- The 1920-1921 depression demonstrates Keynesians are wrong.
- Keynesians thought there would be a post-war depression.
- Keynes's German preface lauded the Nazis.
- Keynesianism is consumptionism.
- Mises was pro-fascist (there are a lot of things I find reprehensible about that passage in Liberalism, but one thing I don't think is that it suggests he was pro-fascist).
That doesn't exhaust it - it's just a few that interest me. And I added Mises at the end to demonstrate all the Keynes stuff is because that's what interests me - not because I'm trying to put forward a sob story where we're the embattled ones.
Granted, it's not a problem with the internet - it's a problem with how people have interacted with the internet at the dawn of the information age. After all, I could not have produced my counter-arguments to these or promoted them so efficiently on this blog and elsewhere without the internet.
LOL @ the xkcd comic.
ReplyDeleteWould Michael Emmett Brady's efforts count as an example of this? :-P
But in all seriousness, from checking his sources directly, he looks like he knows what he's talking about.
"...it's a problem with how people have interacted with the internet at the dawn of the information age."
ReplyDeleteI disagree. All of the following misconceptions were around long before the internet (indeed, the last two were myths created in the 1870s). There isn't really anything particularly unique about the internet age in that respect; though the speed of transmission has increased.
- Herbert Spencer was into "social Darwinism."
- Aliens built the Egyptian pyramids.
- Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake."
- Prior to Columbus Europeans thought the Earth was flat.
- The Catholic Church forbade human dissection during the Middle Ages.
I could list dozens more things that vast swaths of the population take as the truth, all of which were invented a hundred or more years ago.
Gary you seem to be confused about what I'm saying. I'm not saying there's anything unique about the internet in this respect. I'm not saying myths weren't perpetuated before the internet. Both are ridiculous claims, and neither has been made here, so I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with when you say "I disagree".
ReplyDelete"It is a problem" is generally not translated "the only time this problem has ever come up".
One thing that is new about the internet is the speed/scope of the process - and of course the technology itself. I imagine there are spikes in this sort of thing when new technologies come around (printing press had the same impact, I'm sure).
My comment was eaten. *frak*
ReplyDeleteThat's not what I am getting at.
People do not interact with the internet; people interact with other people; they use the internet as a tool for that purpose. (Shorter version of my eaten comment.)
I'm interacting with the internet right now. And I'm interacting with you, over the internet.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm going to go interact with my refrigerator and my fork and my plate (the nice thing about days not on campus is that I get to snack more easily... the dangerous think about days not on campus is that I get to snack more easily).
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteNot in any sort of social sense, which is what is of interest here. Last I checked mimetic theory does not take into account such things.
Let's put it this way - would this sentence really make any sense in light of what we're talking about?
ReplyDelete"It's a problem with how people have interacted with the pencil and paper at the dawn of the age of Republic of Letters."
Let me know when you finally get a hold on those straws you're grasping for.
ReplyDeleteAnyway - the list of other myths still seems like something of a non-sequitor with regards to the original point. Same with the multiple references to this sort of thing happening in the past.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI always know when you're out of your depth when you into insult land.
They aren't non-sequitors; they illustrate my point. This has nothing to do with the internet; this has to do with how people interact with one another socially and how ideas are spread, and the internet is merely one more tool for that purpose.
I agree, and I would like to add that "follow the money" is a good strategy for getting at, if not the truth, the sincerity.
ReplyDeleteInvisible Backhand
http://www.reddit.com/r/CafeHayek/
Gary -
ReplyDeletere: "I always know when you're out of your depth when you into insult land."
I hate to break it to you, but asserting that your argument has no merit does not constitute an insult. Your character, your person, etc. has not come under assault at all. It rarely does on here. At worst I point out rhetorically frustrating tics you have, and even that I wouldn't call an "insult". The only thing that's come under assault here are your ideas, and that's fair game.
As for your sentence - that sounds a little strange, but I think it's because of the example you chose. For example, I would say that "it's a problem with how people interacted with the printing press" makes sense. It was a new technology that magnified human communication. Many people interacted with it in a way that was incredibly productive at generating and disseminating good knowledge. It also lead to a lot of printing where less responsible people propagated bad ideas that had the air of authority because of the novelty of the medium. The way some people interacted with it was problematic. The way other people interacted with it was good. I don't understand what's bothering you about this.
Regarding Glasner and Krugman, "Market Monetarists" and Keynesians you wrote:
ReplyDelete"There are lots of people who get it who just have a problem with the whole Keynes packaging and perhaps some of the politics that go along with Keynesianism - many of the NGDP targeters are like this. But I read this post by Glasner, and I know he is worried about the same problem as I am, and that he has basically the same solution."
I would be interested to learn more about the problem they have with the whole "the whole Keynes packaging and perhaps some of the politics that go along with Keynesianism." I plan on looking into it myself.
There's a paper by the economist at the St. Louis Fed on the Fisher Equation and Deflation from 2010.
Glasner wrote "the conceptual similarity (if not identity) between the Fisher effect under deflationary expectations and the Keynesian liquidity trap. I think that insight points to a solution of Keynes’s puzzling criticism of the Fisher effect in the General Theory even though he had previously endorsed Fisher’s reasoning in the Treatise on Money."
Is it a similarity or an identity? What was Keynes's criticisms of Fisher? Anyway good catch on your part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_equation
Has a reference to Robert Barro.
I think the interesting thing is that this type of thing still occurs so frequently in spite of how much more is available to the layperson.
