Hayek makes a come back

Schumpeter,

Now you can enroll into his online "University"
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20009560-503544.html

Isn't Glenn Beck the nutcase that has a direct hotline to the White House? (remember that? And people fell for it.)

Regards

Road to Serfdom was one of the most disappointing books I ever read. I knew I wouldn't like it going into it but I at least expected to be challenged. Instead, I was treated to a pretty good, but hardly revolutionary, critique of the contemporary economic thinking of the time and why the specifics of planning wouldn't work. I didn't see much applicability to modern times.

What really disappointed me though was the juvenile linkages between his economic and social theory. This was basically a caricature. He talked a lot of the idea of a collective identity, but showed little evidence for having actually thought about what corporate identities mean, their place in history, or how Germany and the Soviet Union differed in their approach. For him, this was all collectivism. But it ignores that the individual identity was closely linked to state by the centralization process that destroyed the earlier corporate medieval identities, which if they hadn't been destroyed probably would have prevented the formation of the modern concepts behind individualism.

He also ignored that the Soviet Union was seeking to create a new individualist identity that did not recognize any of the corporatist or class identities that preceded it. Only the individual would exist, with a temporary class identity as long as bourgiousie civilization stood. To a large extent, Soviet social policy can be described as a conscious seeking to destroy collectivist identities so that only the individual and society were left, to them Hayek would have been arguing in favor of maintaining not individual identity, but bourgousie identity such as nation and family.

Germany however, wanted to reinforce a nationalist reinvention of earlier corporate identities with sharp distinctions between various forms of corporate identities between groups. Hayek made it sound like existing corporate identities in western society, with strong corporate identities for nation and family at the very least, were individualist, while the very different programs being pursued in both Germany and the Soviet Union were actually collectivist, rather than very different programs with very different directions. In my opinion government has no place in promoting social identities of any kind, whether individualist, coporatist, or collectivist, and will always fail to do so at great cost to society but this doesn't prevent me from thinking that Hayek's linkages between economic and social policy are just as wrong headed as the societies he was criticizing.

That's to not even get into the fact that he was drawing distinctions without real historical context. The similarities between the German economy and Soviet economies don't reflect similar conclusions reached by each path, they represent the Soviet Union's conscious choice to model their economy on the War Economy of WW1 Germany.

I could go on. In short, I think the book works well as a narrow critique of the contemporary economics of the time but as political economy he takes way too many shortcuts and mistakes cosmetic similarities for deeper relations. I can't believe that a book like this remains so popular today, it ignores most of the big, complex, worthwhile questions about society and replaces it with a far too simple framework.

I do have to get around to reading Schumpeter though. Haven't yet and it sounds interesting.

"To continue reading, subscribe now"

Sorry, but I couldn't read the article.

Regards

http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=JEP&volume=24&issue=1

If anyone knows Mr. Beck, do tell him to peruse the articles in that magazine if he'd like to know the impact of the various government interventions in the market.

Most of the economists writing in seem fairly certain that the US MoneyCav stopped the Second Great Depression in its tracks.

@Reido
Now I'm convinced there's a difference between a Martian and a Venusian.

In Oz, we heard a rumour there was/had been/would be a Global Financial Crisis. Global, S*?t, that means us too. Quick, we'd better stimulate.

Rebuild all our schools, re-roof all our houses, .... There, that should do the trick.

Oops, can't pay for it. No worries. The mining companies have been bleeding us dry for eons. There was an era when they were Australian-owned but, now ... ? They're global too, they'll pay.

Now, what was that about a gfc? Oh, it passed us by. Pity, 'cos we were ready for it, when it hit our shores. Oh, you say it's still coming. Double S*?t, we've done our schools and our homes, what else can we do to get ready for the BIG ONE?

And here I was hoping for pictures of Salma...

:(

Whenever I read comments about "stimulus failure", I remember how severely the states have cut their contribution to aggregate demand and the complaints by economists about the low multipliers of the specific spending measures in the federal bill. Then I wonder, "What government stimulus? Has actual stimulus been tried yet?"

A dedicated column in The Economist is good enough for that dead dandy?