John Maynard Keynes Quotes
It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946, British Economist, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, 1935
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Although, the Obama administration vastly improved on this requirement compared to the George W. Bush administration excesses, he was not able to eliminate it. Some would argue that it should NOT be eliminated in that military planning ought to be driven and controlled by the people in a democracy, and therefore the process is inherently political. However few would defend the Bush ideologically driven military planning and decision making.
A major problem in politics is that many governments and factions have at times acted against their own interest. The polarization of America at the beginning of the 21st century where each party would no sooner win an election than follow their passions and ideologies and then get thrown out of office by the voters. Or a nation going to war against a hated and traditional enemy when they did not have the military power or economic resources to prevail. One of the best examples was the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands. Another was the American policy of isolationism prior to WWII. Both Napoleon’s and Hitler’s attempted invasions of Russia were also examples. Political parties even more commonly act for the passions of their base of supporters to their detriment. This is extremely common.
The conflict to which he was referring was the terrorism practiced by the Pakistan-supported Muslim fundamentalists in Kargil, India in 1999.
The Ottoman Turks made the great mistake of allying themselves with Germany in WWI. At the end of the war, most of the Ottoman Empire in was stripped from Turkey by the terms of the peace treaty, corruption was rampant, and Turkey was culturally, scientifically, and economically quite backward and the nation was further hampered by Islamic Fundamentalism. The nation as they envisioned it at the time did not survive. Soon Demal and the other Young Turks were unseated in the almost bloodless revolution of Ataturk who then made the nation secular, modernized it and triggered the development that makes it the most modern and powerful Islamic country in the world, and a major economic and military power in the world.
This admonition of his applied not only to initiating war, but to increasing unemployment for a worthy purpose like controlling inflation. He sought solutions where pain was borne by tall if necessary, but not to particular subgroups (identifiable or not) to the degree that they would suffer badly. In general, we should not sacrifice some for the good of the whole without their volunteering, as in a volunteer army.
For many they are.
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB, FBA (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles. One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, he produced writings that are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots. His ideas, reformulated as New Keynesianism, are fundamental to mainstream macroeconomics.
