Brains Eat More
A Book Review of Arguing With Zombies
by Ethan Laguna
Zombies eat brains. This happens not necessarily because they are morally deficient but because they are hampered by one remaining cannibalistic impulse: to infect more brains. Generations of people all over the world have come to learn this truth in the past decades, most predominantly, through American popular culture. In Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight For A Better Future, Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate and CUNY Economics Professor par excellence, relates this idea in an almost two-decades-worth collection of opined editorials, which constitutes his career as a columnist for the New York Times. His columns refer to his varied takes on political and economic discourse in the United States post-9/11. Krugman’s primary tone is polemical by nature, and his polemics are woven through each topic of this book; for the most part, he challenges the culmination of movement conservativism with unique economistic adeptness. Yet despite his insistence of a looming zombie apocalypse, he provides a magnetic foil that reorients readers toward a sense of time and space that can contextualize modern American politics. At its core, this book is Krugman’s sincere attempt at political punditry in an era of increasing polarization between the America’s two major parties.
Krugman delivers sober analyses on the workings of apt policies and fit politicians by using his economic talents to spare the reader from pandering opinions. To do this, he writes from the perspective of a researcher turned political pundit. In essence, the summarizing introduction of each chapter follows a format like this: “Here is what is recorded in my written inventory. I have catalogued these zombie ideas. My predictions for the effects of these zombie ideas looked like this. Were these predictions correct? Substantially, yes though not always. When outcomes were not predicted correctly, it was because the zombie reality had become much worse than I had anticipated.” Bearing this in mind, the Nobel laureate’s writings appear most persuasive when he critiques from his own economic perspective. For instance, he sees a pessimistic strain of corruption and cronyism in the Trump administration when he uncovers the former president’s conservative party between the years 2016 and 2018. Furthermore, he believes his column “on the unsung greatness of Nancy Pelosi” strikes the deepest nerve to the Republican intelligentsia. In this column, Krugman rhetorically asks: “What has she achieved,” and then conglobates the bulk of her notable works. Her track record is impressive: she helped turn back former President Bush II’s attempt to privatize Social Security; she was a key figure in passing the Affordable Care Act; she helped enact financial reform after the Great Recession, which helped stabilize the economy and protected many Americans from fraud; she helped pass the Obama stimulus plan; and these acts continue to go on and on (Krugman 2021). He employs rhetoric that persuades by displaying how other men have failed in their office as speakers of the House. The subtle importance of this kind of punditry lies in its awareness of the inherent goodness that can be accomplished in politics, especially by women at its highest levels. Good work can be done to achieve fine ends, he asserts, even with hard-pressing matters on the line.
Readers can snag an understanding of the problems that the American republic incurs through its economic illiteracy just by skimming some of his columns at random, a testament to his economic acumen. Nevertheless, the education that Krugman harnesses is both illuminating and incomplete. For example, in the chapter entitled The Crisis in Economics, he rationalizes that the cost of bad ideas, which set the stage for destructive wrong turns during the financial crisis of 2008, have since been shirked in bad faith by right-wing politicians. This kind of erudite antagonism presents itself in a multitude of forms throughout his writings. Again, in his column entitled Conservatism’s Monstrous Endgame, Krugman definitively claims: “The Democratic Party is a loose coalition of interest groups, but the modern Republican Party is dominated by ‘movement conservatism,’ a monolithic structure held together by big money” (2021). He then chronicles breaches by firms in big money politicking. Krugman’s deconstruction is on point, still readers can glean an error in his inferential application. The author dismisses right-wing billionaires for their corruption; at the same time, he does not champion a constructive course of political action that would prevent suspicious firms in big business from negatively influencing politics in America. According to the joint research of Alexander Fouirnaies and Andrew B. Hall, a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and a professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, respectively, a large percentage of publicly traded firms do not contribute to political campaigns. However, the small amount of firms that do often allocate and reallocate considerable amounts of money through direct and indirect accesses to both policy makers and the legislative procedure (2018). Perhaps these aforementioned corporate interests are to blame for the lack of bipartisan efforts; regardless, the two major political parties of America are committed to long-standing polarization. Krugman unfortunately overlooks this particular effect of crony capitalism. Not only did politicians on both sides of the political spectrum engage in civil discourse to effectively produce meaningful changes in recent memory but also while highlighting their differences (Fouirnaies 2018). Whether it is possible to change corporate behavioral patterns in America remains an unanswered question that looms over his collection of columns. In lieu of answers, he points to social democratic societies in the Nordic countries for anecdotal stories, much the same way that other lesser pundits do
