The Consensus Problem | Sojourners

The Consensus Problem

The folks at NPR's Planet Money podcast have already sort of repented for verbally badgering Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor and high government official who happens to be female, in an interview. But what interviewer Adam Davidson's sort-of apology didn't reexamine is the reason he gave for getting so combative in the first place: Warren's thoughtful and reasonable economic critique differed from that of every other economist he's interviewed in the past months. Faced with someone who was bucking the consensus he'd heard, Davidson temporarily lost it.

You know what else we've done in the recent past by consensus? Created the huge, destructive speculative bubbles