From my inbox

I feel like the young economist bloggers of the world need some advice, but I don’t have the stature, experience, or age to give it.

Working for a consulting company I’m fairly detached from the academic world, but we are staffed with PhD economists and we do hire grad students. When I read stuff that, for instance, REDACTED writes, in the tone that he writes it, I know that at my company if he were a potential hire we would a) Google him, and b) this would hurt his chances. This isn’t about political leanings either. My liberal colleagues would look at his writings with the same distaste and worry that my conservative colleagues would.

Is this the same way it is in academia? Should young economist (and other academic) bloggers be more careful than many seem to be? Are they hurting their job market chances? Because that is my impression.

That is another reason for polite discourse, namely that it improves the career prospects and quality of one’s readers and followers.  The best reason, however, is still that it improves one’s own thought processes and that is a point of substance not just style or manners.  I’ve seen that point ignored a lot in the commentary of the last few weeks but not once seriously disputed.