Through the Looking Glass

Last night I had a date with this girl I met online. It turned out we were both first year PhD economics students (me at Mason, she at American) and we've been talking via e-mail comparing classes.

During this date, I discovered that American University's economic department leaned left. So after dinner, we decided to go to meet up with some of her friends from the program in a bar. It was here I discovered AU's program was Very Leftist.

It's hard to overstate how different I learned our departments and student body were. When I mentioned I was from Mason, there were cringes and looks of horror. When I noted I had friends at Cato and IHS, they were visibly shaken. They talked of the Soviet Union just not having the right people in charge, of incentives not mattering that much and an "implict collusion" between car makers.

I had never fathomed an economics department could seriously embrace these ideas in this day in age, especially at a world-renown school like American. But there it was, Ying to Mason's Yang; stir to Mason's shake; Bizarro to Mason's Superman (or perhaps more appropriately, Superman to Mason's Bizarro because Superman is a socialist).

Over the next few blog posts, I plan to retell--to the best of my ability--some of the discussions I engaged in with AU's econ students. I think it's worthy to engage in such dialogues; its helpful and neccessary to do so if you want to continue to claim to be a scientist. Hopefully my retellings will demonstrate that.