08 Jul 2013

How to Identify the Good Guys

DeLong 37 Comments

Brad DeLong writes: “A certain asymmetry here, by which, IMHO, you can tell the good guys who respect argument and evidence from the bad guys who do not…”

Then he goes on to show that Keynes and Paul Samuelson showed much more respect for Hayek’s contributions, than vice versa.

Using this criterion, we should look around at economists today, and judge their goodness by the sympathy and precision with which they treat their opponents.

For example, if someone summarized Hayek’s position by saying “Derp. No-class. Derp.” it would be a no-brainer. There are other examples I could give, but I want to leave a margin for subtlety.

37 Responses to “How to Identify the Good Guys”

  1. MG says:

    Yep. Samuelson was a paragon of intellectual kindness and respect. His comments on the passing of Milton Friedman should make DeLong proud.

  2. Teqzilla says:

    The thing that annoyed me most about reading the Delong post was not the colossal hypocrisy, which i’m totally desensitised to by this point, but his cutesy use of “Derp”. Considering how obviously both Krugman and Delong want to be one of the cool kids they should try harder to keep on top of the lingo. Derp is an 8 year old South park reference and Krugman still does that annoying “like, um, no” thing that was gratingly old hat by 2006. Did a quick google search of Delong’s blog and didn’t discover an example of “Cool story, bro” but it cant be long now before it makes its appearance

    • DD says:

      I think he got that from Noah Smith. He loves saying “derp”

      • Wonks Anonymous says:

        Noah has come up with a new definition of “derp”, which is not synonymous with its use in South Park. I find that annoying.

    • MJGreen says:

      In a few years, DeLong will use nothing but cat pictures to explain why Rand Paul would be a terrible president.

  3. Bob Roddis says:

    DeLong: My view is that Money and Credit is very readable–compulsively readable, in fact: I have just spent two and a half hours telling myself “it’s OK; I will just read one more page…”. But it is only readable in a rhetorical-excess-train-wreck mode, for it is also totally bats— insane.

    From “WHEN REACTIONARY GOLDBUG AUSTRIAN PLUMBER-ECONOMISTS ATTACK!!”

    http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/12/when-reactionar.html

  4. Bob Roddis says:

    It’s a miracle. DeLong posted my comment of Hayek saying nasty things about Keynesian (which he thinks proves his point).

    Of course, that quote is all that any lay person needs to know about Keynes and Keynesianism.

    http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/07/john-maynard-keynes-on-friedrich-von-hayek-and-friedrich-von-hayek-on-john-maynard-keynes.html#comment-6a00e551f080038834019104259019970c

  5. Brad DeLong says:

    Silly Murphy.

    When I write about Hayek’s *arguments* about the value of the price system, I write things like: “Friedrich Hayek, after all, won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for making many of [James] Scott’s key arguments: that the bureaucratic planner with a map does not know best, and can not move humans and their lives around the territory as if on a chessboard to create utopia; that the local, practical knowledge possessed by the person-on-the-spot is important; that the locus of decision-making must remain with those who have the craft to understand the situation; that any system that functions at all must create and maintain a space for those on the spot to use their local, practical knowledge (even if the hierarchs of the system pretend not to notice this flexibility). These key arguments are well known: they are the core of the Austrian economists’ critique of central planning…. This is a compliment to the Austrians: their arguments are powerful and applicable, and it is striking that others looking at the same problem come up with their conclusions…”

    It is when I write about Hayek the grouchy and corrupt intellectual trickster that I write: “Derp. No-class. Derp.”

    I know that you can be less stupid than this post makes you look. Please try.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      But in this post I was just writing about the grouchy blogger DeLong who calls me “silly” and “stupid.” When I’m discussing your arguments

    • Ken B says:

      Just to clarify. This is how you defend yourself from charges of rudeness?

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Hey cool, we’re playing the cherry picking quotes game? OK…

      “A short, plump, heavy-moustached Jew, well groomed, well kept, but with an unsteady, roving eye, and his shoulders a little bent with instinctive deprecation….Lloyd George had always hated him and despised him; and now saw in a twinkling that he could kill him. Women and children were starving, he cried, and here was M. Klotz prating and prating of his “goold.” He leant forward and with a gesture of his hands indicated to everyone the image of a hideous Jew clutching a money bag. His eyes flashed and the words came out with a contempt so violent that he seemed almost to be spitting at him. The anti-Semitism, not far below the surface in such an assemblage as that one, was up in the heart of everyone. Everyone looked at Klotz with a momentary contempt and hatred; the poor man was bent over his seat, visibly cowering. We hardly knew what Lloyd George was saying, but the words “goold” and Klotz were repeated, and each time with exaggerated contempt.” – Keynes, describing his admiration of Lloyd George’s attack on the (Jewish) French Finance Minister Louis-Lucien Klotz, who had tried to squeeze the defeated Germans for more gold in exchange for relieving the Allied food blockade.

      Afterwords, Keynes reflected on his witnessing of Lloyd’s attack: “Never have I more admired his extraordinary powers.”

