Why John Maynard Keynes Was A Keynesian - Jerry Bowyer - The Great Relearning - Forbes: "The truth is that both knowledge and wisdom are disbursed: disbursed throughout the economy, which is why market price signals are important; disbursed throughout the world, which is why trade is essential; disbursed through both genders, which is why both passive savings and active investing are necessary ; and disbursed through the centuries, which is why foundational principles are essential.
But Keynes then, and Soros now, believed that principles tried and proven and received gratefully from the loving hands of past generations were to be replaced by an elite of academic planners. These men are sure that they are simply smarter than we are; smart enough to overrule our billions of individual decisions, too smart to explain themselves to us, and too superior to have to. Then, as now, the meme was that people like Hayek who held to foundational principles were arrogant, not humble. Then as now, the answer is that humility in economics requires an admission that knowledge is widely distributed through markets, not captured in curricula. The recent reemergence of this debate in the circles of George Soros and the Financial Times in their critique of Hayek shows just how little the elite have learned in the past century."
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