The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.
Interpretation
Skilled investment aims to counteract the negative impacts of time and ignorance on our future prosperity.
John Maynard Keynes emphasizes the importance of skilled investment in safeguarding the future against the detrimental effects of time and ignorance. He suggests that the act of investing wisely is not merely a financial task; rather, it serves a greater social purpose by enabling progress and mitigating risks that threaten our collective advancements.
In practice
In a talk about sustainable investing, one might quote Keynes to illustrate the importance of forward-thinking investment strategies.
As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method of investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
We will not have any more crashes in our time.
This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.
Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.
The gap in India has always been between the promise and the execution.
Economists specialize in pointing out unpleasant trade-offs - a skill that is on full display in the health care debate. We want patients to receive the best care available. We also want consumers to pay less. And we don't want to bankrupt the government or private insurers. Something must give.
I think one of the most important facts of basic income would be that it's not only a redistribution of income, but also of power. So the cleaners and bin men would have a lot more bargaining power.
When the word 'morality' comes up in connection with economics, income distribution and financial stability are usually the issues. Is it moral for rich countries to use such a high proportion of the world's resources or for investment bankers to earn large bonuses?
In a perfect world what poor countries at the lowest rungs of economic development need is not a multi-party democracy, but in fact a decisive benevolent dictator to push through the reforms required to get the economy moving
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