I had just finished reading Bruce Schneier’s blog post “Security in 2020” when further review of blogs I follow pointed me to Chris Alden’s post “Julian Simon, and Paul Krugman, Remembered.” Alden’s post reminisced about a 1998 issue of his magazine, Red Herring, that included articles by two different economists:

Encapsulated in that issue, which was our optimistic appraisal of the future of technology, was a contrast of two very different economists: Paul Krugman and Julian Simon.

Alden takes the time to review the predictions of Paul Krugman in particular, and comes up wanting:

This whole article was supposed to be proof that some economists are overly optimistic, but in retrospect all this did was prove that Krugman is overly negative. Not only were all of his predictions were wrong, but they were wrong in the same direction: they were all too negative.

I can’t help but feel the same way about Schneier’s post. I will put on my calendar ten years from now to review it in hindsight.