Zach Carter on the Life and Legacy of John Maynard Keynes
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2020
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded October 29th, 2020
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:08.4 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:12.6 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:15.2 | And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit |
| 0:20.4 | ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:26.0 | Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations With Tyler. |
| 0:29.8 | Today I'm chatting with Zach Carter. |
| 0:32.0 | He's a senior reporter at the Huffington Post, but more importantly this year he published |
| 0:36.6 | a new book as biographer called The Price of Peace, Money, Democracy, and the Life of John |
| 0:42.8 | Maynard Cain's. |
| 0:44.3 | And just last week, publishers weekly selected this book as one of its best 10 titles of |
| 0:49.3 | the year. |
| 0:50.3 | Zach, welcome. |
| 0:52.4 | Let's start with a simple question. |
| 0:54.4 | Wasn't Cain simply wrong about the treaty of Versailles? |
| 0:57.5 | Man, tough question out of the gate. |
| 0:59.5 | I don't think so, but of course there are people who have made this case over the years. |
| 1:04.3 | You can talk about the treaty of Versailles as a, in his critique of the treaty of Versailles, |
| 1:10.6 | an economic critique or a political critique. |
| 1:13.2 | I think a few years after 1922 I believe, after the treaty had been signed, Cain's did |
| 1:19.3 | a sort of follow-up analysis called a revision of the treaty, which was basically 80,000 |
| 1:25.3 | words of I told you so, and he goes through the debt and resource numbers into tale and |
... |
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