Saturday, May 4, 2013

Harvard Prof Discusses Link Between Keynes Being Gay and His Economics

Time to grab some high powered antioxidants.  Gawker is reporting this:
Harvard professor and prominent Obama-critic Niall Ferguson told more than 500 financial advisers at a conference on Thursday that Keynesian economics, an economic philosophy that advocates stimulus spending and is not kind to the idea of empire (which Ferguson loves), is flawed because Keynes was gay and uninterested in future generations.
Reportedly calling Keynes "effete" and operating on the general assumption that our own children give us concern about the future of humanity (and not empathy or kindness), Ferguson explained that Keynes was more interested in discussing "poetry" than having sex with his wife, and because of that, his complex economic philosophy doesn't make sense.
Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe tried to explain this years ago:
In March of 2004, during a 75-minute lecture in my Money and Banking class on time preference, interest, and capital, I presented numerous examples designed to illustrate the concept of time preference (or in the terminology of the sociologist Edward Banfield of "present- and future-orientation"). As one brief example, I referred to homosexuals as a group which, because they typically do not have children, tend to have a higher degree of time preference and are more present-oriented. I also noted--as have many other scholars--that J.M Keynes, whose economic theories were the subject of some upcoming lectures, had been a homosexual and that this might be useful to know when considering his short-run economic policy recommendation and his famous dictum "in the long run we are all dead."
Hoppe, a man ahead of his time. Will we now be hearing that Harvard has offered him a position on the faculty?

4 comments:

  1. Bob, wouldn't the same argument hold for childless couples, for instance, Murray and Joey Rothbard?

    (Posted for Ralph Raico)

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  2. Annnnnd, he's apologized: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57582902/niall-ferguson-harvard-professor-sorry-for-remarks-on-keynes-homosexuality/

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  3. "As one brief example, I referred to homosexuals as a group which, because they typically do not have children, tend to have a higher degree of time preference and are more present-oriented."

    Is there any evidence for this? Or does Hoppe, et al. simply assert it? What studies have been done that provide evidence that homosexuals have a higher time preference?

    If demonstrably true, then we might go about wondering why. Perhaps it is because they tend (as a group) not to have children. Perhaps not. We would have to study that claim as well by, perhaps, comparing them to heterosexual couples that don't have (or want) children.

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  4. There is a lecture series given by Hans Hoppe called Economy, Society and History via the Mises Institute on iTunesU. During the talk on time preference he makes the case for a link between gays and higher time preference. Its fascinating research.

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