The London School of Economics held a “debate” called Keynes v Hayek. The previous link takes you to the official audio recording of that debate.  It is 93 minutes long. You can also see the video of this event.

I feel that I need to say something about this debate, but it is hard to figure out exactly what it is worth saying.

The debate is all the more frustrating because it is among presumably very intelligent people.  Or at least it is between highly trained people.

A voice vote was taken before and after the debate as to whether the audience would rather have Keynes or Hayek solve the current economic crisis.  In actual fact the Hayek supporters were being asked whether they would prefer to have their interpretation of Hayek’s beliefs used to solve the crisis or their own misinterpretation of Keynes’ beliefs used to solve the crisis.  In similar fashion, the Keynes’ supporters were being asked whether they would prefer to have their interpretation of Keynes beliefs used to solve the crisis or their own misinterpretation of Hayek’s beliefs used to solve the crisis.  This is not a useful question to ask, nor a useful one to have answered.

Furthermore to work under the premise of what Keynes who died in 1946 and Hayek who died in 1992 would do based on what they knew and what they wrote those many years ago is another level of silly.  With the progress in economic research even since 1992, had these two economists been alive and in working condition surely they would have learned something and their prescriptions would have changed. Not only  has knowledge expanded, but the circumstances and the environment are quite different today in ways that neither of these economists could have foreseen.

I would have preferred a discussion that went along the lines of “Given the current situation, what policy would you prefer to employ to solve it and why, and if it should work, what would you do then in the new situation and why?”  I don’t know if it would have been worthwhile to add the question, “If your preferred policy did not work why might it not work, what would you do then?”  In any case, I do not think it added to the discussion to put the labels of Keynes and Hayek on the policies under discussion.

My conclusion is that if this is the way we have to discuss things, then the situation is probably hopeless.

Given that conclusion I do not know whether or not you will gain anything by listening to the “debate”.