Hey guys, back for more wisdom. I was debating in a comments section of an article with a keynesian who professed to hold a ph.d in political economics and regaled Paul's ideas as idiotic, naive and with a cartoonish understanding.
Many things were said but this was the statement I wish I had better ammunition for:
Hayek and Keynes are not so diametrically opposed in their theoretics as it seems you'd like to suggest... and Keynes approach has both the benefit -and- detriment of having to have been applied in real time, often "on the fly," whereas Hayek -- indeed, the entire Austrian school -- was not on the actual field of play, and so enjoyed the relative freedom of pure theorizing.
A comments section is a poor venue for a debate as such and I actually asked him if he would continue the debate here at the mises forum. A thought that made me laugh, he decline via non-response.
Welcome back!
danbeaulieu: Pure academic theorizing -- reified static utopianism -- often trips when it encounters actual reality... as Hayek's did when reality itself did what his models said should be impossible. If Keynes' approach had political advantages, that is as it should be... for economics is always at the service of politics, not the other way around.
I would almost say this sort of projection gets old, if only it weren't so comical. First of all, this is about the quality of argument you'll usually get — from people denouncing Ron Paul (on any subject), as well as Austrian economics — random vague statements about how wrong they are or about how their positions or something that was said doesn't match up with reality...virtually never with any specifics, let alone actual supporting evidence.
That's the first point right there. He needs to clarify what he's talking about. Not doing this is a simply tactic that hits two birds with one stone. First of all, being vague allows the accuser to not have to provide any specifics, which is good because the specifics often don't exist (or they simply don't have any), so blanket generalized statements allow them to make an accusation and have it sound like an argument. It doesn't matter that they didn't really make any argument—they just made a negative statement and provided nothing to back it up—because mud has been slung, and the negative impression has been placed in the mind of any listener. This is largely what people who have no real argument do...sling as much mud as possible and hope some of it sticks.
This is why they often get belligerent and attempt to change the subject (or any number of other logical fallacies), or simply leave the debate when pressed for specifics.
What's more, in this instance we have a case of extreme irony in that what is precisely true about Keynes is projected upon Hayek...claiming reality occured that his models said was impossible...which is not true (which again, is why specifics are important...what reality is he talking about? What models were disproven?), when in fact it is Keynes' ideas (about there being a sort of tradeoff / tug of war existing between unemployment and inflation, and that there must be a give and take, as if one goes up, the other must necessarily come down) that were disproven by the stagflation of the 1970s. Bob Wenzel over at EconomicPolicyJournal has called Krugman out on this very topic of the Hayek/Keynes debate recently...
Paul Krugman Stoops to a New Low
Send in the Psychiatrists: Is Krugman Projecting?
Krugman and DeLong versus Hayek and Mises
Krugman Calls for More Inflation but Disses Those who Bring up Zimbabwe or Weimar
I sent him a couple of links. One from ben Bernanke admitting the fed caused the great depression. One from the Washington state journal that says Ludwig Von Mises predicted the great depression and one from mises. I'll send him the thread you provided as well.
This guy is hopeless though
JJ, do you mean the GD and WW2?
Oh man, I thought you meant that the Gilded Age was laissez faire:
The robber barons and the real Gilded Age
The Gilded Age: a modest revision
No laissez-faire there
The many monopolies