We Beat the Germans in 1918/And They’ve Hardly Bothered Us Since Then

Brad DeLong culls the comments to this post at Crooked Timber to produce a “with notably rare exceptions” Greatest Hits package—his second post riffing on the original—in honor of The Maestro continuing to attempt to improve the reputations of Paul Volcker and Ben Bernanke, if not G. William (“I ran a company, I didn’t need to know about Finance”) Miller.*

I point you to Dr. DeLong on the off chance that you didn’t read any of the other three (one by Henry, two by Brad) posts, while we all wait for Patrick or Jim MacDonald to continue the riff with more variations.

Economics question of the day: whose productivity will be greater: someone who reads all (now four, counting this one) posts, someone who starts with Dr. DeLong’s second, someone who starts with Dr. DeLong’s first, or someone who only read Henry Farrell’s original post but kept clicking back to see the newer comments?

Explain your answer in terms of the value-added of aggregators and/or hedonic pricing. Best answers will be forwarded to Bill Dudley, the current leader of the FRB of New York, on the off chance he ever agrees to speak in Queens again.

*I refuse to believe that Alan Greenspan is stupid enough to believe the things he’s saying now. Next thing you know, he’ll be claiming that his Ph.D. thesis was so perfect that no one should ever read it, lest they despair of following in his giant footsteps.