Nobelist economist...

 

Nobelist Daron Acemoglu: “Academics must speak out about Trump!" 

Who is going to speak about Acemoğlu and his misleading research?

In the interview he gave to Jack Grove of the Times Higher Education (23 December 2024), the laureate of the Swiss Central Bank’s award in the name of Nobel, Dr. Daron Acemoğlu talks about the threat posed by the USA’s new president and the need for regulation of artificial intelligence.

He says: “Many vocal US academics have been uncharacteristically silent in recent weeks as America's president-elect has vowed to launch an assault on affluent universities. Donald Trump is a real threat to democracy.”

This is how Dr. Acemoglu has not shied away from public involvement. He thinks that his “Nobel” “honor” confirms and approves what he has declared and his standing as one of the most unique voices in American industry and technology. Yet he cautions that “not all recent scientific developments are beneficial.”

Wait a minute! These are the words of a science man who had said that “the inclusive institutions lead to prosperity and well-being of individuals” when he was receiving laureateship from the Swiss Central Bank: “This year’s laureates in the economic sciences – Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity. Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better. The laureates’ research helps us understand why.” Indeed?

Stop here: one of the best examples of “inclusive institutions” all around the world could be found in the USA and UK, as he claimed. No one can claim the opposite. Or can they? The USA and UK election institutions are some of the best, although some systematic technical problems arise from time to time. Election is an institution that covers, or extends to, or include all people in the USA and UK. It produces extensive and inclusive representation and checks and balances of the different segments of government. What more do you want? (One produced Trump and the other produced Boris Johnson, what the heck!) It brought prosperity as well. We have seen it in the last century. Of course, not from the exploitation (extraction) of the labor of other countries as a colonial and imperialist power and war exportation under the name of democracy but squirted from their own strength of its inclusive institutions (election institution), as a Nobel laureate, called Acemoğlu, once upon a time had claimed!

But we are learning from the most unique voice in American industry and technology, the laureate of the Swiss Central Bank’s award in the name of Nobel, who has not shied away from public involvement as other vocal US academics have, that this perfect inclusive institution (the American political system as a whole) can produce a threat to itself—to democracy! Science can do the same! What a profound and scientific finding! Are they the same person? Or are there two Acemoğlus?

Science is not a descriptive cognitive occupation only. It shows the consequences as well (causality). In order to find a causal relationship, you have to have an independent variable. There is none in Acemoğlu, et al. Or at all? Also, we have not heard from Acemoğlu (the second one) what would be the consequence of Trump and AI. According to Acemoğlu, the Second, “some technologies might be bad for society—and shared prosperity too.” Shared prosperity? Might the landslide triumph of Trump in the best inclusive institution in the world, the American democracy, have happened from an unshared prosperity? We heard no answer from the Swiss Central Bank laureate yet… For whom? He does not answer either, except to pinpoint the whole non-segmented, maybe “inclusive” society. Which society is this? He is an economist, not a communist. He does not indicate. Threat for all of us? If yes, what a pity! Nobel’s dynamite is one of the examples. He must dwell on Mr. Nobel and the dynamite as well, not only on Mr. Trump and AI!

In this blog you can find evidence of what I have written above. Please go to Archive of Previous Articles at the right column if you are interested.