      Classy guy that Keynes.

      ——————-

      “[The General Theory] is a badly written book; poorly organized. . . .It abounds in mares’ nests of confusions. . . .I think I am giving away no secrets when I solemnly aver—upon the basis of vivid personal recollection—that no one else in Cambridge, Massachusetts, really knew what it was all about for some twelve to eighteen months after publication.” – Paul Samuelson, 1948.

      Classy guy that Samuelson.

      ——————

      “How can I adopt such a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia who . . . are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?” – Keynes on Soviet Russia

      (I actually enjoy that particular low class burn). Therefore, I’ll refrain from calling it low class. I mean, after all, how can lavishing heavy praise on the upper class, be entertained as a low class comment?

      ——————–

      And this final one below, is so incredibly high class, so dutibound and respectful of our social engineering overlords, that it would make every modern day Keynesian feel proud:

      “By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

      That’s brandy and housecoat class.

      • Daniel Kuehn says:

        Keynes didn’t hate Jews for being Jews or anything, but there were obvious prejudices he held that aren’t admirable.

        But that last one is misleading… that line comes in a passage paraphrasing Lenin and criticizing the practice!

        I don’t get the point of including the Samuelson quote. Samuelson didn’t like the book – didn’t think it was well written. So? Who cares?

        The problem with Hayek there is that he is quite opportunistically twisting Keynes’s claims. Samuelson doesn’t do that.

        • Bob Roddis says:

          Of course it was Keynes, with malice aforethought, who concocted an economic “theory” based upon the surreptitious theft of purchasing power from oblivious victims whom he clearly despised and dressed it up with pseudo-scientific jargon that only fools and/or scoundrels could believe.

          “By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

          My goodness. Where did I ever get that idea?

        • Lord Keynes says:

          Funny how Hayek’s latent anti-Semitism is forgotten when these obviously disgraceful Keynes quotes are dragged out:

          HAYEK: I don’t have many strong dislikes. I admit that as a teacher—I have no racial prejudices in general—but there were certain types, and conspicuous among them the Near Eastern populations, which I still dislike because they are fundamentally dishonest. And I must say dishonesty is a thing I intensely dislike. It was a type which, in my childhood in Austria, was described as Levantine, typical of the people of the eastern Mediterranean. But I encountered it later, and I have a profound dislike for the typical Indian students at the London School of Economics, which I admit are all one type—Bengali moneylender sons. They are to me a detestable type, I admit, but not with any racial feeling. I have found a little of the same amongst the Egyptians —basically a lack of honesty in them.
          (Nobel Prize-Winning Economist: Friedrich A. von Hayek, Regents of the University of California, 1983. p. 490).

          What the..?? Certain types … conspicuous among them the Near Eastern populations and allegedly “fundamentally dishonest”?

          Not to mention the bigotry directed at Indians etc.

          • Ken B says:

            “Bigotry”? There is a difference between bigotry and an acknowledged prejudice. They are very different things indeed.

            • Lord Keynes says:

              big·ot
              noun \ˈbi-gət\
              : a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

              The definition of bigot does not require that the person holds their opinions secret or does not “acknowledge” their prejudice.

              I don’t see what you’re talking about Ken B.

              • Ken B says:

                LK, your definition includes *precisely* the point I am making!!

                “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his …prejudices”

                The key word there is devoted. See my longer response to DK.

                I guess you guys see no difference between someone in AA and a stumbling drunk?

            • Daniel Kuehn says:

              Dude what has happened to you lately Ken? Trying to see daylight between prejudice and bigotry? This is an MF move, not becoming of you.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from you, thank you very much.

                I’ll consider it a reinforcement that I am on the right track.

              • Ken B says:

                Huh? There’s a big difference Daniel. Bigotry implies a full embrace of your prejudices, but acknowledging you have prejudices is important in overcoming them. I have for instance a negative reaction to one particular speech pattern. It’s not a voluntary thing or a rational thing, it’s a gut emotional response, just a reaction I feel. I need to be aware of it to not let it influence how I deal with people who exhibit it.
                Even beyond that it is possible to treat people failry while harboring a prejudice agaisnt them I think. Bigots would not do that, so that’s another distinction.

                “This is an MF move, not becoming of you.” Funny, but that was sort of what I wanted to say to LK when he conflated them!

              • Ken B says:

                One small request. I have taken a lot of abuse on this blog, being called a liar, delusional, a dupe, a communist, and a bonobo. But PLEASE no MF comparisons!

              • Lord Keynes says:

                “Bigotry implies a full embrace of your prejudices, but acknowledging you have prejudices is important in overcoming them”

                That quote does not show Hayek acknowledging his prejudices as some step in “overcoming them” at all!

                On the contrary it shows him defending them and being comfortable with them.

              • Ken B says:

                I’m curious. Where did I refer to Hayek? Even a pronoun will do.

          • Tel says:

            With the wave of Indians coming into the IT industry, there has also been a wave of dishonest CV’s and you can search just about anywhere on discussion boards people are noting that when you outsource your IT to India you get brilliant CV’s on paper but rarely do you get that in practice.

