Michael Perelman:> Writing about expertise, I think that we should recall how Alfred Marshall revamped econ. education -- making it more mathematical, even though he himself rejected the idea that math was useful for economics -- just to make it more difficult for outsiders to comment on economic matters.<
I think most professions suffer from the "mandarin disease" (named after the fact that the Imperial Chinese Mandarins required that new bureaucrats be excellent at calligraphy, even though it didn't help them rule). Lawyers, for example, seem to like jargon as much as sociologists or literary theorists do, which is a lot.
It's only recently -- due to pressure from non-experts, I believe -- that the lawyers & government bureaucrats have been pressured to write their documents in as plain a version of prose as possible. (The "Plain English" compaign seems to have started with a English housewife, Chrissie Maher, in 1979 (at least in the U.K.) but I'd have to do more research to be sure. Googling found the web-site http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/law.html.)
Something like that is needed in economics. We should never forget that just because "we experts" "know more than they do," their insights can be extremely useful and even superior.
JD