The CUNY professor’s political outlook favors progressive solutions proposed by progressive politicians and socialist trends, which partially describes the left-wing in the United States, due to his insistence that movement conservativism is basically a puppet show. Researchers from differing professional backgrounds, such as MacArthur fellow Alberto R. Salazar, a professor of law at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, make similar claims concerning the fight for a better future. Researchers like Salazar look at how interest groups gain access to committees and how the developing social consciousness of North Americans has guided attempts at improving ethical guidelines in corporate society (2016). Not all warring paths lead to better futures. Notwithstanding, this fight is well-tread territory in economic literature. In fact, throughout his writings, Krugman makes known his suspicions for the enablement of the “zombie ideas” to which he consistently refers. He writes in one essay: “… monetary support from right-wing billionaires is a powerful force propping up zombie ideas — ideas that should have been killed by contrary evidence, but instead keep shambling along, eating people’s brains,” (2021). His belief may not be agreed upon by a political consensus, though this does not make it an invalid opinion nor a controversial belief. Rather, the misstep of this belief lies in its application, which can perhaps be attributed to an oversight in Krugman’s line of reasoning. “Zombie ideas” prevail due to the inactive role of equally-wealthy shareholders, who have short-term goals in America’s greedy corporate culture. So corporations who prop up this greedy culture have their shareholders funding political misconduct. Salazar theorizes how this fatal scenario can be amended: corporations can adopt tougher board oversight; institutional shareholders can be given an active role and can reorient toward the long-term; and the corporate culture can become unfriendly to greed while being friendly to stakeholders such as customers, employees, communities, and suppliers (2016). This would require fundamental changes to existing corporate beliefs in the United States. To this effect, Krugman has his figurative finger on the pulse of zombified shareholder interest, but he does not elaborate on the remedy for this corporate greed: namely, a longer-term value generation for shareholders and the commitment of stakeholder inclusivity (Business Roundtable 2019). Stakeholder schemes have not seen much action since Business Roundtable announced their approach to redefine corporations two years ago; moreover, Krugman spends little to no time writing about how stakeholders can better serve the whole of America than shareholders. This is unfortunate because stakeholders would benefit from the authoritative voice of a pundit like Krugman. He should have spent less time worrying about these interest-driven corporate zombies, for his details beat an already dead horse whose mere existence lacks no coverage.
One Haitian saying goes: Bel anteman pa di paradi. (“A beautiful funeral doesn’t guarantee heaven.”) As such, readers typically associate zombies — those once-buried passengers who were denied a restful sleep — with the living dead or reanimated living beings based on modern imaginings from American popular culture. Edward P. Comentale, the director of the Arts and Humanities Council at Indiana University in Bloomington, outlines the stereotypical script: an aggressive strain of some abnormal virus loses its containment and an unlucky soul, often termed patient-zero, ignites the spread of this virus from within the centralized hub of an urban sprawl (2017). In the categorically-different rural folklore of Haiti, however, dead persons can be physically revived by a bokor’s act of necromancy. The houngan and mambo, who are fetish priests and priestesses of the formal voodoo religion, can then oppose the undue actions of that bokor (Comentale 2017). In the same vein, a pundit such as Krugman should be able to pinpoint the culprits — those zombies who spew zombie ideas — and provide severe commentary on the cruel, tangible realities that these zombified beings foster from inception. This is the antidote. The way of the voodoo priest, it turns out, can also be the way of the Nobel laureate. Krugman’s arguments should win him battles on the side of formalized knowledge and expertise in the long-term even if an irrational invasion from the other side of ill-informed notions can undermine his economic authority in the short-term. With this implication in mind, readers can view the pundit Krugman as less of a prophet of the zombie apocalypse and as more of a spiritual guardian of Haitian folklore. That is the long and the short of it: brains (i.e. reason) can put zombies to death. And a zombie’s death ought to manifest good omens.
