An Island Model of Rejuvenation

Ok, so it's not going to get any less rigorous than this post, i don't even have a graph or table. i have a "simple" idea for rejuvenating the moribund discipline of economics. i start with the casual observation that the number of fundamental contributions to economic thinking have been dropping off over the last ten-fifteen years. this heralds a severe crisis for those of us who have any hopes of making a comfortable living in a sterile academic environment.

i propose a start-from-square-one plan: basically, let's pretend that the field of economics has only just been invented and that all the zillions of papers that we know of were never written. so let's stop training students in economics - instead, we let them rediscover all the economic insights of the last two hundred years all by themselves. if all goes well, a generation of untrained economists will produce more interesting insights and ways of thinking about economics than if they had been taught the economics we know. we can also start a couple of journals which will exclusively publish papers by these young 'islanders'.

everybody wins: the island model keeps the game going indefinitely (we can periodically wipe out the past and start over) and meanwhile those of us for whom it's too late can benefit from the reduced competition.