You don't understand a bad job market until you're in it

I felt that my grasp of economics wasn't good enough, so I read articles, took econ class, talked to people, and did general research. I learned all about the history of panics, depressions, boom and bust cycles, laissez faire, Keynesian economics, Reaganomics, and more. I read op-eds blaming the Tea Party movement on the lack of jobs. I was no expert, but I knew about economics and the job market and something of how it all worked.

And then I tried to get a job for the summer. An internship, even. Something to get me on a schedule and out of the house. Make a tiny bit of money. Something to do- anything. My standards dropped lower and lower. I wrote query letters and heard nothing. Went to interviews where I was bluntly told that all the jobs had been filled but they could try to find me a little work to do. Went to interviews where they seemed to like me and never got back to me again.

Yes, I knew something before about economics and the job market. But now I feel what a bad job market means, for me and for my friends and individual citizens.

Anonymous on the Internet

Because there's nothing like a thoughtful article about anonymity on the Internet: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/mf_minerva/all/1

The article tells the story of the South Korean blogger Minerva, and how he moved from anonymity and influence to notoriety and a court trial. Park Dae-Sung became tremendously influential in Korea as the financial markets plummeted, and his anonymous predictions, which he based on careful study of the markets, turned out accurate at important moments. Despite flying rumors before the revelation, he turned out to be nobody particularly qualified; no economist, just a student, and not a reformed greedy financier as he'd presented himself.

Orson Scott Card himself, on his web site, noticed the resemblance of the Minerva case to his book Ender's Game, where Val and Peter become Locke and Demosthenes, using the anonymous names' freedom to pretend to more gravity and influence than they actually had. Sometimes doing that attracts attention in itself, as the anonymous writer can come across as someone powerful who wanted to speak the truth without compromising an established reputation.

Minerva was uncovered in the end, though, in a way that also uncovered serious flaws in the system of South Korean law and government, if the Wired article is accurate in its judgements (something I don't really know much about so I can't be sure). Internet and privacy, and whether it is the government's job to keep the Internet clean and tidy for its citizens, is of course a whole other debate, worthy of discussion but not for this post. But the article is an excellent read, with its insights into the economic crisis, South Korean society, the nature of anonymity on the Internets, and the interaction of opinions with the sources that form them.