> The same way he became an expert on the level of expertise among "geeks" (whatever that means) in macroeconomics.
It's pretty easy to observe that amongst geeks (or at least those that post a lot on the internet), there are way more people, compared to society at large, who believe in what most actual economists consider to be fairly fringe theories, like "Austrian" economics. I think this is interesting enough in itself to warrant thinking about.
To cite an example, this could be any number of people on this site:
There's definitely lots of curiosity about the world there, which is definitely a hacker trait, but also this element of going from socialism to the another extreme, rather than, say, settling down somewhere in a range between, say, Krugman and Friedman, who are probably at two ends of mainstream economics.
I'll also add: sometimes "extremes" are correct. The concept of the US was pretty extreme at the time. (Many?) other times, however, they aren't. Plenty of smart people thought communism was a pretty good idea, and we are lucky in the US that during the 30'ies, the most extreme we got was FDR, rather than the wild swings that were going on in Europe.
I don't think you can consider Austrian school of economics nor the Chicago school fringe economics. Milton Friedman and Friedrick Hayek were hardly fringe loonies, but rather continued the free market tradition of classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
You mention that you should settle down in a range between Krugman and Friedman. These are so completely opposite in their beliefs that you would end up believing nothing. -1+1=0. There really is no such thing as one mainstream economics, most economists are in one of these two camps Free Market or Keynesian.
I would also like to take issue with this using me as an example of "this element of going from socialism to the another extreme".
I grew up in a society (Denmark) where Socialism and the particular flavor of Socialism (Democratic Socialism) I believed in was mainstream and not at all considered extreme. When I look at the beliefs I had, they were pretty much the same as mainstream democrats have in the US today. I can accept libertarianism as being extreme, but in most of the world democratic socialism is not considered extreme.
I take pride in the fact that I was able to independently of anything but my own observations realize that this system, where I was living (Denmark) and my own party was corrupt and change the fundamental beliefs I had grown up on. Yes being a geek, who constantly question and optimizes things probably was an important part of this.
I think just accepting the status quo is impossible for a hacker, or we wouldn't have tech startups, open source or any other tech project that wasn't sponsored by DARPA.
The latter are considered mainstream, even if they're certainly very biased in favor of the infallibility of markets and/or inability of governments to do anything useful. The Austrians aren't, and tend to take things to even further extremes than someone like Friedman.
I am sorry if I mischaracterized your shift from socialism to libertarianism - I was thinking of a different sort of socialism, not the nordic sort, which isn't very extreme, all things considered.
Also, don't think there isn't some commonality between various branches of economics. Most everyone, Krugman included, is basically in favor of free trade, for instance. Generally, though, they talk about the stuff they disagree about, so it tends to be more visible.
It's pretty easy to observe that amongst geeks (or at least those that post a lot on the internet), there are way more people, compared to society at large, who believe in what most actual economists consider to be fairly fringe theories, like "Austrian" economics. I think this is interesting enough in itself to warrant thinking about.
To cite an example, this could be any number of people on this site:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473812
There's definitely lots of curiosity about the world there, which is definitely a hacker trait, but also this element of going from socialism to the another extreme, rather than, say, settling down somewhere in a range between, say, Krugman and Friedman, who are probably at two ends of mainstream economics.
I'll also add: sometimes "extremes" are correct. The concept of the US was pretty extreme at the time. (Many?) other times, however, they aren't. Plenty of smart people thought communism was a pretty good idea, and we are lucky in the US that during the 30'ies, the most extreme we got was FDR, rather than the wild swings that were going on in Europe.