Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and especially not on controversial topics. That combo amounts to trolling, whether you meant it that way or not.
This is extremely debatable. One could argue the exact opposite. I wholeheartedly disagree completely. One could presume you attribute boom and bust to him but stability came after the arrival of his theories.
If you want a dive into what it looked like before look out for a book called Lombard Street.
Infact our problems with trade deficits and imbalances at the moment can be attributed to his defeat by Harry Dexter White in the implementation of Bretton Woods in negotiation (Bancor).
My personal pet peeves with HN is that there is a vocal minority that is completely dismissive of the entire field of economics. Obviously, the field has pluses and minuses, but it's nuts there are people that completely think the whole field is useless or harmful. Economics didn't become a major academic field studied in every college in the country (world even?) by being a bunk science.
> My personal pet peeves with HN is that there is a vocal minority that is completely dismissive of the entire field of economics.
I am mostly dismissive of a lot of economically-motivated political arguments, because a lot of the time the people advancing such arguments are abusing models that are simply not applicable.
> Obviously, the field has pluses and minuses, but it's nuts there are people that completely think the whole field is useless or harmful.
I'm very critical of the "because economics" when money is involved on one side or the other.
When the opaquely-funded Cato institute's neo-libertarian nonsense is being funnelled through here from one of the two accounts that only serve to post their content, then I'll criticise them and be in a minority.
I also think that people cherry picking arguments based on following microeconomics into a realm it isn't really applicable is responsible for some of the most cruel and savage human behaviour we see today. When supply and demand is applied to public services with no regard for taxation and planning and you have bullshit-economics acting as a mask for racists, I think it's right to call it out in the same way that I would call out someone claiming that migrants breathe too much air.
> Economics didn't become a major academic field studied in every college in the country (world even?) by being a bunk science.
Some critics argue that it got there by supporting those with the money to keep it there. If your field is funded by people who have an interest in the direction and implications of that field of study, we start to see problems. People tend to see this more with the pharmaceutical industry than with economics. Ubiquity is not a very good measure for a sign of its quality.
Nonetheless I am actually quite a fan of Keynes. I found it quite tragic to hear about his heart attacks and lack of recovery that seemed to come at such an unfortunate time.
Actually, Keyenes correctly predicted some of the main reasons WWII happened. If more world leaders had listened to him, then we probably could have prevented world war 2.
He predicted that after WWI that the reparations required of Germany would be too burdensome on their economy which would in turn lead to another war.
Marx described the problem, communism tried, and failed to solve it. He didn't create the problem of capital vs labour inequality, though.
(Meanwhile, many of the rights workers have gained over the twentieth century were given to them because of the fear that they will turn to communism.)
You can't do "positive" or "negative" things the The Earth. It is a lump of mass shot through with potential energy and lattice opportunities. Net positives and negatives are subjective assessments by perspectives constrained within a framework. The earth is the super constraint on humanity, at least for the time being. The oxygen rich atmosphere is not objectively better than the nitrogen rich atmosphere, but it is subjectively worse for us.
It's a fools game anyway. Erase the homo sapiens and some other primate gets spared a genocide. I have never understood the value in anthropomorphizing the planet outside of political manipulation.
> If I could only erase one person from history, Keynes would be very close to the top of the list. The damage caused by his malevolent theories has done immeasurable harm to all humankind.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or any dictator that's ever lived seem like better candidates for erasure. At least with them, you'd be saving the lives of the people they each malevolently murdered. You'd have to be clutching narrow-mindedly onto some economic dogma and view Keynes as a heretic to choose him for erasure.
I used to think that, however I would like to point out that Keynes did believe that the gold standard was necessary. What we have in economics now are Neo-Keynesians, who perhaps can be said to have hijacked Keynes.
> however I would like to point out that Keynes did believe that the gold standard was necessary.
Keynes advocating against the reintroduction of the gold standard, and then—when Churchill got it reintroduced anyway—for its abandonment until it was again abandoned.
They usually are working towards proving mathematically (with microfoundations) Keynes theories, so I don't see how they would differ besides the issues were the economic mainstream have shifted.
