If I could return to the Hayek's discussion of Keynes's statement that in the long run we are all dead. In response to my brief posting, Rod Hay wrote: "This of course, is based on a deliberate misreading of Keynes. Keynes was arguing against the laissez-faire policy proposals for dealing with extreme economic conditions like the great depression. 'In the long run the economy may correct itself. But we cannot afford to wait. Because by then we will be dead.' is how I read his comment." It may be my own fault for not being more explicit, but Hayek does understand exactly what Keynes is getting at. It is precisely because Keynes focuses on the short run that Hayek sees as the problem. My aim was only to note the existence of Hayek's discussion and not to render it in full. What Hayek wrote was this (The Fatal Conceit, Routledge 1988, p 57): "This extraordinary man [ie Keynes} also characteristically justified some of his economic views, and his general belief in a management of the market order, on the ground that 'in the long run we are all dead' (i.e., it does not matter what long-range damage we do; it is the present moment alone, the short run - consisting of public opinion, demands, votes, and all the stuff and bribes of demagoguery - which counts). The slogan that 'in the long run we are all dead' is also a characteristic manifestation of an unwillingness to recognise that morals are concerned with effects in the long run - effects beyond our possible perception - and of a tendency to spurn the learnt discipline of the long view." And in response to my post, in which I had stated that "Keynes statement is shown to be not only economically destructive as a basis for policy but is also deeply amoral" Jesse Vorst wrote: "I consider the use of the word 'shown' inappropriate, as it has the pretension of relating to objective truth; 'argued', 'suggested', 'intimated' or 'maintained' would have reflected the implicit subjectivity of of the assessment." In my own posting I was merely pointing out what Hayek had written but if I also happen to think what he had written is true (!) then I find it unproblematic to say that Hayek had shown certain conclusions to be so. Hayek in the passage I quote is hardly concerned with emphasising that these are merely his own subjective conclusions but is stating what he also believes to be the truth of the matter and in no uncertain terms. All of our assessments are by nature subjective but it does not strike me that for that reason we might not say what we mean as forthrightly as possible. I might note that Hayek, also in The Fatal Conceit (p 106), in a chapter with the remarkably pointed title, "Our Poisoned Language" wrote,"As Goethe recognised, all that we imagine to be factual is already theory: what we 'know' of our surroundings is our interpretation of them." That, of course, never stopped Goethe or Hayek from reaching their own conclusions on a vast array of issues. Steven Kates