economists-from-germany

"Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the Army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God."

"The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their Army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint."

"Military necessity does not admit of cruelty – that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult."

"Military necessity, as understood by modern civilized nations, consists in the necessity of those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war."

"When sitting on the German federal ethics committee for autonomous driving, I had a lot of discussions with representatives from automotive companies who felt the same way about this kind of technology: They were equally looking for academia and government to help them address ethical problems. There are some problems a single company – or even industry as a whole – cannot address on their own: These range from questions like how to organize AI accountability issues to very fundamental philosophical problems such as: How much dependence on certain technologies are we willing to accept as a society?"

"The digital world is a mirror of society in many ways. Of course, there are a lot of activities going on which people would not openly admit to, some of them illegal, certainly. However, I am not sure that privacy (and in particular, privacy with respect to illegal activities) has increased when compared to the non-digital world. Was it not worse in a time when dictatorships around the world could shield their citizens from information from the outside or when companies could hide their activities easily without having to worry about the power of social networks? So in this regard, I believe we cannot complain about too much privacy in the digital world – in some ways at least, we had more privacy in the old days, with bad consequences sometimes. Still, I agree of course that disclosure of information is essential in many digital contexts and too much privacy can have bad consequences too."

"This is not a simple yes or no question. In general however, I believe regulation should be approached with caution at this point. The digitech markets are still very dynamic, and that has to be taken into account. It should also be clear beforehand that specific regulation would achieve the goals it aims at and not be counterproductive: if innovation is considerably stifled, it cannot bring about its ethical potential. Therefore, I favor an approach that relies on ethical guidelines first, and in which all parts of society participate."

"First, I always state that there are no obligations whatsoever towards Facebook. The new institute is an independent research institute, which will also have an independent Advisory Board with no members of Facebook sitting on it. The money comes as a gift for research. It will be used to help make AI systems more ethical, not just by putting together some abstract principles, but by working on concrete issues, like algorithms, systems, robots or screening technologies, for example. Therefore, if the money from Facebook can be employed for advancing ethics and bringing (ethical) benefits to the users of AI (which we all either soon will be or already are), it will be beneficial for all sides."

"If innovation is considerably stifled, it cannot bring about its ethical potential."

"This is a very unique opportunity to work on ethical issues in a new technology on such a scale. It comes at a point in time when AI is on the forefront of a large number of both scientific and public debates. We have the chance to work on AI ethics issues in detail, and not just by doing research behind closed doors, but with an outreach to civil society, politics, and the corporate world."

"There is still a lot of critical discussion on the GDPR in Europe, and there are some valid arguments in it. I believe however that on the overall, the GDPR can become a tool for improving trust in digital technologies without putting the brakes on them. It could become a sort of blueprint for other regions of the world, as it sets a relatively clear regulatory framework for people to sell their data. This issue is certainly seen in a more liberal way in the US, where the use of data is not considered per se as problematic as in Germany, in particular. But still, there are a lot of critics in the US too, and a – revised and refined – GDPR could address these."

"[...] the soul feels, in contemplation of the landscape, a gentle being-carried, a movement as if by an invisible spirit, through which lingering on the charming details first gains its appeal."

"A poem is a whole, complete 'made' world: a fiction is a half, incomplete, poorly made piece of world."

"Man cannot be conceived outside of the state."

"The state is [...] an alliance of past generations with the following ones, and vice versa. It is an alliance not only of contemporaries, but also of 'spatial contemporaries'; [...] The state is not merely the union of many 'living side by side', but also of many 'succeeding one another' families."

"Man is endowed with a thousandfold desires and infinite longings, and thus has been sent into a world that would be rich enough to grant even more than he can demand. Every glow of the heart finds its shadow, every thirst its wave, every longing its distance, and countless hidden, well-protected refuges are prepared for the soul that strives for safety and peace."

"I too have often dreamed of a union of that greater nation to which we belong, as a branch belongs to the trunk, expecting revolutions, heroes, and various changes in the sentiments of nations, which should come and favor the dream. The great federalism of European peoples, which will one day come, as surely as we live, will also bear German colors; for everything great, profound, and eternal in all European institutions is German – that is the certainty that has remained to me among all those hopes. Who can still separate the German element out of Europe?"

"Müller was a man of great and versatile talents, an excellent orator, and a suggestive writer."

