"Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom"
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Economists love a paradox the way magicians love a reveal: the audience has to feel a little foolish for ever believing the obvious. Stiglitz is calling out that professional tic with a mix of insider familiarity and gentle accusation. “Startling theorems” aren’t just intellectual fireworks; they’re career capital. A result that “runs counter to conventional wisdom” is more publishable, more teachable, more quotable. It signals rigor, originality, and membership in a tribe that prides itself on seeing what ordinary people can’t.
The subtext is a warning about incentives. If the discipline rewards surprise, economists will go looking for surprise, sometimes by sanding away messy realities until the model behaves. That doesn’t mean counterintuitive insights are wrong; plenty are clarifying. It means the hunger to overturn “common sense” can become a style of authority: if you disagree, it’s because you’re naive, not because the assumptions are brittle.
Context matters here because Stiglitz has spent decades arguing that markets don’t automatically self-correct, that information is uneven, and that elegant models can smuggle in ideology. His critique lands hardest on the postwar, math-forward prestige economy of economics, where clean proofs can outshine lived conditions.
The line works because it doesn’t attack economics as a whole; it describes a temptation from the inside. The target isn’t intelligence, it’s taste - a preference for the clever inversion over the stubborn, inconvenient truth.
The subtext is a warning about incentives. If the discipline rewards surprise, economists will go looking for surprise, sometimes by sanding away messy realities until the model behaves. That doesn’t mean counterintuitive insights are wrong; plenty are clarifying. It means the hunger to overturn “common sense” can become a style of authority: if you disagree, it’s because you’re naive, not because the assumptions are brittle.
Context matters here because Stiglitz has spent decades arguing that markets don’t automatically self-correct, that information is uneven, and that elegant models can smuggle in ideology. His critique lands hardest on the postwar, math-forward prestige economy of economics, where clean proofs can outshine lived conditions.
The line works because it doesn’t attack economics as a whole; it describes a temptation from the inside. The target isn’t intelligence, it’s taste - a preference for the clever inversion over the stubborn, inconvenient truth.
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| Topic | Knowledge |
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