From Angry Bear: "I have a challenge. Can anyone think of a useful insight in macroeconomic theory which isn't clearly stated in "The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money"?"
The most defensible elements of ABCT are in chapter 16, btw.
One comes to mind - he seems to be much more likely to treat labor like a spot market, which is wrong. And as far as I know he ignores job search.
If you mention anything touching public choice I'm going to be forced to conclude you either (1.) haven't read the General Theory, or (2.) have read it but for some reason will only accept a public choice argument if it's clothed in the language, politics, or citations associated with the modern public choice school.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
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Wow. I've only looked at parts of The General Theory before. Given your comment, I decided to take a look at Ch. 16. I was shocked to find out that Keynes seems to have not understood any part of the roundaboutness argument . All of his arguments have nothing to do with the essence of the principle - rambling on about smelly processes or spoiling, all completely irrelevant. What's especially discouraging is that the theorists he was directing his arguments towards had clarified these mistakes countless times. "Sundry" should be changed to "Cursory and Mistaken".
ReplyDeleteYou gotta give us more than that if you want to be taken seriously.
DeleteThe point of talking about "smelly" processes was that there are lots of qualities of the organization of production that may be of some interest but of no relevance to the determination of the volume of output. Keynes put roundaboutness in this category. You say "rambling on" without clarifying what you mean by that for people. What you mean is that Keynes didn't think roundaboutness had much currency, he dismissed it with an analogy, and you got bent out of shape over that so you called it "rambling".
Now - if you really want to have this discussion why don't you tell me what was wrong about his discussion of the impact of changes in the interest rate on the capital structure. As far as I can tell he got that exactly right, and I'm a little confused at why you think he missed the essence of the principle.
You know you will eventually be asked the same question about Mises's Human Action.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be qualified to answer that question.
DeleteDo you think it would really be true of Human Action?
Yes it's true, there are macroeconomic insights in Human Action.
Delete