Thinking Citizen Blog —John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) “When Facts Change, My Opinion Changes, What Do You Do, Sir?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Tuesday is Economics, Finance, and Business Day
Today’s Topic: John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) “When facts change, my opinion changes, what do you do, sir?”
Last time, Daniel Kahneman (1934–2024). Today, time to re-visit John Maynard Keynes.
What did the great economist say worth remembering? Well, the guy is famous for both his brilliance and his flexibility of mind. The above quote, technically a misattribution, captures his soul. Today, a sampling of actual quotations. Consider this post a continuation of my last post on John Maynard Keynes from 7/21/20 (last link below). Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF OPINION IS A NECESSARY PRELIMINARY TO THE EMANCIPATION OF THE MIND” (caricature of Keynes by David Low, 1934)
1. “Marxian socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion — how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and through them the events of history.”
2. “Comforts and habits let us be ready to forego, but I am not ready for a creed which does not care how much it destroys the liberty and security of daily life, which uses deliberately the weapons of persecution, destruction, and international strife. How can I admire a policy which finds a characteristic expression in spending millions to suborn spies in every family and group at home, and to stir up trouble abroad?” (from “A Short View of Russia,” 1925)
3. “How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever their faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement?”
“THE DIFFICULTY LIES, NOT IN THE NEW IDEAS, BUT IN ESCAPING FROM THE OLD ONES WHICH RAMIFY FOR THOSE BROUGHT UP AS MOST OF US HAVE BEEN, INTO EVERY CORNER OF OUR MINDS” (Below Keynes with his wife Lydia Lopokova, a former Russian ballerina)
1. So what are the old ideas that have you cleaned out of the Augean stables of your own mind?
2. Have you done a mental spring cleaning lately?
3. Is it time?
NB: I must confess I was a Marxist socialist and proud of it from 1967–1979, long after Keynes wrote the above. Long after the horrors of Maoist China and the Cuban tragedy. Human capacity for self-delusion is almost infinite!
WHAT EXPLAINS THE APPEAL OF MARXIAN SOCIALISM EVEN IN 2024? (below, Cain killing Abel, painting by Titian 1543–5)
1. A story as ancient as time: envy, jealousy, hatred.
2. Cain was jealous of his brother Abel because God favoured his brother with a wink.
3. Unfair!
NB: The primacy of gratitude is easily forgotten. Revenge is an easier sell. And the mysteries of the supply/demand curve are confusingly counter-intuitive. Do you remember what the axes are? Do you remember why the supply curve slopes upward to the viewer’s right and the demand curve downward? What do the inexorable mathematical laws of supply and demand mean for the minimum wage and rent control? for long lines and empty shelves? Can those laws be legislated away? How about the laws of gravity? Are the laws of supply and demand and gravity and motion matters of opinion? Are all opinions created equal? Is Marxism creationist economics? or a legitimate “school” of economics that should be taught at places, say, like Harvard? Do you remember the technical name for the force that drives the price in a free market to equilibrium? Do you remember the non-technical term for it?
Reminder: the force is self-interest, aka the “invisible hand.” The laws of supply and demand can be summed up in one line: “Tax it get less of it. Subsidize it get more of it,” Unfortunately, the first law of politics is, as economist Thomas Sowell has noted, to deny the first law of economics.
John Maynard Keynes — Wikiquote
John Maynard Keynes — Wikipedia
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/
https://groups.google.com/g/whatmattersadams/c/jq3gPkUmk14/m/3VBBljyyBAAJ
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY INTO FOURTEEN BOOK-LENGTH PDFs:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN — Please share:
a.) the coolest thing you learned this week related to business, economics, finance.
b.) the coolest thing you learned in your life related to business, economics, finance.
c.) anything at all related to business, economics, finance.
d.) anything at all
