NationStates Jolt Archive

Ignore the website the link is from (god-damned opportunistic Marxists), the text is the important thing, and I vouch for its correctness.

Chapter 24 of Keynes' General Theory (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch24.htm)

Read, then tell me what you think.

And if that catches on, I'll tell you what Capitalism has to do with not being allowed to smear sh*t all over the place...:D

Let us stop for a moment to remind ourselves what these advantages are. They are partly advantages of efficiency — the advantages of decentralisation and of the play of self-interest. The advantage to efficiency of the decentralisation of decisions and of individual responsibility is even greater, perhaps, than the nineteenth century supposed; and the reaction against the appeal to self-interest may have gone too far. But, above all, individualism, if it can be purged of its defects and its abuses, is the best safeguard of personal liberty in the sense that, compared with any other system, it greatly widens the field for the exercise of personal choice. It is also the best safeguard of the variety of life, which emerges precisely from this extended field of personal choice, and the loss of which is the greatest of all the losses of the homogeneous or totalitarian state. For this variety preserves the traditions which embody the most secure and successful choices of former generations; it colours the present with the diversification of its fancy; and, being the handmaid of experiment as well as of tradition and of fancy, it is the most powerful instrument to better the future.

And thinking that I am perhaps a little over-ambitious in expecting people to read it all just because I tell them to, I'll add this nice quote as well for your convenience.
For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth, but not for such large disparities as exist today. There are valuable human activities which require the motive of money-making and the environment of private wealth-ownership for their full fruition. Moreover, dangerous human proclivities can be canalised into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunities for money-making and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way, may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self-aggrandisement. It is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens; and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative...
I think I'm turning into a Keynesian...

Besides the Austrians, who thinks that Keynes was a socialist? :p [/megh]

I have yet to read his General Theory, but perhaps I will now.

Besides the Austrians, who thinks that Keynes was a socialist?
Well, this thread is probably directed at that kind of people.

I think if you read Keynes you get the impression that he is an individualist, that he does think the Government should keep out of most things - but also that the economy cannot run on laissez-faire alone since the assumptions that make it work theoretically are false.
There is no rational individual (and maybe later I'll come back on the whole Freudian interpretation of money and capitalism...), and ultimately the reason for unemployment is often simply a lack of investment.
And investment can be influenced by interest rates, or by public investment to boost output. Simple as that.

As for "the state" - I think I made it clear previously that that isn't the same as the government, and that Keynes believed that large firms, especially when they serve some public purpose (like railways etc) would eventually start caring more about their constituency than about their profits, and "socialise". Maybe he was wrong, but that kind of thing prevented him from advocating nationalisations and stuff.

Bump!

But, above all, individualism ... is the best safeguard of personal liberty in the sense that, compared with any other system, it greatly widens the field for the exercise of personal choice
You're an anarchist then? Don't worry, everyone are. The only possible defence against it, is the false nothion that anarchy=chaos ;)

I like Keynes and I'm no socialist.

That doesn't really mean much to most of you...

You're an anarchist then? Don't worry, everyone are. The only possible defence against it, is the false nothion that anarchy=chaos ;)
Not necessarily. That quote was from Keynes, and Keynes was also of the opinion that everyone left to their own devices could sometimes fall short of what is required.
For him that was primarily the power of the rich people to set interest too high - causing investment to fall short, and the general irrationality of investment.

I personally would also add externalities, and the both of us acknowledge the existence of public goods...

I believe the view that Keynes was a socialist comes partially from his followers who were much more dogmatic than he was. That's why I don't denounce him completely because his ideas and theories can be useful.

With a broad definition of 'socialist' one may consider Keynes to be one, but it's not particularly descriptive. The state part, however, belongs in any description of the man. If he was nothing else, he was a statist. I have nothing good to say about the man and so much bad that I wouldn't know where to start. He was an elitist crackpot who excelled at telling government officials just what they wanted to hear.

Check out Hans Herman Hoppe on Keynes (http://www.mises.org/etexts/hoppekeynes.pdf).

If he was nothing else, he was a statist. I have nothing good to say about the man and so much bad that I wouldn't know where to start. He was an elitist crackpot who excelled at telling government officials just what they wanted to hear.
Did you read the chapter?

And besides, the state includes such things as art, tradition and culture, and state institutions include institutions that foster just that. There's a difference between that and "big Government" which I have yet to see anyone actually promote. Apart maybe from Soviet planners and Fascists without theoretical grounding.

