How do we prepare for the election? As examples to our kids, neighbors, coworkers, and friends, we must “walk the walk,” but this includes persuading; it means knowing our stuff so we can make sense and expose nonsense! We must point out the nonsense behind our political adversaries’ ideas!
“Some people think that nonsense is too silly to answer. But not answering it can just allow nonsense to prevail.” ~Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell made this comment in an article where he emphasized how Freidrich von Hayek addressed and helped clarify so much nonsense. Hayek was best known for exposing how dumb Keynesian “Economics” is theoretically and in practice. He told us it would never work when Keynes began publishing the ideas…he knew they were old ideas that had always failed!
From Chapter 1 Economic Clarity or Political Confusion
“Keynes and Hayek became academic adversaries, and they debated publicly. They also began meeting for lunch and over time had many friendly personal conversations. Years later, in a video recorded interview, Hayek told Leo Rolston, that while brilliant Keynes had “a parochial” understanding of economics. He only knew one school of thought well, the ideas then prevalent at Cambridge. Although intelligent, very well-read generally with much intellectual knowledge, economics was just “a sideline for him.” Hayek made this statement partly from quizzing Keynes about work done by earlier European economists. It seemed to him because Keynes could speak and read only English and French, ideas previously experimented with by so many Germans, for example, were inaccessible to him. Hayek believed already exposed errors eluded Keynes (Hayek F. A., 2012).
In the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Keynes and Hayek exemplify our mainstream theoretical poles. Hayek stands on the shoulders of giants, notably, Ludwig von Mises, his teacher from the Austrian School of Economics. Mises summed up Keynes’ ideas this way:
“…salvation through spending and credit expansion,” and, “No need to worry any longer about the insufficiency of savings and capital accumulation and about deficits in the public household. On the contrary. The only method to do away with unemployment was to increase “effective demand” through public spending financed by credit expansion and inflation (Mises, 2005).” P. 9 https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Clarity-Political-Confusion-Classical/dp/0578430215/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1547765974&sr=1-1