[PEN-L:29892] Re: Re: dead economists

[Ben Day <day@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:44 PM 8/26/2002 -0400, Gil Skillman wrote:
> The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are
> right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly
> understood.  Indeed the world is ruled by little else.  Practical men, who
> believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences,
> are usually the slave of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who
> hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic
> scribbler of a few years back.

It always makes me wince to see this quoted over and over. Hasn't the
history of ideas methodology had enough ridicule heaped upon it in the last
half century of historiography to move beyond this? The Keynesian one-liner
seems to have remarkable staying power, despite its untenability, though.

-----Ben