Mantoux and his criticisms of Keynes

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The issue of Keynes’s complicity on the road leading to World War II has been raised in another post. So I have now added my own contribution.

At this stage, there is no point discussing the rights and wrongs of the Treaty of Versailles. But there is no doubt that Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace was one of those Al Gore-type treatises of incontrovertible truth that brought out into the open a particular variety of criticism. The book was, as you would expect, a non-starter in France but a runaway best seller in Germany. It helped solidify grievances inside Germany that did help foster World War II but how far you can go is impossible to say, although I would say it was close to none at all. On how much Keynes mattered, the book that has had lasting significance was an attack on Keynes by the French economist, Etienne Mantoux, in his Carthaginian Peace: the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes, which you can download here. Mantoux had also published a trenchant attack on The General Theory right after its publication, whose English translation can be found in Henry Hazlitt’s The Critics of Keynesian Economics.

What is indisputable is that The Carthaginian Peace made Keynes an international superstar so that by the time he published The General Theory in 1936 he was far and away the most famous economist in the world. Without the first book, the second book would likely have been a nine-day wonder, about as influential as any of the other Depression-era texts written at the time.”>a post that has brought my name into the issue.

Who has to read when you already know everything?

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A fascinating story with the title, University students are struggling to read entire books. Books are so slow motion, and require such concentration, why should anyone be surprised? But there were two bits at the end that addd to the pleasure of the story. First, there was this from someone who was described as “chair of Universities UK’s mental well-being working group”:

“I think most students do thoroughly enjoy the challenge of reading,” said Ms Francis. “I remember having to read Derrida and thinking I’d lost the plot – but these materials are supposed to be engaging and difficult.”

Yes, lost the plot, but more to the point how distorted a worldview must ultimately arrive if you finally think you have unscrambled Derrida. In fact, it leads very nicely into the very last quote in the article:

Lizzy Kelly, a history student at Sheffield added: “Students might be more inclined to read what academics want them to if our curricula weren’t overwhelmingly white, male and indicative of a society and structures we fundamentally disagree with because they don’t work for us.”

Our future leaders. She already knows at 19 what is best. A history student, yet, with no sense of history. Why she even needs to go to a university is beyond me.

A case study in media deceit

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For the history of this bizarre attempt at a set up, you can go here. If you would like a longer, more extended version of these events, Stefan Molyneux is the one for you.

But really, this is the central issue: you cannot trust the media to tell you the truth. The story that would have been the final nailed down version would have been Fields’ version of having been thrown to the ground by some thuggish Trump employee. It is only because the evidence has been so overwhelming showing she is a complete liar that his critics – and they were both Democrat and Republican – have reluctantly had to back down. Open and shut in this case. In the others, you are with certainty being manipulated and your views shaped by a media with a very left-of-centre perspective who are personally opposed to everything Donald Trump stands for: a strong America, with closed borders who will defend the interests of the West against all comers. He may not have the nuance of running for office exactly down pat, but he would be a formidable president in the sense that he could and would get things done.

Depravity is now part of the curriculum

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From Andrew Bolt which has the lead in, “The Andrews Government is mad, you know”. It’s about an article from The Oz today which I saw but skipped over. It is no longer safe to skip a thing if you are going to keep up with each new step into depravity. This is the story, Year 8 kids to study sex ads under ‘domestic violence’ curriculum, and I will just repeat the same quote from Andrew:

Students as young as 12 will study sexualised personal ads and write their own advertisements seeking the “perfect partner’’ as part of a new school curriculum supposed to combat family violence.

The classroom material includes an example ad from a “lustful, sexually generous’’ person seeking “sexy freak out with similarly intentioned woman’’.

Another ad — to be analysed by Year 8 students aged 12 and 13 — is from a “30-year-old blonde bombshell, wild and sexy, living in the fast lane’’.

“Can you keep up?’’ it asks.

A third example cites a “hot gay gal 19yo’’ who is seeking an “outgoing fem 18-25 into nature, sport and night-life for friendship and relationship’’.

Children are instructed to “write your own personal ad for the perfect partner’’.

The Building Respectful Relationships material, which is meant to prevent family violence, is replacing religious education lessons during class time in Victorian state schools this year. The Andrews Labor government yesterday announced it would spend $21.8 million over the next two years to expand the program to kindergarten and primary schools as part of its $572m package to combat family violence. The funding will target 120 “lighthouse schools’’ and train thousands of teachers, and up to 4000 childcare workers, to teach the respectful ­relationships program.

