Why Would Any One Have Defended the Gold Standard?

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In the time of cains, especially the earlier years, why would any one have defended the gold standard? I think almost everyone did who thought about it. And i think it was tied up in a conception of liberalism and freedom that is very intuitively compelling to people who take enlightenment liberalism seriously. It's hard to create a system that says, when your back gets up against the wall, you've just got to deal with it, because people will break the rules. This is one of the sort of philosophical dimensions of in the long run, we all dead. Claim hes se: If you don't fix things in the short term, the long term may never actually happen....

After reading Zach Carter’s intellectual biography of Keynes earlier this year, Tyler declared that the book would qualify “without reservation” as one of the best of the year. Tyler’s assessment proved common, as the book would soon become a New York Times bestseller and later be declared one of the ten best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. In the book, Carter not only traces Keynes’ intellectual achievements throughout his lifetime, but also shows how those ideas have lasted long after him, making him one of the most influential economists who’s ever lived.

Zach joined Tyler to discuss what Keynes got right – and wrong – about the Treaty of Versailles, how working in the India Office influenced his economic thinking, the seemingly strange paradox of his “liberal imperialism,” the elusive central message of The General Theory, the true extent of Keynes’ interest in eugenics, why he had a conservative streak, why Zach loves Samuel Delaney’s novel Nova, whether Bretton Woods was doomed to fail, the Enlightenment intuitions behind early defenses of the gold standard, what’s changed since Zach became a father, his next project, and more.

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Recorded October 29th, 2020 Other ways to connect

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