Last night on the Economix Blog, Bruce Bartlett returned to Niall Ferguson’s gay Keynes moment. I wrote about this over the weekend. Basically, Ferguson said that Keynes’ economics didn’t take the long term into account (not true) because he was gay (largely true) and didn’t have kids (true). Most of the criticism has been regarding Ferguson’s homophobia. But as I pointed out, the main issue is that he was dead wrong on the economics: he totally misunderstood Keynes’ most famous quote, “In the long run we are all dead.”

What is also stupid about the comment is that the only reason a man would care about future generations is if he had sperm in the game. I have no children, and yet I am terribly concerned about future generations. Part of this is personal. I have friends who have kids. I have friends who are kids. But beyond that, only a sociopath thinks of himself alone and his own well being. I assume that Ferguson is an atheist, because his wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is a prominent member of the New Atheists. But his attitude is typical of conservative religious people who think without the threat of God’s wrath, there is no reason not to kill everyone you don’t like.

In Bartlett’s column, he makes a similar error. Ostensibly, his argument is that Keynes’ real mistake was that he mis-titled his book and thus gave the wrong impression about his work. But he spends most of his time on claims of Keynes’ homosexuality. It seems like he is trying to give Ferguson cover. It doesn’t much matter one way or the other. Clearly, no one particularly cares what Keynes did in his bedroom nor does anyone seriously think that it made him short sighted. But Bartlett does think his homosexuality had an effect on his work:

I don’t think this is true. Everyone has experiences that allow them to see what it is like to be an outsider. If this kind of thing is going on, I’m sure it works the other way around. There are lots of people who never really accept their sexual orientation. Clearly doing so requires a mind that accepts that social conventions are often arbitrary and wrong. But it is incorrect to think that the process runs: “gay” leads to “outsider” leads to “thinking outside the box.” It just doesn’t work like that.

So let’s just all agree that being gay really has nothing to do with economic brilliance, either for good or ill.

Afterword

I don’t mean to be down on Bruce Bartlett. Although he has been a big player in a lot of really bad conservative policy over the years, he’s mostly been dead on the last few. He does look at data and act on it. He’s a good example of what I am surprised we don’t see more of: a conservative who stood still. Rather than be dragged to the right by his party, he has become one of its most effective critics.