And then, you think the second-rate wannabe arguments of an Austrian are going to convince me? Like I haven't heard them all before?
Anarcho-Capitalism not only is yet to be tried, but it also lacks any practical relevance whatsoever - besides the obvious flaws in it if you assume away the perfectly rational individual and allow for people to act in ways which are not in everyone's best interest.
I can live with libertarians yelling profanities at the tax office, but when people start advocating abaondoning democracy, then the buck stops right there.

Keynes was no socialist. In fact, I think that his ideas can be used by all political ideaologies. However, he certainly has halting faith in the free market, and I think that his ideas are so pervasive that the kind of faith I describe just doesn't exist these days.

Did you read the chapter?

And besides, the state includes such things as art, tradition and culture, and state institutions include institutions that foster just that. There's a difference between that and "big Government" which I have yet to see anyone actually promote. Apart maybe from Soviet planners and Fascists without theoretical grounding.

And then, you think the second-rate wannabe arguments of an Austrian are going to convince me? Like I haven't heard them all before?
Anarcho-Capitalism not only is yet to be tried, but it also lacks any practical relevance whatsoever - besides the obvious flaws in it if you assume away the perfectly rational individual and allow for people to act in ways which are not in everyone's best interest.
I can live with libertarians yelling profanities at the tax office, but when people start advocating abaondoning democracy, then the buck stops right there.
Sweet mother of Myrth! We agree on more than I thought, omitting a few things. He followed the idea of expediency, I would necessarily label him a personal fan of big government. That has more to do with his followers. I 'm a more gradualist libertarian, but I know that there will not be an ancapistan any time soon nor a libertarian state within my lifetime. I work for the long-run. I would trust Hoppe with economics any more than I would Rothbard.

Did you read the chapter?

And besides, the state includes such things as art, tradition and culture, and state institutions include institutions that foster just that. There's a difference between that and "big Government" which I have yet to see anyone actually promote. Apart maybe from Soviet planners and Fascists without theoretical grounding.I read what you quoted. No definition of "the state" that I'm aware of includes art, tradition, and culture.


And then, you think the second-rate wannabe arguments of an Austrian are going to convince me? Like I haven't heard them all before?
I just thought I'd include the perspective of someone I respect. I am not an the expert that Hoppe is. I've not studied Keynes directly. I've only been subject to the arguments of Austrians and friends of Austrians like Hoppe, Rothbard, Mises, Robert Higgs, and Lew Rockwell. So any argument I can provide is, at best, a second-rate wannabe argument from your perspective.

I honestly cannot why Keynes was ever taken seriously. The notion that unemployment is a problem caused by too little investment is silly, but the idea that the alleged problem can be solved by the state artifically lowering the interest rate is downright idiotic. Add to that the fact that Keynesian theory has had to be modified several times since the man's death and you've got nothing but a steaming pile of shit as far as I can tell. Had Keynes been correct, stagflation never would've happend.

Keynes was a statist because he absurdly believed that it is government that behaves most rational, while consumers are robots and investors are irrational fools.


Anarcho-Capitalism not only is yet to be tried, but it also lacks any practical relevance whatsoever...
Is that the debate we're having?

I read what you quoted. No definition of "the state" that I'm aware of includes art, tradition, and culture.


I just thought I'd include the perspective of someone I respect. I am not an the expert that Hoppe is. I've not studied Keynes directly. I've only been subject to the arguments of Austrians and friends of Austrians like Hoppe, Rothbard, Mises, Robert Higgs, and Lew Rockwell. So any argument I can provide is, at best, a second-rate wannabe argument from your perspective.

I was the same way, but then I discovered an economics textbook.
The notion that unemployment is a problem caused by too little investment is silly, but the idea that the alleged problem can be solved by the state artifically lowering the interest rate is downright idiotic.
To a degree, his theory of too little investment and unemployment is true to a degree. Keynes believed in targetting interest rates and it does have affects, it's not completely useless. This is related to his monetary policy.

Keynes was a statist because he absurdly believed that it is government that behaves most rational, while consumers are robots and investors are irrational fools.
Have you any proof of this?

The notion that unemployment is a problem caused by too little investment is silly, but the idea that the alleged problem can be solved by the state artifically lowering the interest rate is downright idiotic.