Krugman the voodoo-savior-economist shares many meaningful insights and a complex network of economistic thought that interconnect with one another in stunning cohesivity, which is rare to find among contemporary punditries. Even so his whole book can read as a large drawn-out “I told you so”. Based on his expertise, this was likely not his intention. This approach, however, bogs down that his work — at least most of what he entails — props up the fight for a better future. At its best, the book offers perspectives on issues that can clear up the fog caused by disinformation in America’s late capitalistic period; at its worst, the book only offers vague assurance. He writes in truth: “… belief in the magic of tax cuts for the rich is the ultimate zombie. And the truth is that it’s not hard to see why it has proved impossible to kill. After all, think about who benefits from the persistence of the belief that low taxes on the rich are a great thing,” (Krugman 2021). Krugman sincerely believes that he is on the side that is fighting for a better future; thus, he should not assume the position that he is fighting against “zombie ideas” even in the figurative sense of the word. Zombies are dangerous, but they truly are no match to his brain. No matter how rhetorically deceptive, how downright corrupt, or how tyrannical the corporate oppression may seem to his punditry, neither superstition nor hopelessness should be granted precedence in his polemical strategy. Krugman should have affirmed that the American people are leveraging a charge against redeemable human beings who desperately need the voice of the people — that immutable vox populi — to turn a new leaf. As the law professor from Ottawa points out, the tolerance of self-centeredness is not necessarily a universal, cultural norm found in other countries; thus, a culture of intolerance toward excessive corporate greed can and must be founded in America (Salazar 2016). The wealthy folk can choose to revise their own interests. They can allow duly-elected politicians their power to reach across the other side of the aisle. These folk must enable arrangements that bring aid to those stakeholders who suffer. This is the grand possibility: the rich can have a change of heart through no small effort on the behalf of everyday, ordinary Americans.
Political punditry, regardless of economistic adeptness, is a tall task. House Representatives and Senators will fold to corporate interests. This has become more predictable than the weather forecast. As an economic and political forecaster of varying highs and lows, however, Krugman spreads his predictions in the midst of “zombie ideas” with hardly a moral concern for the adherents of his punditry. Consequently, he may lead some people to an understandable form of despair or a tendency to stray from any hopeful path. He may even mean this to be encouraging in the face of a zombie invasion. Yet if the reader assumes — based on Krugman’s vision — that the fight for a better future is a war with “zombie ideas” or “zombies”, then they can conclude that this does not appear to be a future worth fighting for. The reader cannot possibly kill every zombie because even more zombies can form at an exponential rate (and they are allegedly impossible to kill). If the author’s vision of the future retains the present situation, and if it is precisely the present situation that obstructs the path to a better future, then the reader may not be left with “zombies”. They may just be left with a depressed version of themselves and of others. If that is true, then Krugman should retitle his book Arguing With A Depressed Version of Ourselves and of Others.
A nation’s aspirations can be made dormant by the anti-triumphal splash of defeatism and its killing wake. This weary pundit and his fellow compatriots, for better or for worse, are hostage in the same boat with right-wing billionaires in a stormy sea. Corrupt agendas and unsettling tactics have come from these plutocrats with influential power, coercing the American people to abandon their virtues for the sake of political favor or economic gain, but the sun that rises above the blue — the hope for a better future — can outshine this darkened plutocratic abyss if the American peoples’ hearts are kept open and their minds kept intact. A pundit can argue with zombies all night and day; all the same, peoples’ brains can eat zombies for breakfast any time of the year. Zombies eat brains, but brains eat more zombies.
References
Business Roundtable. (2019). Business Roundtable Redefines the Purpose of a Corporation to Promote “An Economy That Serves All Americans.” Businessroundtable.org. https://www.businessroundtable.org/business-roundtable-redefines-the-purpose-of-a-corporation-to-promote-an-economy-that-serves-all-americans
Comentale, E. P. (2017). Zombie Race. In S. J. LAURO (Ed.), Zombie Theory: A Reader (pp. 189–211). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt6zr.17
Fouirnaies, A., & Hall, A. B. (2018). How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees? American Journal of Political Science, 62(1), 132–147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26598755
Krugman, P. R. (2021). Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future. W. W. Norton & Company.
Salazar, A. R., & Raggiunti, J. (2016). Why Does Executive Greed Prevail in the United States and Canada but Not in Japan? The Pattern of Low CEO Pay and High Worker Welfare in Japanese Corporations. The American Journal of Comparative Law, 64(3), 721–744. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26425468
