I think I'm satisfied with the abbreviated version myself, but since this is something of a Keynes promotional blog I felt like I oughta share this longer version of the LSE debate between Skidelsky, Wheldon, Selgin, and Whyte (HT - Ryan Murphy).
Saturday, August 13, 2011
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"I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organising investment..."
ReplyDeleteHistory has shown how just wrong this claim is. Of course I'm not even quite sure why Keynes would make the assumption that the State (or rather, bureaucrats, etc.) would take such a "long view" in the first place (even if we assume here for the sake of argument that the State is any better predictor than the marketplace of what is and what is not a socially useful investment).
And he ignores the truth that democratic institutions, ceteris paribus, hold consistently shorter "planning horizons" that the monarchies his father grew up under. If anything, the GT might make more sense under 19th century European order, but not democracy.
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