Therefore I am a Donkey

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini lamented many western things. He did not like capitalism, or even the science of economics. He once declared "economics is for donkeys." Since I am pursuing a doctorate in economics, I must be a serious donkey.

Green Revolution? (Not the Al Gore kind)

I was reminded of this blogger account trying to post a comment. Guess I'll start using it instead again. This comment was on a blog posted in Iran, give them your support. It takes real balls to stand up to such a brutal and oppressive regime.

Wikipedia as an economic system

Back in the 1980s there was a movie, rather forgettable, called "Gung Ho." This movie dealt with the ability of American auto workers to match the Japanese. In the end the Americans match the Japanese monthly production record, ten thousand cars. (Or something) The catch was that the cars didn't have engines in them. A hollow victory, hilarious nonetheless.

This movie demonstrates very well what happens when the incentives of production become mismatched. The old Soviet Union was another example, say for instance you own a shoe factory back in the U.S.S.R. The Kremlin dispatches a message commanding ten thousand be produced. You would produce ten thousand baby shoes, basically because there is a shortage of leather. The guy at the leather factory factory is thinking just like you, and raw materials are in a shortage. You would hoard the leather left over, and trade it on the black market. There is no incentive to produce shoes that people want, you would only try and keep yourself from being thrown into the gulags -- for not following the instructions of the Kremlin.

Wikipedia is another example of collectivism, gone awry and not doing any good because of a mismatch of incentives. Many people stride into wikipedia with some knowledge, hoping to actually do some good. Only to find a power structure of editors, and admins that can be hostile. You then swear it off forever, in hatred of the "cabal." The utopian encyclopedia is now the gilded encyclopedia.

A good example of this is the swastika entry, which became the victim of an edit war. This website entry discusses this. The problem basically arose when the piece information regarding Nazis as national socialists was removed and replaced many many times. Revisionist history at it's best. Thousands of edits, by someone who thought hiding known history from wikipedia would somehow disassociate Socialism from the Nazis.

The completely anonymous system of wikipedia, basically shunts the incentive of producing quality entries to the bottom -- so it can push the "collective utopian ideal." Working to become the largest depository of never better than mediocre knowledge in the world.

This illustrates a problem known in environmental economics as "The tragedy of the commons." Common pool resources, such as cod fish stocks, can fall victim to this. More on this phenomenon in later posts.

The Teachings of Muhammad

I have found a really spiffy blog, written by Muhammad Saleem. The Mu Life is well written, and makes many observations I try to make. Turns out he is an economics major as well, obviously much closer to finishing and likely much smarter than I. He is earning his degree at a school quite prestigious for their economics program, the University of Chicago. This is where Steven Levitt hails, well known economist and author of "Freakonomics."

I highly recommend this blog, unlike many economics blogs, this one deals with interesting concepts without sounding like an economic lecture.

 

Spies Aside

Wikipedia is not a place where the incentives to produce a good article are found. Many articles are the result of winning arguments. Some of vandalism, and the list goes on. Addressing fatal incentive mismatches are the impossible task facing of those who want Wikipedia fixed.

There seems to be a "cabal" running things. Read about it here.

Spies and the Wikipedia

There is a big debate swirling around Wikipedia, and an administrator called SlimVirgin. Basically this admin was quite abusive towards other Wikipedia users. This was done to the point a group banded together to form a website called Wikipedia Review. This group, led by Daniel Brant, used thier collective investigative skills to reveal the identity of SlimVirgin, apparently a woman named Linda Mack. Read a lengthy, but informative piece on this here. 

In the investigation, some interesting things were learned about Linda Mack. She apparently went to school at Cambridge, and worked for ABC news in the investigation of PanAm 103 terrorist attack. Her boss became suspicious of Linda working for MI5, and fired her.

John K. Cooley, one of her bosses expresses this in a letter.

A news source in Korea broke a story about Intelligence agencies infiltrating the online encyclopedia. The basically unknown OhMyNews ran a story called "Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services."

There is a big debate to wether Mack, aka SlimVirgin, was or is a dis-information plant that infiltrated wikipedia. Looking at this from the standpoint of Information Economics, then using that to understand Intelligence Services will show a few things. While the value of information economics in the academics setting is relativley new, Intelligence Services have long known the value it.

Information is a strange good, it cannot be consumed or used up like a gallon of milk. Information seeking, to provide insight can be costly. Intelligence services basically control information the best they can. Wikipedia is something that many people use and greatly reduce information seeking costs. Information is easily found on Wikipedia, and is usually the first result of a google search.

While more on this saga will come in future posts, one thing should be said:

It is naive to assume that the various intelligence services around the world are not involved in Wikipedia. (At least in some way)

The thing is

In this capacity, we can observe many interesting things. We can learn many things.