Don't get John Cochrane mad

"'Global south'. I'll just pick on this one as a stand-in for all the jargon in this letter.  What does this oxymoron mean, and why do the letter writers use it? We used to say what we meant, 'poor countries.' That became unfashionable, in part because poverty is sometimes a bit of your own doing and not a state of pure victimhood. So, it became polite to call dysfunctional backwaters 'developing.' That was already a lie (or at best highly wishful thinking) since the whole point is that they aren't developing. But now bien-pensant circles don't want to endorse 'development' as a worthwhile goal anymore. 'South'--well, nice places like Australia, New Zealand and Chile are there too (at least from a curiously North-American and European-centric perspective).  So now it's called 'global south,' which though rather poor as directions for actually getting anywhere, identifies the speaker as the caring sort of person who always uses the politically correct word."

"'The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades....' Notice the interesting voice of the verb. Let's call it the 'accusatory passive.'"

"But honestly, do we really yearn to send a billion Chinese back to their 'local economies,' trying to eke a meager living out of a quarter acre of rice paddy, under the iron grip of some local bureaucrat? I mean, the Mao caps and Che shirts are cool and all, but millions of people starved to death."

"Still, if you start with the premise that the last 40 or so years, including the fall of communism, and the opening of China and India are 'negative for much of the world's population,' you just don't have any business being a social scientist."

"If it's sad to see what 101 professionally distinguished minds at the University of Chicago think about free markets at all, it is to me sadder still how atrociously written this letter is."

"I'm not a good writer. I admire great prose, and I attempt to fill the spaces between equations of my papers with comprehensible words. But even I can recognize atrocious prose when I see it.... I was quoted as saying 'drivel,' and I meant it, not as an insult but as a technically correct description of a piece of prose. We can--and should--happily disagree on all sorts of matters of fact and interpretation, clearly stated, and openly discussed. But there's nothing here to discuss, it's just mush. The saddest aspect of this whole sorry affair is that 100 faculty at such a distinguished institution can sign their names--and with them their intellectual reputations and their sacred honor--to such utter drivel."