Re: Civilized behavior

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2 Nov 1994, Herbert Gintis wrote:

> 	When you say I "find orthodox classical concepts as the sole
> (primary?) useful explanation" I don't know what you mean. I don't
> like classical concepts. I don't even like old concepts. I like new
> concepts. Keynes is old concepts. Game theory is new concepts. Game
> theory and theoretical institutional economics, which is what I do, is
> blowing orthdoxy apart. Spending a lot of time reading the old dead
> masters is my idea of orthodoxy. Who cares what Keynes Really Meant?

What remarkable intellectual arrogance. Economics is not like biology,
where it might make sense to dismiss Galen. The reason to read Keynes,
and Marx, and Ricardo, and the rest of the dead dudes is that they were
very very smart, much smarter than any of us, and had lots of interesting
things to say that *enlighten the present*. They're not sacred texts, but
they're still alive. A philosopher who thought Plato an old fart not
worth reading would be rightly laughed at; economists who dismiss "old
concepts" should be too.

> 	Your lines are too long, so my mail reader garbled them.
> Sorry. The golden age _allowed_ people to indulge in pyramid building
> and other Keynesian infelicities (such as saying that in the long run
> we are all dead, and running up deficits doesn't hurt our
> grandchildren).

If you read the old farts, you'd know that "in the long run we're all
dead" came in a context - a reply to classicals who said that the
depression was a spot of bad weather that would take care of itself in
the long run. Keynes thought that rather cavalier, and that unemployment
in the present was something that had to be dealt with.

Of course, none of us is like Hayek who thought that JMK's homosexuality
had something to do with this quote.

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
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