During this weekend, we are planning to initiate Operation Panic Time in the Mises Wiki: a concerted push to create at least basic (stub) pages for pretty much every major panic, depression and economic crisis in history. More is always welcome, of course.
Is anyone interested to join the effort? I know many questions about crises of the past have been repeatedly asked in these forums. (We’ll try to look the threads up, please point them out if you know about them). We’d like to build a good entry list with basic information and where to learn more. Some pages already exist in good length, some will be expanded in due time, many need at least a start.
I found an interesting resource praised by many: “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” by Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff
Does anyone happen to own it, or can you recommend other general resources?
I am not qualified to write about historical events but wanted to thank you for your effort in improving the Mises Wiki. Maybe you have an idea for an other complex of topics more participants of this forum could write about? Maybe a sub-forum solely for the wiki would be appropriate since a forum software is more suited to handle discussions than a wiki.
thanks for the kind words. Being ‘qualified’ is a relative quality, being interested in a topic and having the dilligence to find and distill resources to their core makes one qualified for this job in my book.
I would surely welcome a sub-forum for the wiki, if there is sufficient interest.
And lastly, anyone can choose a topic of their own liking… but I have an idea or two to organize something more popular, once this ‘Operation’ is over. One big complex of topics is Intellectual Property - it was touched, but very briefly. It is is a large topic spanning from legal spects, through economic and moral discussion down to practical examples and speculations on business without IP; the pro-IP side needs to be fairly represented as well. I think that could be of interest to many people around here. What do you think?
Good news everyone, the Operation has reached the 20th century!
There are still many panics lacking information (1796, 1866, the Australian banking crisis of 1893, 1896) but such is the fate of stubs. I’m going to have a break, anyone feel free to take a panic or two and make a little summary - there should be enough resources about each of them. Check the Crisis list for possibilities.
I apologize in advance for going off-topic but I think I have an idea how to promote growth in the Mises Wiki. People are sometimes reluctant to start something but when the thing is rolling they are likely to join. Thus I propose an “Operation Stub”. We create as many stubs as possible, primitive definition pages for as many keywords as possible and people can add their knowledge. Newbies have the possibility to look up theese words even if they get “only” a short definition. But this is better than having to stare at a red link, I suppose.
Very nice! I’ll bump it in the coming days to drum up more attention.
In other news, the Depression of 1920-21 has been added to the list, so all pre-war crises are done! What follows are the various crashes etc. from the 70s and later. The advantage is, that
The resources should be much more easily available, and
There should be much more interest in making short pages about them!
So let’s see, if someone takes up the challenge! crosses fingers
And the Operation is herewith officially over.. Check the list of major financial crises in history, there is at least a short summary (stub) for each, and many have more.
Enjoy, next time we can try something more crowd-pleasing.
