On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Hard to say. Engineers seem to gravitate towards monetary quick fixes, be
> they the gold standard or post-Keynesian credit schemes. They also think
> the system could be run rationally, like a machine, as if you could just
> design your way around greed, violence, and irrationality. Economists are
> sort of like that, in their own way.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Keynes:
<quote>
Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally. A discussion of practical affairs on these lines was really very boring.
<unquote>
Tracked down by the incomparable Ted Winslow (the Peter K. of Keynes :o) to Keynes's collected works, Vol X, p. 449.
It's probably because I'm immature, but I also find something inherently amusing about having Bertrand Russell referred to as "Bertie."
Jeeves