Are there really people in our departments of education who think this makes sense? Our students may need a safe space at school after all, but unfortunately, they may need it to keep themselves safe from their teachers.

On the road with Tony Abbott

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That’s our former Prime Minister in a karaoke moment in the middle of a bike ride through rural New South Wales. The title of the video is itself a mark of the kinds of fools who cannot recognise genuine goodness in people but prefer the fake socialist variety where no one does anything personally but leaves it to the government to tax others to do what they would never do themselves. The caption that comes with the vid:

Tony Abbott belts out karaoke in a wife-beater singlet singing John Denver classic ‘Country Roads’ with radio presenter Wes Heather.

Such disgusting superiority by people who have nothing to offer the world but their own warped opinions.

Fifty years too late

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Ohio State Shuts Down Student Occupation after Arrests, Expulsion Threatened: “‘If you refuse to leave, then you will be charged with a student code of conduct violation,’ [Ohio State Vice President Jay Kasey] said. ‘If you are here at 5:00 a.m. we will clear the building and you will be arrested.’ He added, ‘We will give you the opportunity to go to jail for your beliefs.’”

Or to be more explicit and to the point:

Kasey had little patience for it. “We told you, and all we can do is be honest with you. If you’re still here at 5:00, our current philosophy is, we are going to take you out — escort you out of the building and arrest you. You will be discharged from school also,” he noted.

Confused, one of the students asked, “discharged as in…?”

“Expelled,” Kasey answered flatly.

I was there at the dawn and while I was among those who might have camped out in the dean’s office had they done it where I went to school, my belief, then as now, was that we were let off too easy.

Via Instapundit

The classical theory of the cycle explained

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I received an email yesterday from someone in America who had read my Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution who was then proposing to write a blog about what he had found. And lo and behold, that he has now done: How Keynesian Economics Has Distorted Economic Thinking (Somewhat wonkish). It never occurred to me that all this stuff is for the more studious types, but there you are. Looks natural and straightforward to me. It’s this Keynesian nonsense that requires the effort. You can read the whole of his post at the link, but here’s how it ends:

Contrary to popular belief, Keynes and many of his followers have misrepresented classical economics. This has led many to renounce classical theory without realizing that it not only offers logical explanations for the business cycle, but that the classicalists were well-versed in and rejected Keynesianism before it became known as Keynesianism. And that’s a fact that merits more attention.

I, of course, go beyond the notion that these ideas merit more attention. I am along the lines that Keynesian theory should go the way of the labour theory of value and the textbooks that carry this debilitating infection should be consigned to the furnace. But that’s just me.

Finally, I will just mention the list of labels he has attached to his post:

Labels: Classical Theory, David Ricardo, Jean-Baptiste Say, John Maynard Keynes, John Stuart Mill, Keynesian Economics, Say’s Law

There they are, almost everything you need to know about what makes an economy go, specially that John Stuart Mill fellow, and Say’s Law.

Susie Kates

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I thought this was exactly right:

The secret — and don’t worry, I’m not disclosing anything the feminists haven’t already figured out — is monogamous pair-bonding. Each man has to find exactly one woman and close the deal. Happily ever after, ’til death do you part, the whole package.

You don’t know it when you are young, specially in the way the world is now structured, where the sexual wilderness looks like a continuous adventure. But that is the true happiness, if you can find it.

Susie Kates, my one true love.

AND NOW LET ME ADD THIS: Written by a woman so don’t blame me: What Women Really Want Is The Patriarchy. Lots to choose from so you should read it all, but I will restrict myself to this:

As much as stuff is nice, many women still crave a stable, mutual, satiating romantic relationship with an assertive, authentic, direct man. This is normal. . . .

Women can have careers, be independent, strong, and happy, but if they want to do all this and attract the kind of man they really crave, they need to throw out the hallmarks of feminism that claim their male peers are domineering, stupid, misogynist authoritarians who will make their lives miserable. If anything, the opposite is true. The direct, honest, responsible, hard-working man many a woman desires can be just the type she’ll find, once she ditches the ideology that told her she didn’t need that to be happy in the first place.

Just remember, she wrote this and not me. I am merely an innocent bystander reporting while you decide. Found at Instapundit if you are looking for who to blame where, so it says in the comments, that this article has been banned on Facebook. I wonder why and who did it?