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Keynes: A Master of Confused and Confusing Prose

September 15, 2017

Keynes: A Master of Confused and Confusing Prose

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[This article is a selection from Where Keynes Went Wrong]:

Paul Samuelson, professor of economics at MIT after World War II and author of a best-selling economics textbook, was one of Keynes’s most ardent American disciples. Here is what he has to say about the latter’s General Theory:

It is a badly written book, poorly organized. . . . It is ar­rogant, bad-tempered, polemical, and not overly gener­ous in its acknowledgements. It abounds in mare’s nests and confusion….

In reading this, one recalls Keynes’s infatuation with paradox. Samuelson, the ardent disciple, is telling us that the master’s book is good because it is bad.

We do not, however, have to take Samuelson’s word about the bad writing, poor organization, and general confusion of The General Theory. Following publication in 1936, many lead­ing economists pointed to the same problems, although some of them hesitated to criticize or quarrel with Keynes and thus chose their words carefully. Frank H. Knight, a leading American econ­omist, complained that it was “inordinately difficult to tell what the author means. . . . The direct contention of the work [also] seems to me quite unsubstantiated.”

Joseph Schumpeter noted Keynes’s “technique of skirting problems by artificial definitions which, tied up with highly specialized assumptions, produce paradoxical-looking tau­tologies. . . .” British economist Hubert Henderson privately stated that: “I have allowed myself to be inhibited for many years . . . by a desire not to quarrel in public with Maynard . . . . But. . . I regard Maynard’s books as a farrago of confused sophis­tication.”

French economist Etienne Mantoux added that the whole thing simply appeared to be “rationalization of a policy … long known to be . . . dear to him.

In The General Theory itself, Keynes has a good word to say about clarity, consistency, and logic.He is quick to pounce on what he considers the errors of others. But he then leads us down a rabbit hole of convolution, needless and misleading jar­gon, mis-statement, confusion, contradiction, unfactuality, and general illogic.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The return of the peasant: or, the history of the world in 10½ blog posts

August 30, 2017

The return of the peasant: or, the history of the world in 10½ blog posts

About a year ago I started publishing on this site various projections for how the future population of southwest England where I live might be able to feed itself substantially on the basis of small-scale, relatively self-reliant ‘peasant’ farming – convincing myself, if no one else, in the process that such a ‘Peasant’s Republic of Wessex’ might be feasible. The notion that a small farm future of this sort may occur and may even be desirable and worth striving for is, I confess, hardly a mainstream political position. And yet it’s one that I’ve come to, for reasons that I’ve documented here over the years. Essentially, I think that humanity faces a series of interlocking ecological, economic, political, cultural and social crises that, if they’re resolvable at all, are most resolvable through a turn to small-scale, predominantly self-reliant farming. Actually, I see this way of life less as a ‘solution’ to modern ‘problems’ as a non-modern way of being that’s intrinsically less problematic. But I’m anxious to avoid easy dualities – not everything about modernity is necessarily bad, and not everything in a turn to small farm agrarianism would necessarily be good. I’ll say more about that in due course.

The main difficulties in achieving a turn to small-scale agrarianism are not agricultural, but social and political. So I now want to turn my attention away from issues of farm scale and structure towards these socio-political issues. As I started thinking about them, I found myself constantly drawn to history and to what the past may be able to teach us about the possible course of a small farm future. I’m still not really sure whether it does have much to teach us. I said above that a small farm future would be non-modern, but that’s not the same as pre-modern: a non-modern small farm future needn’t necessarily much resemble a pre-modern small farm past.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Free Stuff” Isn’t All That It’s Cracked Up to Be

April 8, 2016

“Free Stuff” Isn’t All That It’s Cracked Up to Be 

To my British and American friends who must deal with the socialist nonsense of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, I found this poem. It was written by Rudyard Kipling, the writer most hated by English Socialists in the 40s and an opponent to the interventionist policies implemented by the Labour Party after the second world war:

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “iƒ you don’t ‘work you die.

This poem is not an exaggeration. At the time, it was decreed by the Control of Engagement Order that “no man between the ages of 18 and 50, or woman between the ages of 18 and 40, can change occupations at will. The Minister of Labor has the power to direct such workers to the employment he considers best for the national interest.” This Order was abolished only in March 1950.

At the time, the consequences of “democratic socialism” were disastrous: no food, no housing, no clothing, no fuel. By 1948, rations had fallen well below the wartime average. At the same date, one could read in The New Statesman, which was by no means a virulent opponent of Planning: “You may have social security, but you cannot go into a store and buy two quarts of milk.” To which an English commentator replied: “You not only cannot buy two quarts of milk. You cannot buy one. You can only get two quarts of milk on your doorstep a week. If you try to get more you are apt to land in jail.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Noam Chomsky: How America’s Way of Thinking About the World Naturally Produces Human Catastrophes

August 15, 2015

Noam Chomsky: How America’s Way of Thinking About the World Naturally Produces Human Catastrophes

The scholar talks about the seemingly innocuous elements of our socialization that promote one-world view over another.
 

Tavis: Noam Chomsky is, of course, internationally recognized as one of the world’s most critically engaged public intellectuals. The MIT professor of linguistics has long been an unapologetic critic of both American foreign policy and the ideological role of the mainstream media.

He joins us now from MIT to talk about the seemingly innocuous elements of our socialization that promote one-world view over another. Before we start our conversation, a clip from “The West Wing” that I think will set this conversation up quite nicely.

Tavis: Professor Chomsky, good to have you on this program. Thank you for your time, sir.

Noam Chomsky: Glad to be with you.

[Clip]

Tavis: I think that clip, again, sets up our conversation nicely. Let me just jump right in. Why all these years later is the west better than the east, the north better than the south, Europe better than Africa? These notions continue to persist. Tell me why.

Chomsky: There’s a generalization. We are better than they, whoever we are. So if you look through the whole history of China, one of the most ancient, most developed, civilizations which, in fact, was one of the centers of the world economy as late as the 18th century, China was better than everyone else.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Today’s Anti-Capitalists Ignore the Fundamental Problems of Socialism

July 29, 2015

Today’s Anti-Capitalists Ignore the Fundamental Problems of Socialism

Anti-market and pro-socialist rhetoric is surging in headlines (see also here, here, and here) and popping up more and more on social media feeds. Much of the time, these opponents of markets can’t tell the difference between state-sponsored organizations like the International Monetary Fund and actual markets. But, that doesn’t matter because the articles and memes are often populist and vaguely worded — intentionally framed in such a way to easily deflect uninformed attacks and honest descriptions of what they are actually saying. In the end, they can all be boiled down to one message: socialism works and is better than capitalism.

While most of it comes from the Left, the Right is not innocent, since the Right appears to be primarily concerned with promoting its own version of populism, which apparently does not involve a defense of markets. “Build bigger walls at the border,” for example, is not a sufficient response to “All profits are evil!”

Instead of stooping to this level or simply resorting to “Read Mises!” (a more fitting response), we must show, yet again, that socialism — even under well-meaning political leaders — is impossible and leads to disastrous consequences.

The Necessity of Profits, Prices, and Entrepreneurs

Socialism is the collective ownership (i.e., a state monopoly) of the means of production. It calls for the abolition of private ownership of factors of production. Wages and profits are two parts of the same pie, and socialism says the profit slice should be zero.

The inherent theoretical problems of socialism all emanate from its definition, and not the particulars of its application. However, the supporters of socialism define “collective,” as no exchange of the factors of production. And without exchange, there can be no prices, and without prices there is no way to measure the costs of production.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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