the
postings of people you know you're not interested in.

	I may be different from others in one regard, however: I find
Methodenstreiten across 'paradigms' (Post-Keynesian, Marxist,
Neoclassical, etc.) boring and uninformative, since I think all the
existing paradigms are wrong, but have interesting stuff to offer. The
'frequent posters' often appear to me to be trying to peddle their pet
paradigms, which accounts for their ability to respond on so many
fronts at once--they give the 'party position' on an issue. Like some
others, I have been guilty of this myself, but I think it is a waste
of time and I should be repremanded for it when it occurs.

Herbert Gintis
Department of Economics
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx