Hayek on Keynes

Friedrich Hayek discusses Keynes and his influence on a Britain facing economic difficulties.

For Hayek's critiques of keynesianism see his book; A Tiger by the Tail: The Keynesian Legacy of Inflation which can be found in PDF at

https://sites.google.com/site/malthus0splace/home/hayek/pure-economics

The Pure Theory of Capital can be found at the same above link as Tiger by the Tail.

This is an excerpt from a longer interview which can be found here

http://www.vimeo.com/4063439

Category:

News & Politics

[BarringtonDailey]

I read his book, very cool. Can somone subtitle this - the conepts he is trying to get accross are not easy, and the poor sound quality, combined with his accent make it hard to hear what he is saying.

[Malthus0]

@BarringtonDailey There are subtitles, you have to press the 'CC' button.

[Alias828]

@BarringtonDailey He has written more than 1 book. 

[ImhoffInstruments]

Hayek was such a badass, it's sad his ideas weren't given the respect they deserved until near the end of his life. Austrian economic theory can save the American economy, provided we're willing to allow it to exist.

[DaveC86]

@pittland44

yes well the real problem is trying to reduce all of human action into a graph, or a few charts and models.. it's impossible, maths has almost zero relevance in economics, besides basic arithmetic.. economics is a social science, the study of human action!

[pittland44]

@DaveC86 The real problem with Keynes is what I refer to as "The myth of central planning." The idea that you can quantify an entire economy in some class room or government office, and that from that you can come up with qualitative controls for an economy. It literally can not happen, the failure of groups such as LTCM demonstrates that much. But Keynes, like so many jackasses before and since, believed that people could control, and also understand, a whole economy.

[loveisamistake]

@Zimnyification It's because he's Austrian and went to school with Moses. Subtitles help a lot. Click "CC" (Closed Captioning)

[pittland44]

@DaveC86 Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with Keynes (or the totality of his writings) to say one way or another what my opinion is of his writings. What did jump off the page at me is that his mathematics (which I do understand) is bad. As the old computer science anagram says: GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. If his mathematical assumptions are bad, then everything else he puts out will be bad. It also doesn't surprise me that he rejects the role of the entrepreneur. Please bear with me.

[DaveC86]

His bad math is what bothers you? What about his ignorance of the role of the entrepreneur? The theory of perfect competition entirely eliminates any role for entrepreneurs. By ignoring entrepreneurship he can simply reduce economic phenomena to mathematics and graphs. Since the traits of alertness, energy, and enthusiasm do not lend themselves readily to mathematics and graphing they are neglected by Keyens and others. Here we have a "method" displacing real-world events, is this desirable?

[Zimnyification]

@macroman52 So now that you've read both, what's your take?

[Zimnyification]

I don't know if it's because he was old or what, but he sounds weird. Kind of makes me irritated and pissed off. I kind of want to punch him in the face.

His book's good though.