Five years ago, we launched Jackson Hole Economics. Today, with a mix of pride and gratitude, we say farewell.
While it is poignant to close this remarkable chapter in our lives, we are proud of what we have accomplished, and thankful for all our contributors and readers, who have made this journey so meaningful.
Each week, for the past 250 weeks, we have sought to share thoughtful and differing perspectives on the most pressing issues of our time. Driven by the belief that ideas should be free, it has been our honor to share over 1,000 opinion pieces by authors from dozens of countries and with readers from around the world.
Our farewell is only in form, not spirit. Both of us have the itch to contribute to the discussions at the commons; to observe, analyze, and write about the world around us. To remain engaged. Today, however, the demands of careers, family, and countless other obligations require us to take a pause.
Before we let go of Jackson Hole Economics, we’d like to share some observations about what we have learned along the way.
We started Jackson Hole Economics in 2020, during the pandemic, in the final year of Donald Trump’s first term, and before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We were at a unique time in our own lives, taking a break from demanding professional obligations, with one of us starting a young family and the other helping adult children make their way.
As close friends, we shared ideals and fears, hopes and frustrations. We were two souls that cared deeply about one another, and about the world into which we had brought children.
We were both living in the shadows of the Teton Mountains, near Jackson, Wyoming. We came out of the worlds of finance and economics, and for perhaps the first time in our careers felt sufficiently unconstrained by the narrowness of our past experiences, our former titles, and whatever reputations we had established to believe that we could now freely express our views on various controversial topics, while also providing a forum for others to do the same.
We freely borrowed a famous geographical brand in ‘Jackson Hole’ and unambitiously appended it with ‘Economics’ to name our creation Jackson Hole Economics.
That wasn’t entirely disingenuous. Jackson Hole is a place of uniquely wondrous natural beauty. We’ve never met anyone who first arrived in that valley and was not inspired. Not merely motivated to hike a trail, climb a peak, or marvel at wildlife, but overcome with a genuine sense of awe at the grandeur of our natural environment. The sort of reverence that evokes the spirit and challenges the imagination.
And so, we embarked.
We set out to write ourselves, and to engage other writers, with the aim of making sense out of the bewilderment that is modernity. And we partnered with the redoubtable Project Syndicate, a marvelous non-profit creation some 35 years in the making that provides a platform for authors spanning the fields of economics, finance, politics, and the arts to offer short essays accessible for the non-specialist.
We cannot judge ourselves. Only our contributors and readers can say how well we did. But we can say that it was great fun trying.
Writing, as most know, is both extraordinarily difficult and always somewhat elusive. “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master,” as Hemingway memorably put it.
Writing is, after all, a pure act of thinking. Unlike conversation, writing requires the author to contemplate, to choose, and to commit.
Put another way, speaking is easy. Writing is hard.
Sadly, in an age where we are bombarded with endless images and videos, and where anyone can publish and broadcast messages without filter, quality writing is under siege. One of the greatest perils of our times is not mis- or disinformation, but scarcity of concern and respect for the written word.
Even the best writer requires an editor, a task we accepted for one another and for our contributors at Jackson Hole Economics. Good writing is not pouring emotion onto the page. It is harnessing emotion with care, and with respect for editorial guidance.
We fret about the future of writing. Good writing is under assault from the seduction of images and videos. It is degraded by mass authorship oblivious to the precision of language. It is pushed aside by the medium of broadcast conversation, where spontaneity supersedes deliberation.
Language is a public good. It is the shared commons. It is available to all and excludes no one. It is akin to a living organism, evolving as humanity does.
But language, like the oceans or atmosphere encircling us, can also become a dumping ground. Without care, it turns into a cesspool of mind pollution.
If inspiring writing is elusive, bad writing is commonplace. And it is ‘bad’ not because of poor grammar, rotten syntax, and dangling participles, but because it channels bad thinking, which, like a common virus, spreads and infects the thoughts of others. Bad writing is nothing less than a tragedy of the human commons.
We are not naïve. We marvel at modernity, wonder at technological change, and embrace human ingenuity. But we are also concerned residents of earth. We respect the genius of mankind and simultaneously fear for its future. We neither doubt the innate brilliance of our species nor underestimate each person’s capacity for both selflessness and selfishness.
Today, we cannot deny that something has gone awry. That is self-evident when the majority of American voters opt to elect a convicted criminal, a sexual predator, a congenital liar, an avowed imperialist, an admirer of war criminals, a misogynist, and a person of moral depravity as their president.
That is not simply abnormal. That is an immoral act of the electorate.
We don’t pretend to know how it came to this. In dozens of articles written by us and by our fellow Jackson Hole Economics authors we have explored that question more than any other. And we still don’t know the answer.
But if we have learned anything, it is to never give up. We may be ending a chapter called Jackson Hole Economics, but we are not yet finished with the book. In ways large and small, we remain dedicated to the notion that writing matters. That thought matters. That humility matters. And that each of us has a responsibility to engage with the hard issues of our time.
Thank you for being patient with us. For putting up with our missteps. For indulging our exuberance. For your kind and often critical remarks.
Above all, thank you for caring.