            Some of this might be racism or Western engineers just disgruntled about the competition, but I doubt it all is. On the whole engineering has always been competitive and people will accept honest competition, but they get pretty pissed over cheating. I’ve personally been in a position to evaluate some outsourced work and report back to a major investor that he didn’t get good value, and when he went and confronted the supplier over qualifications, he was told, “In my culture it is acceptable to tell a few lies, if no one gets hurt.”

            That’s right, the Indian outsourcing company told him flat to his face that they had lied to him, and too bad there was nothing he could do about it.

            If you search, you will find a lot of other people with similar observations. If it was just a handful of isolated cases I’d shrug it off, but it is endemic.

          • Major_Freedom says:

            “Funny how Hayek’s latent anti-Semitism is forgotten when these obviously disgraceful Keynes quotes are dragged out:”

            Funny how as soon as Keynes’ anti-semitism is referenced, you immediately attempt to divert attention away from that.

          • Bob Roddis says:

            Since Hayek did not say that he would dislike a Near Easterner who was fundamentally honest, this is just another typical LK hair-splitting adventure and one more humiliating defeat he has suffered. They are starting to pile up.

            I can remember several obnoxious sons of rich foreign business people when I was in college. But unlike Keynes and the “progressives”, I don’t have a visceral dislike of working class people which is the basis of employing the government to boss them around.

            • Lord Keynes says:

              So now Hayek’s quite clear bigotry, his dislike of “certain types” “conspicuous among them the Near Eastern populations” , a type described as ” Levantine, typical of the people of the eastern Mediterranean” is to be sweep under the carpet and ignored!

              Anyway who isn’t intellectually “challenged “like Roddis will be capable of seeing this comment as anti-Semitism.

              • Lord Keynes says:

                Or presumably Roddis thinks numerous Syrians, Egyptians, or Lebanese lived in pre-1931 Austria!

              • Ken B says:

                Of course it is but in you excahnges with me we were discussing your claim of bigotry against Indians. And since bigotry requires even by your definition a lot morre than prejudice you havent proven that claim.

        • Major_Freedom says:

          “Keynes didn’t hate Jews for being Jews or anything, but there were obvious prejudices he held that aren’t admirable.”

          Hitler didn’t hate the Jews in a cosmic, primordial, inner fabric of spacetime, rip apart the universe kind of way or anything, he just really, really, really, *really* hated them.

          “But that last one is misleading… that line comes in a passage paraphrasing Lenin and criticizing the practice!”

          I was being facetious, DK.

          “I don’t get the point of including the Samuelson quote. Samuelson didn’t like the book – didn’t think it was well written. So? Who cares?”

          It’s the way he said it that matters. It’s very “classy” don’t you think?

          “The problem with Hayek there is that he is quite opportunistically twisting Keynes’s claims. Samuelson doesn’t do that.”

          Not really. But I can see how those who have the pre-approved twisted interpretations of what Keynes argued, would view non-twisted interpretations as twisted.

    • Bob Roddis says:

      In his review of James Scott’s book, Prof. DeLong notes that Scott really does not seem to understand that his “new” (1998) theories are derived from Hayek and Mises.

      http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/james-scott-and.html

      While Prof. DeLong notes the Hayekian concept of dispersed knowledge, he avoids and omits the essential companion concept that the most essential type of such knowledge is transmitted via unadulaterated free market prices. He also omits to mention (like all Keynesians) the central Austrian point which is that Keynesian policies distort that essential information thereby causing the very problems that Keynesians claim they are attempting to cure.

      • Major_Freedom says:

        But Roddis, the world of mankind isn’t perfect, empirically speaking, so that means introductions of violence are justified.

        Didn’t you get the memo from Hegel? “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.”

        Since state violence exists, it is rational and justified. Shut up and go watch Dancing With the Stars while the “representatives” of “The People(TM)” spy on you, steal from you, and believe they know more than you about what’s better for you.

  6. senyoreconomist says:

    DeLong has really outdone himself here. Both Hayek and Keynes said nice and not nice things about each other. What DeLong has done is he has taken one of the uncomplimentary things Hayek said about Keynes and one of the complimentary things Keynes said about Hayek and contrasted them. Why did DeLong not quote Hayek when he said of Keynes that, “He was the one really great man I ever knew, and for whom I had unbounded admiration. The world will be a much poorer place without him.” Furthermore, the Samuelson quote being used as an example of the generosity of Keynesians is laughable. The quote, while being complimentary to Hayek, was highly insulting to Mises. One may be forgiven for wondering whether or not the purpose of the quote was to just describe an historical episode or to take a dig at Mises. Even if one accepts that Hayek’s knowledge argument was the best, and I am not saying it is, the crucial question is whether or not Hayek could have come up with his argument without building on the pioneering work that Mises had already done. To paraphrase Ebenstein, one can imagine Mises without Hayek, but one cannot imagine Hayek without Mises. Mr. DeLong, surely you can do better than this.

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