Comments on: The Storm Fiend Did Loudly Bray

By: MBH

MBH — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:32:57 +0000

Or at least, that’s probably the best that you can do with Keynes’ framing.

By: MBH

MBH — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:12:30 +0000

The object then would be to re-design social structures to create a rational investment class — which would be open to everyone.

By: MBH

MBH — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:00:51 +0000

Nevermind. That won’t work because — according to Rothbard — Keynes thought the investment class was irrational. Scratch that last thought. Too much dialectic spirit.

By: MBH

MBH — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:00:39 +0000

One more question in the spirit of dialectic libertarianism. Why throw away Keynes? Why not just say that — in his class-based language — the object is to point everyone towards the investment class? In anarchist language — that translates — dissolve the consumerist and government class.

I’m still not convinced that Keynes had bad ideas. I get the sense that Rothbard is interpreting Keynes’ descriptions of the world as if Keynes’ meant them in normative terms.

By: MBH

MBH — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:14:33 +0000

There I go again. My sincerest apologies to Y.

By: MBH

MBH — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:12:51 +0000

My apologies to X.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:48:33 +0000

You have unjustly maligned X; he didn’t think that, plus his name was actually Y!

I’ll have something more helpful to say (hopefully) after I get a chance to listen to the Rothbard clip.

By: MBH

MBH — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:39:56 +0000

Better: is Keynes wrong to talk about a certain form of life — that of consumerism — as robotic?

By: MBH

MBH — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:17:34 +0000

Then just replace my use of “Augustine” with X: the imaginary guy who assumed that only nouns were directly linked to the world.

Why does Rothbard try to scold Keynes for pointing this out?

By: Roderick

Roderick — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:09:09 +0000

Actually Augustine didn’t think that; he points out in De magistro that in a sentence like “If nothing of so great a city remains,” neither “if” nor “nothing” is being used to name an object.