I think there is one glaring flaw in the paper wherein pg assumes that nobody would write academic papers if there were no structure of competition necessitating such papers. I have two problems with this:
1) I know several people who do indeed love writing these dry analyses - what they dislike is the academic format. Given freedom of style, I think there are very few topics that you would never find anyone willing to write about. For illustrative purposes, here's a google blog search with the same parameters as his academic search
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&#...
2) I think it's blatantly fallacious to assume that there is nobody in the world that wants to do a particular job. There are certainly garbage men who enjoy their work. Of course, this number doesn't really live up to our need for garbage men. But that's why different jobs pay different amounts. This is why corporate lawyers get paid as much as they do - there's a supply shortage of people who really want to do the job.
He also implies nobody would write a foreword if it wasn't for the prestige. I would be honored to write a foreword for people I admire, I'd do it even if my name wasn't on the book.
1) I know several people who do indeed love writing these dry analyses - what they dislike is the academic format. Given freedom of style, I think there are very few topics that you would never find anyone willing to write about. For illustrative purposes, here's a google blog search with the same parameters as his academic search http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&#...
2) I think it's blatantly fallacious to assume that there is nobody in the world that wants to do a particular job. There are certainly garbage men who enjoy their work. Of course, this number doesn't really live up to our need for garbage men. But that's why different jobs pay different amounts. This is why corporate lawyers get paid as much as they do - there's a supply shortage of people who really want to do the job.