My Cobden Centre Radio colleague-stroke-boss Andy Duncan is enthusiastic about the latest Keynes v Hayek video. Guido Fawkes already has it up at his blog, and that’s where I’m now watching it.
My first reaction is that Keynes was the bald one, while Hayek had plenty of hair right to the end. This video has it the other way around.
Lots-of-head-hair-to-no-head-hair is one of the most important variables in political propaganda, the bald guy typically being the wicked loser, and the one with the good head of hair typically being the virtuous winner. I therefore deeply regret this particular reversal of the truth. If Keynes had really had lots of head hair, but Hayek very little, fair enough. Hayek would still have been right and Keynes would still have been wrong. But why miss a trick like this, when the truth is on our side?
Otherwise, this video seems pretty good. The important thing is that Austrianism, approximately speaking, must now lose the economic argument and be known by everyone, everywhere, to be losing the economic argument. Austrianism is now being shunned by everyone of any significance in policy-making circles. Right thinking people all now agree that Austrianism is delusional.
And right thinking people are now driving the world economy over the cliff.
For a little more chapter and verse, try reading Detlev Schlichter‘s latest.
When the world economy lies strewn about the landscape at the bottom of the cliff, Austrianism turns around and wins. It reassembles the world economy, and then, slowly at first, but later with gathering strength, drives it back to its former heights and beyond, way beyond.
Well, I like to live in hope.
Oh yes. That’s about it.
Reagan and Thatcher did it somewhat, enough to stave off destruction, back then.
But I doubt something like that will be allowed to happen again.
Perhaps something else.
Pity about Hayek/Keynes. Indeed.
” the bald guy typically being the wicked loser” &c
I thought the casting was spot on. Whatever they looked like in real life, this is a vid for kids, and it works. JMK is a smarmy git; Hayek is the outsider, the underdog, spurned by the fawning Press and powers that be, modest, unassuming and a bit otherworldly, and scarcely a match for his physically fitter companion, yet holds his own by sheer dint of being right. It’s almost Rocky (1).
Haven’t seen the new one yet, but in “Fear the Boom and Bust” I got the impression that the casting of a bald, nerdy guy for Hayek was deliberate – to suggest that Keynes’ theories are more popular ONLY because he tells people what they want to hear. It’s a sly way of answering a largely uninformed audience’s first, and completely understandable, concern – namely “why, if this Hayek guy was so smart, is Keynes the only one I’ve heard of?”
For my part, I think they made the right choice. Doing it the other way around would be too obviously manipulative.
I agree with Endivio and Joshua. The JMK casting depicts him as superficially attractive but shallow, all style but no substance. It makes an important point in a very subtle manner.
I’m no fan of rap (far from it!), and I had to force myself to sit through this one. But not only does it capture that style spot-on, if you listen to the words it presents both sides of the debate very well. And it permits the listener to reach his own conclusions; it doesn’t force an answer on you, but rather lets you deduce it for yourself. Very well done.
It’s enormously subtle: note the distinctly middle-class dress on the part of those who are just dying to shake Hayek’s hand.
“It’s enormously subtle”
It should also be mentioned that they have Hayek win the boxing match by a knockout, after which Keynes is declared the winner by the referee/Senator, and the crowd congratulating Keynes on his win are all the bankers & politicians shown earlier benefiting from the high government expenditure.
Strange. I had thought that the representations of Keynes and Hayek were more-or-less spot on, but looking at pics of the real men Keynes is quite a bit balder than he’s shown in the video, and Hayek has quite a bit more hair. I think that the reason is that the most famous representations of Keynes are from when he was a younger man and looked quite a bit like the actor in the video, while Hayek’s appearance is best known from later in his life, when he was indeed quite bald.
Well Hayek was not quite bald (even very late in life when I had a look at him).
But I agree with most of the comments here – and disagree with Brian.
However, it is just possible that baldness is a subject on which I am not entirely disinterested…….
@AKM – And yet it’s not a fixed match. Hayek may be absolutely right, but his arguments have absolutely no appeal for the bankers and government types who are wanting a justification for using a tool. So far as the suits are concerned, Hayek may as well be talking puppies and lollipops.