I did not think that Paul Krugman was still writing academic papers. Nor have I seen any evidence in the last decade that he still has any sense of humor.
Consequently, I was surprised to see an article written by him entitled “The Theory of Interstellar Trade,” published recently in the journal Economic Inquiry. Here is the abstract of the paper:
This article extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.
A quick look at the acknowledgments, however, clears things up. The original manuscript was written in July 1978, when Krugman was an active researcher and being a curmudgeon wasn’t part of his professional identity.
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Listen to any of Krugman’s talks and you’ll hear good examples of humor. Not always successfully funny, of course, but we all can’t be commedians. And as a poster above mentioned, his blog does have great little jokes.
I didn’t realize he was truly funny until I was playing a speech by him on my speakers while cleaning the house, and my girlfriend started laughing at Krugman’s jokes. Apparently he does a decent job at humor, even if he seems so glum and serious moreso these days.
Its a good read, but it only takes to the special relativistic case. General relativistic interstellar economics (gosh, I sound smart now) would be a fun update to his older paper. Oh, the possibilities that time relativism brings! Faster production clocks, slower durable goods clocks, compounding interest at lightspeed, a wonky nerdy dream.
The good news is astronomers found a planet at the right distance to a star that would allow optimal surface temperature, liquid water and non-toxic gas that would potentially support life.
But before realtors start hanging their signs, there is the bad news:
If you could build a car that can drive at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, then it will take you 20 years to reach it. Current land speed record at Bonneville is about 760 miles per hour.
I assume a space craft will go fast,(let say 10, 000 mph, the speed of an ICBM missile) but nowhere near the speed of light. Chances are you will die from old age in transit, and must reproduce a baby, educate and train that child, and make his/her life mission the trip you began before said child was born. And that child may not reach the destination and must also breed, and so forth and so forth.
And you must forbid the two year child from asking “Are we There Yet! @^%@%^**^@!”
Interstellar trade will not be viable, if trade distances are generational. We might be lucky just to send light encoded Morse-code messages. Better to invest NASA’s budget in better Hollywood Sci Fi movies. Captain Kirk and the Queen of the Cat People. Rarrrar
Why the cheap shot at Krugman?
I’d rather be a curmudgeon that uses his column on the NYT to address and offer alternatives to current economic policy (however disagreeable) than an economist who uses his blog to take potshots at other academics.
If you have problems with his point of view or his methods, perhaps you should address those rather than Krugman’s identity.
Krugman may be a curmudgeon but I find him to be a funny curmudgeon. I like his sense of humor (both in his talks and print…).
Hmm, no evidence for a sense of humor? Maybe actually reading a few posts from Krugman’s blog would have been a good start.
Is “curmudgeon” supposed to be dismissive? I look to Krugman to provide some sensible economic analysis in an area increasing dominated by commentators prescribing austerity and sacrifice by the poor, and tax cuts and incentives to the rich.
An unnecessary and inaccurate attack on your fellow economist.
Rather than disagree with something he said, and explain why you disagree, you took a few cheap shots.
It is your blog, so you can write what you want within any legal limitations, but you should be ashamed of yourself.
Dear “addicted” -
In the newspaper biz, the article writers do not write their own headlines nor photo captions. If you find humor there, it isn’t Mr. Krugman’s.