Sebastian Mallaby has much wisdom on how markets process information. My favorite part:
A long time ago, in a more aristocratic era, Henry David Thoreau
lamented that "the mass never comes up to the standard of its best
member." But in the age of the Internet, people are more inclined to
believe that the decentralized efforts of large groups can be better
than the work of experts. Wikipedia has edged out traditional
encyclopedias; eBay can value your car better than a local used-car
dealer. And politicians have a special reason to respect the wisdom of markets.
Amateur traders on the University of Iowa’s political futures market
predict elections more accurately than professional pollsters.
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As usual Sebastian Malady doesn't know what he's talking about. If one of your students cited Wikipedia as a source, would you accept it?
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/head_wikipedian.php
Wikipedia being unworthy of of scholarly papers doesn't mean it's not accurate. You can't reference discussions with fellow economist either, doesn't mean they're not accurate.
The hostility of academics toward Wikipedia–and I say this as a devoted University student intent on pursuing a career in philosophy–is to me ridiculous. The tendency of Wikipedia, and, indeed, the Internet as a whole, to decentralize knowledge is something to be celebrated, not lamented. The accuracy of Wikipedia is consistently denigrated by academics and yet it has proved to be a reliable gateway to information on any given topic time and again. Are there mistakes? Of course. You will search in vain for an encyclopedia that hasn't any. But Wikipedia, by combining quality control standards (witness the speedy removal of the pseudo-professor reported in today's news) with the critical thinking and dispersed knowledge of all those who contribute to it, corrects for these problems and succeeds in maintaining a generally reliable database. Frankly, in my experience, I find that the dislike of most academics for Wikipedia has nothing to do with lofty talk of reliability and accuracy. In my experience it has much more to do with that insufferable intellectual pomposity that pervades so many universities and a desire of instructors that their students hang on their every word, as if it were heavenly manna. Instead of endlessly whining about the evils of nasty Wikipedia, why don’t the academics descend from Olympus and deign to contribute some of their boundless wisdom by editing an article or two?
Wikipedia's accuracy is testable. Has a study of its reliability been done?
Yes one has. On science articles it was found to be as or more accurate than Britannica ->http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
I have no problem with wikipedia as a gateway – an orientation to better sources.
But to quote Mallaby – "But in the age of the Internet, people are more inclined to believe that the decentralized efforts of large groups can be better than the work of experts…" – Do you think this applies to economists as well?
Wikipedia contains some questionable information, and should be scrutinized properly.
So does The New York Times.
Many sources (most?) are more accurate than “traditional” information outlets, especially those with collective disparate interest and expertise. And especially not entrenched (modern) liberal bias.
What is wrong with this analogy by Peter Schiff
Who allocated the tasks in Schiff's fairy tale? It surely was not done by voluntary contract.
Either Schiff is totally closed-minded about the fundamentals of capitalism, or he is paid to propagandize against it.
My question is not how tasks were allocated. But if there is any truth to the fairy tale. In otherwords, is that how the system works at the moment. If not, why not. If yes, Why?
I wouldn't buy into the conspiracy theory yet. Peter Schiff is apparently a laissez faire capitalist.
Peter Schiff is right.