You need to understand the context of his statement. He was joining the discourse at the time on the economic downturn we now recongnize as the Great Depression. At the time very few people were looking at the stock market crash, and other failures of investment, as part of the problem. So Keynes in the General Theory approached the problem in a way that said ignore consumers and ignore the government, and I will still show how the recent problems have been caused by investment.

I don't think he was trying to say that only a downturn in investment causes unemployment but that it could do so. Which at the time was a fairly radical idea. At least in the context of the debate he joined.

You need to understand the context of his statement. He was joining the discourse at the time on the economic downturn we now recongnize as the Great Depression. At the time very few people were looking at the stock market crash, and other failures of investment, as part of the problem. So Keynes in the General Theory approached the problem in a way that said ignore consumers and ignore the government, and I will still show how the recent problems have been caused by investment.

I don't think he was trying to say that only a downturn in investment causes unemployment but that it could do so. Which at the time was a fairly radical idea. At least in the context of the debate he joined.
You quoted Neo Kervoskia and attributed it to me. Please fix this before someone is horribly confused.

I read what you quoted. No definition of "the state" that I'm aware of includes art, tradition, and culture.
Well, Keynes's does (and you really should take a few minutes and read the whole chapter)...
By the way, the man was a homosexual for half his life, then switched back, he was a huge fan of art, music and the like - and one of the most successful investment consultants ever to have lived.
And he developed several new methods in mathematics on the side.

I honestly cannot why Keynes was ever taken seriously. The notion that unemployment is a problem caused by too little investment is silly, but the idea that the alleged problem can be solved by the state artifically lowering the interest rate is downright idiotic.
Well, if that is true, then it's been working quite well for many years now, hasn't it.

Add to that the fact that Keynesian theory has had to be modified several times since the man's death and you've got nothing but a steaming pile of shit as far as I can tell. Had Keynes been correct, stagflation never would've happend.
He was forced to be pedantic about details because Hayek was at the time criticising everyone and everything about such details. That just first.
Second, Stagflation is actually a tiny dent in the model. He had not seen supply shocks as such in his time, he had seen however investment fluctutation for no apparent reason, as well consumer confidence causing the great depression. He did not greatly talk about inflation, and seeing his time and the only possible data he had available indicated the things he wrote.
Of course the future forced things to be changed here and there, and supply side issues were added as well into standard economic modelling. But Keynes would have done the same thing, had he not been killed so young. He was not dogmatic about things, unlike Mises and Hayek, or even Friedman.
In short, any idea that stagflation somehow disproves Keynes comes from the fact that people never bothered to read the General Theory and accounted for the time and the data it was written in, they just read an Econ-Textbook and started criticising squiggly lines on a piece of paper.

Keynes was a statist because he absurdly believed that it is government that behaves most rational, while consumers are robots and investors are irrational fools.
The idea is that the Government reflects the wishes and concerns of the majority of people, that's true.
The idea that real investors actually make a good case for the assumption that people act rationally is ridiculous though. They "satisfice", they act as well as they can, and some are not very good at it, and others still are simply constrained by the lack of knowledge they have.
Read Bruno Frey if you want to see how people really behave, outside economics textbooks.

I do hope you guys have access to Academic Journals from your Uni or school or something, because you really do have to read this:
E.G. Winslow. 1986. Keynes and Freud: Keynes's Account of the "Animal Spirits" of Capitalism. Social Research, 53(4).

Fixed the quotation.

Add to that the fact that Keynesian theory has had to be modified several times since the man's death and you've got nothing but a steaming pile of shit as far as I can tell. Had Keynes been correct, stagflation never would've happend.

Don't you think you are going a bit far here? Keynes' work has been revised, but I wouldn't call it a "steaming pile of shit." Not only is Neo Keynesianism a valid theory of economic interpretation, it continues to add to the field as a whole and not just it's particular ideological niche. The ISLM model, explanation of price rigidity, etc have added to our greater understanding of the market. Whereas I only needed to read the first sentence of the article you linked to realize the quality of the economist writing it.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y9/MAR-Peeves/bump.gif

I've concluded two things from these quotes:

Capitalism = Democracy, first quote. It cannot exist without it. But then he goes to say the second part, which contradicts it:

Keynes predicted the First and Second world wars, due to government screwing with the economy, and I believe that I've already linked this quote to you, its really great. I love this source.

Economic and physical wealth = GENOCIDE and WAR ON MASSIVE SCALE

Now, linky, linky....

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_power4.html