Hayek says in this interview that the slower the “recovery,” that is, the longer it takes to reverse inflation the right way (tightening the money supply), the longer the recovery.

Now, what’s a guy like Volker doing supporting an administration that wants to inflate the money supply beyond anything we have ever known outside of a South American basket case.

Invariably, these disinformation campaigns include a broad and sustained campaign to program the press to amplify such purposeful inanities, completely swamping the real information.

I’ve recently been having thoughts along those lines myself. Recently, on one of the science-related blogs I keep up on (can’t recall which), I posted a comment to the effect that the bureaucratic bloat of NASA and other national space agencies means that projects get approved or denied based on how “sexy” they are, instead of their actual scientific contribution.

(For instance, we’re learning practically nothing by launching shuttles, building the ISS, or otherwise putting human beings into space. We’ve learned far, far more from robotic probes, like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars, which cost a tiny fraction of ISS: $800 million for two Mars rovers, versus $100 billion for 80% of a space station. And the ISS is at a steep orbital incline — steep meaning both “away from the equator” and “expensive to reach from the ground” — just so it can fly directly over Moscow for publicity purposes.)

Of course, the craving for “sexy” over “informative” is itself a direct symptom of skewed time preferences. However, I also opined that, in the absence of NASA but continued presence of the Fed and other time-preference manipulations, much of what NASA does would simply not exist in the private industry, whether useful science or not. The current market, so immersed in interest rate manipulation and “me me me now now now” culture, is incapable of taking the long view on innovation and discovery, including space exploration and other non-applied basic science.

In that sense, NASA represents an attempt to redress the wrongs of one hand by committing opposite wrongs with the other hand (a bit like idealized Monetarism). And, of course, the balance is tenuous and ephemeral because it doesn’t arise naturally from the system — instead requiring master manipulators who declare how much space research we ought to have.

http://rastak.com

Marxist thoughts have been criticized and villified in this country for 40+ years, and because it was believed that anyone that entertained these ideas was a Communist, very little was studied or covered on these topics, lest the author be accused of being a Communist sympathizer, so that by the time we finally arrive in a fully Socialist state, nobody is able to differentiate or understand the situation. Player Piano anyone? Animal Farm?

Before he went to do the interview, some of us who were on IHS fellowships that summer as well — Gerry O’Driscoll, Sudha Shenoy, Don Lavoie, Gary Short, Larry White, Roger Garrison and myself, among others — told him we would be watching very carefully to make sure that he did not “leak.”

So if he was consistent, principled, and uncompromising during that interview on Meet the Press, I’d like to think it was (at least partly) because we had warned him he’d be answerable to this group of other Austrians for any, well, “errors” or “omissions”!

Richard Ebeling

Jeff,

I really don’t think we have come all that far and with this recession we will end up going backwards.

Listen to the British Labour govt in its defence of its bailout and stimulus measures. It lambasts its Tory opposition for “not caring” when it (the Tories) hesitates to support the govts highly interventionist measures, as if the only thing stopping Cameron and his shadow ministers was their personal feelings on the matter rather than what can actually be done to affect the situation. Another Tory backbencher was roundly condemned ‘cos he said that Britain had to go thru the recession in order to remove the unproductive and innefficent investments that had sprung up during the boom years. Again, all because of the belief that the govt can simply tweak a few taxes and print a bit more money and solve all our problems for us.

And its not just a bankrupt govt savings face: by and large commentators (esp. the BBC) display implicit support for the Labour govts policy strategy. The idea of nationalising banks is hardly scrutinised at all.

Capitalism will get it full in the kneck for this recession as govts react with increasing levels of state intervention – forcing banks to loan, nationalisation of banks, lending direct to private companies maybe even nationalisation again, public works programs, and, when the inflation kicks in, price and wage controls. I even wonder if emigration controls will be stepped to stop any likely brain drains on the part of those industriuous people who get fed up with this turn of events.

I am also totally amazed by his patience with these Keynesian political morons. He reminds me of a Chinese Buddha with infinite wisdom and tolerance for human stupidity.

Thanks for the post, Jeff.

Thanks.

In short, a type of cognitive dissonance. Most people I know that go into those endeavors want also to be a savior so they must believe that someone like them can provide the ‘plan’ that will save the world. They refuse to believe that millions and millions of apparently random actions of individuals can produce better results than they can through their plan. They long for the world to be ordered along the lines they envision so they are captured by something that can provide at least sophistic support for what they want to believe. Also, they firmly believe themselves immune to the corrupting influence of power or don’t even think it is an issue.