kids v. economists

Brad DeLong delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Sun Feb 25 16:16:13 PST 2001



>- these suggest that he didn't think the mud-dwelling proles were
>the active subjects in his imaginative republic - bad genes, and
>all. In a lot of ways, he sounds like a gentleman aesthete, hostile
>to capitalist values because they undermined the values and social
>power of the aristocracy. Something of a Fabian, I guess, who just
>didn't trust the masses to run things (and from his point of view it
>sometimes seemed like businesspeople were among the vulgar masses).
>
>Doug

The Oinker's utopia of abundance is a utopia of abundance for everyone, who gets to lead the Good Life. Of course, if you are smart or artistically talented, your Good Life is better than everyone else's. The Oinker did think that the proles were probably genetically inferior, the poor dears. On the other hand, Keynes himself clearly valued deep philosophy and deep art as the highest forms of human endeavor, and he wasn't as talented at them as his friends were. So he probably regarded himself as a second-class citizens of Bloomsbury--one of the poor dears, that is.

As a well-educated card-carrying technocrat, I am much more sympathetic to Keynes's distrust of the vulgar masses (including those among the vulgar who set asset prices and make corporate investment decisions). What we want to do is elect and choose competent administrators who share our values and have not our views but, as Edmund Burke says, the views we will have a decade from now. As the Oinker says in "Economic Consequences for Our Grandchildren," economists should be like dentists. Would you rather have a random member of the public pulling your teeth or someone with a D.D.S. degree? I would rather have Alan Blinder (who shares my values) running the Fed than Alan Greenspan (who shares Ayn Rand's values). But I would rather have Alan Greenspan--who is very, very capable indeed--running the Fed than any of a bunch of European central bankers I can think of who are not very capable and who still have Ayn Rand's values...

Brad DeLong



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