In this piece on why he blogs, Noah Smith says that
blogging has allowed me to inject ideas into the discourse with unparalleled speed, breadth, and access. A researcher goes deep into a few topics; a blogger can quickly hit the main points of many topics. This enables speed; academics might take months to write something useful about a breaking event like the Iran War or Trump’s tariffs, while I can have something out in hours.
Then he continues,
Injecting ideas into the discourse is incredibly powerful. John Maynard Keynes famously described the power of idea injection:
“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
But Keynes’s point contradicts what Smith has just claimed. In fact, Keynes’s point is the polar opposite of Smith’s.
Keynes says that it’s not the “practical men” (in which category we might include not just politicians but also journalists and bloggers) whose ideas rule but rather the “academic scribblers”: now-defunct economists who indeed took months, or even years, to write something useful on their topic. And what they wrote might have had no impact at the moment, but made their way into “the discourse” years or decades or even centuries later.
It’s noteworthy how Smith describes why he does what he does: “actually having an impact on the world” is his goal. “Being an opinion writer has probably allowed me to change the world much more than being an academic or an engineer or a financier or a consultant would have.” He never says anything about what changes he wants to make in the world, only about his desire to be the one who makes the change. He’s what we call an influencer, which is to say, he is one of the “practical men” that Keynes says don’t make a difference in the long run.
The passage Smith quotes comes from the final paragraph of Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), and the sentences Smith quotes need to be seen in context. Here’s how the conclusion of that book goes:
Is the fulfilment of these ideas a visionary hope? Have they insufficient roots in the motives which govern the evolution of political society? Are the interests which they will thwart stronger and more obvious than those which they will serve?
I do not attempt an answer in this place. It would need a volume of a different character from this one to indicate even in outline the practical measures in which they might be gradually clothed. But if the ideas are correct — an hypothesis on which the author himself must necessarily base what he writes — it would be a mistake, I predict, to dispute their potency over a period of time. At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis; more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try it out, if it should be even plausible. But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
The “potency” of Keynes’s ideas, he says, is to be determined “over a period of time.” He does believe that the circumstances of his moment — he is primarily thinking of the Great Depression — incline people to listen to new ideas, especially if those ideas promise “a more fundamental diagnosis” of their economic condition. But even so, he doesn’t think his argument will have influence “immediately, but after a certain interval.” He’s playing the long game.
If Keynes is right, then the ideas that Smith “injects into the discourse” won’t be his, but rather those of thinkers from decades past — the people who weren’t worried about having “something out within hours,” but rather cared about making arguments strong enough to last. Instead of seeking to be quoted by Substackers and podcasters, they rely on “the gradual encroachment of ideas.”
It may not be possible to have both immediate currency — quotability — and long-term significance. You might have to choose between Smith’s model and Keynes’s.
