Zach Carter: uncertainty

Transcript context

…In Indian Currency and Finance, Keynes shows this remarkable knowledge of numbers and statistics from India, which he had a phenomenal grasp on. So, he must have known the Indian growth rates under British rule were quite low, which has been confirmed by later research as one of the big problems with colonialism — not the only one. My implicit mental model of Keynes, consistent with his interest in eugenics, is that he thought that India, on its own, was just intrinsically a slow-growth nation. They’d have a slow growth rate under the British, but they would do worse on their own. Do you think that’s the wrong implied mental model of how Keynes viewed this? I don’t know that it’s wrong. He clearly knows that something’s not quite right. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be studying the financial system in India, and India’s relationship with Britain under the gold standard, and the particular way that India, not having convertibility — it’s the basic subject of Indian Currency and Finance. So he does think that British rule can be improved. But, yes, broadly, he’s a liberal imperialist. He thinks that Britain is bringing prosperity and freedom around the world. He thinks that if you join the British Empire, particularly at this stage of his life, then you are signing up to be led into the light. I have at least 20 different friends who studied The General Theory, Keynes’s book from 1936, the big famous one. I ask them, “What’s the central message of The General Theory?” They all give me different answers, so I’d like to know, what’s your answer? There’s so much in the book, right? Incredibly rich and multifaceted, but what’s the bottom-line core of The General Theory?…

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