I enjoy listening to Econ Talk by my former UCLA professor, Russell Roberts, the famed economist who helped inspire my conversion to Orthodox Judaism.
Roberts is a model interviewer. Listening to him reminds me of all the long talks we had after class. Everything he talked about achieving back in 1989, he had done so.
From EconTalk.org: “Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Zingales’s essay, “Preventing Economists’ Capture.” Zingales argues that just as regulators become swayed by the implicit incentives of dealing with industry executives, so too with economists who study business: supporting business interests can be financially and professionally rewarding. Zingales outlines the different ways that economists benefit from supporting business interests and ways that economists might work to prevent that influence or at lease be aware of it.”
The same thing would apply to groups. If a group is dominant in the media, for example, it should be assumed that this power will be used in its interests.
Here is an excerpt from Luigi’s essay:
If everyone in that network is drawn from the same milieu, the information and ideas that flow to policymakers will be severely limited. A revealing anecdote comes from a Bush Treasury official, who noted that in the heat of the financial crisis, every time there was a phone call from Manhattan’s 212 area code, the message was the same: “Buy the toxic assets.” Such uniformity of advice makes it difficult for even the most intelligent or well-meaning policymakers not to be influenced.