ReplyDeleteTo parrot off your 1920-21 example I believe Christina Romer's rather extensive paper on the subject is available for free, if one of the people perpetuating that myth wanted to read some actual scholarship on the subject (Thats not to say I endorse her conclusions, but rather that it is an example of scholarship off the top of my head that disputes said analysis).
To add one from one of my fields of interest- I still encounter the myth that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was virulently anti-civilization from time to time. That could be cleared up by reading what he actually wrote, since it is all available in the public domain.
"Mises was pro-fascist (there are a lot of things I find reprehensible about that passage in Liberalism, but one thing I don't think is that it suggests he was pro-fascist)."
ReplyDeleteYou're letting him off too lightly.
Mises was not a fascist. He obviously preferred and advocated classical liberalism. But when you declare that fascism is a short term solution in Austria and applaud Mussolini for "saving" European civilisation, you can't deny that Mises's writings contain qualified praise for Austrian and Italian fascism.
Captain Kirk and the Trouble with Hayek:
ReplyDeletehttp://i.imgur.com/VYQkc.gif
Invisible Backhand
http://www.reddit.com/r/CafeHayek/
One of the worst things about this is that when someone is dead and all their followers are gone their treatment is disproportionately worse. I suppose because there is no-one to correct the smears.
ReplyDeleteThe treatment of Friedman on the internet and in popular books is far worse than that of Keynes or Mises.
"you can't deny that Mises's writings contain qualified praise for Austrian and Italian fascism..."
ReplyDeleteHow so?
I am not sure what we even mean by Austrian fascism, since Engelbert Dolfuss led a regime that was fundamentally against Hitler's and Mussolini's regimes, that banned the Nazi Party of Austra, and that was more cosmopolitan and more pro-minorities than Mussolini's or Hitler's regimes.
ReplyDeletevon Mises was praising early years Mussolini however, since he clarifies in Omnipotent Government that the word "fascism" is only reserved for Mussolini. Even Hitler ran a government that fundamentally differed from Mussolini's regime, in von Mises' view. Given von Mises' particular usage of the word, he was criticising and also praising with qualification only Italy in 'Liberalism'.
As for Austria, where he served under the Republic, we see a coalition front of various parties and not the one-party system of Mussolini. von Mises participation in that government does not imply willing collusion with Fascists, since the Fatherland Front was not Fascist. Besides, even as a democrat, he was a part of the monarchy's government and even as anti-authoritarian, he was part of the Fatherland Front. Hypocrisy? No, von Mises clarified he was not a nationalist, but a patriot. While a nationalist only fights for a government or a nation-state of allegiance, a patriot works on behalf of fellow people and remains loyal to the country even under an imperfect government that he does not like. All he was doing was continuing to stay in a place to which he was attached, and trying to reform an authoritarian system from within.
I am sure you folks have some reserved admiration for your country. For all the wonks and academics on this blog, such as Daniel or LK, if a government staffed by amoral people came to power in your country, would you refuse to be a part of it, even if it gave the chance to reform a bad system from within.
Daniel,
ReplyDelete"I hate to break it to you, but asserting that your argument has no merit does not constitute an insult. Your character, your person, etc. has not come under assault at all."
Sure it has; as an idiom that is exactly what the term "grasping at straws" is meant to do most of the time. If I tell someone that they are grasping at straws I know that I am insulting them.
"The only thing that's come under assault here are your ideas, and that's fair game."
*rofl*
"As for your sentence - that sounds a little strange, but I think it's because of the example you chose. For example, I would say that "it's a problem with how people interacted with the printing press" makes sense. It was a new technology that magnified human communication. Many people interacted with it in a way that was incredibly productive at generating and disseminating good knowledge. It also lead to a lot of printing where less responsible people propagated bad ideas that had the air of authority because of the novelty of the medium. The way some people interacted with it was problematic. The way other people interacted with it was good. I don't understand what's bothering you about this."
Because a printing press is an inanimate object. How does the printing press lead to anything exactly? Does "it" do something? "It" doesn't do anything except what humans make it do and that is only if they adopt it. We have dozens of examples of technology that existed without wide adoption that were later adopted by other civilizations (sometimes thousands of years later - think here of the aeolipile). Technology is not some independent actor in the stream of history; if human beings fail to use it then it just sits there. This partly explains why predictions about the use of technology, about of technology, etc. are generally so wrong.
Gary - I said you were grasping at straws because I thought your repeated attempts to justify your original comment were weak. That's what the phrase means. Yes, it's a criticism. If you are insulted by criticism you need to grow thicker skin (that is not meant to be an insult either).
ReplyDeletere: "Technology is not some independent actor in the stream of history; if human beings fail to use it then it just sits there."
Right. They have to interact with it for it to do anything. Communication/information technology has some predictable results when people interact with it. There's a flurry of activity - much of it good, some of it not good - all of it a result of interacting with this brand new, exciting, powerful medium.
re: "This partly explains why predictions about the use of technology, about of technology, etc. are generally so wrong."
I would think they are generally wrong because human behavior is very complex and we don't have crystal balls. Perhaps that's more or less what you're saying.
Skipping all the back and forth in the comments and getting back to the xkcd strip... Are you familiar with this old anecdote?
ReplyDeleteThe Blackfeet asked their Chief in autumn if the winter was going to be cold or not. Being prudent, the chief replied that there was always a chance that the winter would be a very cold one. Hence, the members of the village should prepare by collecting wood.
However, being a practical leader, he also decided to contact the National Weather Service to ask, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"
"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. One week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?"
"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"
"Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever."
"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.
The weather man replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy."