Agile fiscal and monetary policy? Seems dangerous.

Politically, the article attacks conservatism and libertarianism which discourage a strong government role in regulating the economy. Within the context of economics, this is referred to "liberalism." Neoliberalism (the subject of the article) refers to economic liberalism.

I know that. I was responding to a poster who implied that critiquing neoliberalism makes one a "very poor quality publication"

Theoretically, free markets do work best. But practically, they do not exist other than in nature itself. Free markets are, like nature, void of positive feedback loops. Free markets dispose of irrational actors. Free markets trend towards efficiency.

"It was historically a fact because you did not have big data or ways of computing to process supply and demand properly." Realize "the market" is the computing mechanism and that the real-time information it produces is decentralized and fragmented.

Perhaps a technological solution will aid "the market" in converging more quickly and ultimately democratize the information it produces. I truly hope so. But, based on my observations, the market isn't doing that great job disposing of irrational and/or bad actors. This terrible article on The Guardian is an example.

I agree that everyone in power today is Keynesian. I also agree that "Keynesian" is not what Keynes wrote.

Long term, we may be worse off. But short term, Keynesian macro economic policy works. Collectively, society is too stupid for the alternative to work: don't centralize and don't panic.

> I agree that everyone in power today is Keynesian. I also agree that "Keynesian" is not what Keynes wrote.

You hit the proverbial nail in the head.

Sometimes it appears that the people in power picked up Keynes' book and instead of reading "borrow and spend away in recessions, cut spending and pay the debt during economic expansion", they just read "borrow and spend away" and that was it.

What an incredibly frustrating read. The author quoting Andrew Sayer pretty much sums up their understanding of economics: "Interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort." Interest is an assessment of risk. Our superior ability to assess risk is the primary reason we are the dominant life form on this planet.