Name: Keynes Hayek
ISBN: 9780393077483

Keynes Hayek

As the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the world into turmoil, two men emerged with competing claims on how to restore balance to economies gone awry. John Maynard Keynes, the mercurial Cambridge economist, believed that government had a duty to spend when others would not. He met his opposite in a little-known Austrian economics professor, Friedrich Hayek, who considered attempts to intervene both pointless and potentially dangerous. The battle lines thus drawn, Keynesian economics would dominate for decades and coincide with an era of unprecedented prosperity, but conservative economists and political leaders would eventually embrace and execute Hayek's contrary vision. From their first face-to-face encounter to the heated arguments between their ardent disciples, Nicholas Wapshott here unearths the contemporary relevance of Keynes and Hayek, as present-day arguments over the virtues of the free market and government intervention rage with the same ferocity as they did in the 1930s.--Publisher description.

What Hacker News says

throw0101bNov 2023

> The fed has successfully redefined the word “inflation” to mean “an increase in cost”, which conveniently leaves room to blame others for rising prices.

This was not the Fed (entirely), but the entire economic profession as a whole as the dismal science learned more about how things worked. This 1997 paper form the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland goes over the development history:

* https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentar...

* PDF: https://www.clevelandfed.org/-/media/project/clevelandfedten...

This was in response to a better understanding, going back to (at least) Keynes' General Theory of 1936, that the quantity theory of money was not very useful in the first place:

> By referring to inflation as a condition of “too much money,” economists were forced to struggle with the operational issue of “how much is too much?” The quantity theory offered a clear answer to that question: Too much money is an in- crease in the money stock that is accom- panied by a rise in the general price level. In other words, an inflated money supply will reveal itself through its effect on the price level. When Keynesian economic theory challenged the direct link between money and the price level, inflation lost its association with money and came to be chiefly under- stood as a condition of prices.

As even the Monetarist's monetarist, Milton Friedman, stated himself (Financial Times (UK), 7 June 2003):

> The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.

Not even during the 1980 heydays of right-wing economic thinking under Thatcher and Reagan did anyone bother with monetarism, certainly Paul Volcker didn't. A few chapters on this in Samuelson Friedman by Nicholas Wapshott:

* https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393285185

(His book Keynes Hayek is also good.)

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throw0101dNov 2024

If I had to pick one: The rise and fall of American growth: the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War by Robert Gordon. The gains that we have made in the (early) 20th century are unlikely to ever be repeated, and progress in many metrics has measurably slowed or even stalled since ~1970s (likely being asymptotic). And while the Internet (classified under the Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) chapters) gave a bump in the 1990s, it's mostly been flat since 2004.

More economic history with Slouching towards Utopia: an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford Delong. More economic ideas stuff in Value(s): building a better world for all by Mark Carney (ran the Banks of Canada and England). Also Waphsott's Keynes Hayek: the clash that defined modern economics and Samuelson Friedman: the battle over the free market.

The currency of politics: the political theory of money from Aristotle to Keynes by Sefan Eich, Money: the true story of a made-up thing by Jacob Goldstein, and The power of gold: the history of an obsession by Peter Bernstein (also his Against the Gods on risk). Show how much of a human construct "money" is, how its meaning changes in different times and places/cultures. Should be required reading by all the 'hard money' folks (gold standard, BTC).

The good life: lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness by Waldinger and Schultz (directors of the Harvard study). If there's one 'magic' thing for health and happiness it seems to be having good relationships (family, friends) in your life.

Religion: what it is, how it works, and why it matters by Christian Smith and Strange rites: new religions for a godless world by Tara Burton. While many think that religion is in decline, the non-material/supernatural things that people believe in has actually shifted. And having beliefs in a super-human entity seems to be the basis of most societies and civilizations. Related, The warfare between science and religion : the idea that wouldn't die, a series of essays; the conflict thesis bunk, both historically and presently.

The origins of Canadian and American political differences by Jason Kaufman, two seemingly-the-same neighbouring countries that have had different development paths when it comes to culture and government. (I'm Canadian.)

Speaking of government: Civil resistance: what everyone needs to know by Erica Chenoweth. Seems violence/force is generally a less effective way to affect change in society than non-violence.

The week: a history of the unnatural rhythms that made us who we are by David Henkin. Seems that while seven days has been around for a long while, making it a really 'hard' structure/schedule around it is a more recent phenomenon than you'd expect.

If you have kids, Karen Le Billon's French kids eat everything (and yours can, too) and Getting to YUM: the 7 secrets of raising eager eaters, her husband is French and she lived there for a year and found many things done better there than US/CA. See also The happiest kids in the world: how Dutch parents help their kids and themselves by doing less by Acosta and Hutchison.

Flying blind: the 737 MAX tragedy and the fall of Boeing by Peter Robison is an HN favourite. While we get a lot of engineer vs MBA comments, I think the bigger problem (associated with the MBA-types) is financialization, i.e., returns over everything else. Having non-engineers/MBAs can be 'fine' also long as trying to squeeze blood/money from a stone at the cost of everything else.

Some philosophy with Alasdair C. MacIntyre: After Virtue is a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

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littlestymaarDec 2017

> In my book, manipulation by government for political or plain self-interest reasons counts as compromising.

The problem is that «manipulation» by governments as you call it, is part of its toolkit, and a lot of empirical evidences shows that the cost of doing nothing when something should have been done is orders of magnitude worse than «manipulation for political reasons». Take for instance Germany is the 1920s: the hyper-inflation during the early 20s was a huge mess, but it had much lower consequences than the inaction after the crisis of 1929 with a huge economic slowdown caused by deflation.

A government not controlling its currency is catastrophic when something go wrong, you can see what happened to southern Europe during the last decade. I'm not saying the Quantitative Easing is the best way to go out of a financial crisis, but for sure it's better than doing nothing and waiting for the market to correct itself.[1]

Imo, people afraid of the Government and wanting to drastically limit its power are a bit like anti-vaxer: vaccines can indeed cause problems (and they do, a few people have dramatic secondary effects, like with any medicine) and must be controlled, but wanting to abolish them is suicidal. The anti-state psychology was understandable during the cold war, as people had a good example of what can happen when a government has total power on the economy and society as a whole, yet this irrational fear is really polluting the debate when it comes to defining the economic policies.

[1]: scientific evidences are hard to find in Economics, but this particular topic was the point of the Keynes / Hayek controversy during the great depression and, on this particular topic, Keynes proved right.

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catwellDec 2016

I finished Keynes, Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics (Nicholas Wapshott), started in 2015.

I read:

* Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders (David Marquet)

* Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach To Fun on the Job (Dennis Bakke)

* Ne vous résignez pas ! (Bruno Le Maire - French politician)

* Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (Michael Hiltzik)

* Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (Dan Lyons)

* Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Scott Berkun)

* Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (Thomas Sowell)

* The Success of Open Source (Steve Weber)

* Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Cathy O'Neil)

* Programming in Lua (fourth edition - I read every edition)

I started reading (and will probably finish by the end of the year) Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension (Samuel Arbesman).

As for what I recommend, it depends what you are into, but I would say I really enjoyed Making Things Happen, which is a must if you have any kind of project management to do, and Basic Economics.

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