I'm pro Hayek, pro Keynes and very much Anti Friedman. I see an awful lot of discussion which is Hayek vs Keynes and I don't quite understand it. Certainly, these two great thinkers had disagreements and their approaches (one top down, the other more bottom up) were different but their models are not mutually exclusive. It's the mix of Hayek, Keynes and Schumpeter which has always made economic sense to me.
To explain why I feel this way, I'll use four graphs. The first two examine the process of evolution as opposed to diffusion, the third is an examination of value chain vs state of evolution and the last is one the cycle itself.
As activities commoditise they can enable higher order systems to appear e.g. electricity begets radio, computing, Hollywood whereas nuts and bolts beget machines which in turn beget generators etc. These higher order system are where new value is generated and hence we see a flow of capital from past industries (which are commoditising) to new industries (which are being created).
The process of evolution is not however smooth as companies build inertia to change (due to past success), which is why when an activity commoditises it's often associated with new entrants into the market and disruption of existing players.
Figure 1 - Evolution & Diffusion
Figure 2 - The Process of Evolution
Figure 3 - Evolution vs Value Chain
The above can be simplified to a cycle of commoditisation enabling the genesis of new activities (which we often call innovation but there's problems with that specific term). The shift from product to commodity and utility services and the associated inertia barriers to change mark a phase change in an industrial ecosystem. We go from a relatively peaceful state of competition with sustaining change exceeding disruptive to a fight for survival, with new entrants and disruptive change exceeding sustaining. We literally go from peace to war.
Of course, the explosion of new higher order systems (due to componentisation effects) create a rapid growth of new industries (genesis) and a time of wonder and amazement. This cycle of wonder, peace, war repeats throughout history both in specific industries and at the macro economic scale through Kondratiev waves or what we more commonly called ages.
The age of electricity started not with the genesis of electricity provision (which can be traced back to Parthian times) but with Westinghouse & Tesla and utility provision of modern day electricity supply. This disrupted past industries (war), created an explosion of wondrous new activities built upon this component supply (growth) and eventually the new giants of industry settled down (peace). I've created a simplified map of this onto figure 4 to show the cycle (ignoring the value chain).
So, now to Schumpeter, Hayek and Keynes. The overall cycle describes concepts in Schumpeter's work on business cycles. During the growth and peace cycles, the application of Hayek's policies seem the most logical - limiting excessive growth in credit and the impact of central bank policies such as low interest rates which encourage speculation, lower savings and bubbles etc.
However during the war phase (where much of past industry is suffering inertia often compounded by the demands of financial community) then direct investment in new industries and the stimulation of demand - a Keynesian approach - seems a more effective way of balancing this market change.
But this is no different to the issue of managing activities which due to changing characteristics vary from agile development (in the genesis phase where they are more chaotic) to six sigma (in the commodity phase where they are more linear). There is no one size fits all policy and instead you need to use the right policies for the right stage of evolution.
This is why I don't get the whole Hayek vs Keynes debate - which noticeably is a very US based discussion and occurs to a much lesser extent in Europe. The debate is as simplistic as the whole Agile vs Six Sigma, SQL vs NoSQL, Push vs Pull, Hierarchical vs Networked debates of one size fits all.
The answer always seems to be both are right, you just need to know when to use each. So, I'm pro Keynes and Pro Hayek as there is both a time to steer markets and a time to set them free. Furthermore, since markets evolve at different rates then you need to use both approaches at the micro level i.e. one market you let run free whilst in another you can be busily investing and stimulating in at the same time.
Does this make me Pro Friedman? Absolutely not. I'm Anti Friedman and I have little time for the Big Dogma of Monetarist theory / Neoliberals which has been created in his image. I do understand the political reasoning of supply side fiddling with QE because it helps maintain the illusion of house and stock prices (through cheap foreign capital) but continues the stagnation of our real internal industry and society. It is not worth it.
We need to direct our industries to overcome their inertia and that requires direct investment along with stimulation of demand. I find scant evidence that the financial community can resolve this in a timely fashion as they have inertia of their own. Instead, China's huge investments (at this moment in time) in internet technology, renewable energies and manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing & printed electronics suggests an alternative way. They seem to know how to play this game and they're aiming to grab the future.
We should have buried the monetarist dogma long ago and started actually playing the game. The whole Keynes vs Hayek debate feels like just another artificial campaign to maintain the status quo and all the suffering that comes from it (social inequality, lack of true mobility etc). I, for one, don't like it.
