Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Hayek on Krugman

Last night, I was re-reading Friedrich Hayek's The Intellectuals ad Socialism and came across this comment, which caused me to first think of John Kenneth Galbraith and then Paul Krugman:
The specialists who will thus achieve public fame and wide influence will thus not be those who have gained recognition by their peers but will often be men whom the other experts regard as cranks, amateurs, or even frauds, but who in the eyes of the general public nevertheless become the best known exponents of their subject. 

8 comments:

  1. Paul Krugman has a PhD, numerous professional publications in high-ranking journals, and a Nobel Prize.

    problem Mises?

    *trollface*

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    1. I paid my tuition and got an MBA from a top-ranked Business school.....doesn't prove anything.

      What are the topics on which he has been published? They are not what he writes most of his Keynesian BS in the NYT about.

      And we all know how meaningful Nobel Prizes are these days


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  2. More like Hayek on himself. Hayek has always been regarded as a crank by other experts. Milton Friedman held him in very low regard. Krugman is a professor at Princeton. He is hardly regarded as a crank by his peers. The Austrain school regards everyone outside the Austrian school as a crank. Meanwhile, headline inflation for 2013 was 1.45%. Hyperinflation is coming any day now.

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    1. LOL, Milton Friedman was a monetary crank. Krugman is not even an economist, he is a Keynesian, these are different things.

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    2. I am so thankful inflation is so low. Despite continually paying more and more for less and less, it is very comforting to know the government has everything in check.


      -Gitz

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    3. In all seriousness, people need to be much more careful with the term crank. Having a blind spot is not equivalent to being a crank. Engaging in some of the more pathological elements of economics (such as the "physics envy" of mainstream econ) is not crankish.

      That doesn't mean they are correct of course. But many of them are serious people approaching the problems in a serious way, even if they are wrong or misguided.

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    4. Is it really only 1.45%?! That's wonderful. Here I was watching nearly everything I buy either increase in price or downsize its packaging but if the latest calculations have it under 2% then who am I to disagree?

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  3. "Milton Friedman held him in very low regard." "Krugman is a professor at Princeton"

    Lol. Authority trumps everything!

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