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Notes -
Einstein wrote his famous essay in 1949.
Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom in 1944. He identified the knowledge problem, which devastates any ideas about central planning, in 1936.
Samuelson wrote Foundations of Economic Analysis in 1946 and Economics in 1948.
Mises wrote Socialism in 1922.
Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776.
In the essay, Einstein reveals he does not understand basic economic principles and simply tries to discredit the entire field as insufficiently scientific. He also talks about human nature, and goes on to reveal he doesn't understand it very well. He was, to his credit, not a fan of the Soviets.
I'm being a wee bit uncharitable, because the most influential living economist of the time was probably Samuelson, and he used a bunch of math to justify some version of socialism. (He was still defending the growth of the Soviet economy in 1989...) But Einstein didn't even try to justify his delusions with the math of blackboard economics.
Actually, by total coincidence I just found a quote from Samuelson shitting on Einstein being as delusional about economics as Chomsky.
And the communists had equally impressive-sounding arguments for why Marxism would work. And the Soviets were doing everything humanly possible to hide their failures. And 1949 was before the Great Leap Forward. And...
It obviously wasn't impossible to realize by then communism would fail; Hayek and Mises did. But castigating Einstein for not realizing it, when economics was not even his field... seems a bit harsh? Humans don't have a millennia to consider each bit of evidence. Scott has admitted that he would have probably been a communist if he had been born at the turn of the century (I can't find the exact tumblr post, but this one gestures at the same general direction), and I would have probably been if I had not grown up in the 21st century with all the evidence available to beat me over head.
From Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 108:
(But as for the people who have access that evidence and still choose to be socialists, there is no hope.)
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