Alright, this blog is MY little scrapbook of stuff. Reblogging or reposting somebody else’s stuff is not what it’s about. But SOMETIMES, it just has to be done. This economic commentary from Fearsome Comrade has so much wrapped up in it. I just couldn’t stop sayin’ “right on!”.
I always find it amusing when some sociology graduate student headed straight for a career in retail describes himself as a “committed Keynesian,” as though how economies work were a matter of heartfelt commitment. You might as well describe yourself as a “committed Ptolemaist.” Simply put, Keynes was wrong. Not wrong the way Peter Singer is wrong about ethics, but the way Hippocrates was wrong about disease. He was wrong in the sense that after decades of putting his theories to the test, his prescriptions have at worst aggravated the ills they were intended to cure and at best failed to accomplish anything. Moreover, the simplified, caricatured version of Keynes’ theories that actually gets implemented in federal policy (at least in the West) is even more wrong. Keynes’ General Theory is certainly important from a historical view, as it provided the rational justification for greedy politicians’ pursuit of expanded power in the Anglo-influenced world, but from the standpoint of economics, it ought to be consigned the same place that Aristotle’s Physics is in the world of modern science. In time, it probably will be.
How you wish the millions upon millions of daily human interactions would work is a matter of ideology, but that’s not economics. How they actually do work is a matter of theory and observation, and that’s what economics is about. It’s not an exact science, but it’s more of a science than a religion.