"The reconciliation of science and art and of their noblest ideas with serious political life was the purpose of my larger works."

"An artist who forgets the world over his work will never speak to the world through the work, may perhaps tear the work dead from himself, but will never be able to close it into its own free and necessary life."

"When the world of the senses and the world of the spirit appear absolutely separated, then sin is at its peak: it has systematized and completed itself."

"In Economics as almost everywhere else, with all our cleverness, we have become decidedly less wise, while knowing more and more about less and less. We have lost the sense of proportion—so indispensable for every economist—while analysing the curiosities of hypothetical economic situations and forgetting what has a bearing on real economic life. In spinning out the fine threads of the New Economics, we forget the most elementary principles of economics, and while stressing what might at best in highly exceptional circumstances we overlook what are almost perennial truths. While proudly parading our elaborate equations we unlearnt that simple common sense which consists in reckoning with human reactions and institutions as they really are."

"The total weight of taxation, progressive personal taxes hostile to the accumulation of wealth, the "negative saving" of hire purchase, and, above all, the constant expansion of the Welfare State, which undermines both the will and the power of the individual to practise thrift, are the principal forces militating against savings, and accordingly the immediate causes of constant inflationary pressure."

"Whether in Bolshevism, Fascism, or Nazism, we meet continually with the forcible and ruthless usurpation of the power of the State by a minority drawn from the masses, resting on their support, flattering them and threatening them at the same time; a minority led by a charismatic leader and brazenly identifying itself with the State. It is a tyranny that does away with all the guarantees of the constitutional State, constituting as the only party the minority that has created it, furnishing that party with far-reaching judicial and administrative functions, and permitting within the whole life of the nation no groups, no activities, no opinions, no associations or religions, no publications, no educational institutions, no business transactions, that are not dependent on the will of the Government."

"The more we gained knowledge of these new totalitarian systems of mass-rule, the more we realized not only their similarity of structure, but also the fact that we had to do with a type of dominance that had been known in earlier epochs. We discovered that what the ancients called “tyrannis,” or ”cheirokratia,” what Sulla or the tyrants of the Italian Renaissance had practised, and what finally alarmed the world in the French Revolution and under Napoleon, had surprisingly many similarities with modern totalitarianism, although this latter had elements with which they cannot be compared, and although it possessed means of domination unknown in past ages."

"This brings me to the very center of my convictions, which, I hope, I share with many others. I have always been reluctant to talk about it because I am not one to air my religious views in public, but let me say it here quite plainly: the ultimate source of our civilization's disease is the spiritual and religious crisis which has overtaken all of us and which each must master for himself. Above all, man is Homo religiosus, and yet we have, for the past century, made the desperate attempt to get along without God, and in the place of God we have set up the cult of man, his profane or even ungodly science and art, his technical achievements, and his State. We may be certain that some day the whole world will come to see, in a blinding flash, what is now clear to only a few, namely, that this desperate attempt has created a situation in which man can have no spiritual and moral life, and this means that he cannot live at all for any length of time, in spite of television and speedways and holiday trips and comfortable apartments. We seem to have proved the existence of God in yet another way: by the practical consequences of His assumed non-existence."

"It is a poor species of human being which this grim vision conjures up before our eyes: “fragmentary and disintegrated” man, the end product of growing mechanization, specialization, and functionalization, which decompose the unity of human personality and dissolve it in the mass, an aborted form of Homo sapiens created by a largely technical civilization, a race of spiritual and moral pygmies lending itself willingly—indeed gladly, because that way lies redemption—to use as raw material for the modern collectivist and totalitarian mass state."

"It is impossible indeed not to look with considerable uneasiness at the type of the "modern economist" as he developed after Keynes' revolutionary book, whom Keynes himself regarded with alarm at the end of his days. It is the type of man who is obsessed by one thing, i.e. "effective demand," which he thinks must be kept up at whatever cost, while he forgets the working of the mechanism of prices, wages, interest and exchange rates."

"Consider, in this connection, the case of the ardent socialist. He finds that there is very much wrong with our world, and we all probably agree with him. His enthusiastic conclusion will be that "Capitalism" must be replaced by "Socialism." But it is safe to say that, in most cases, the socialist will find it very hard to define the one as well as the other. The idea uppermost in his mind will be that now there is "anarchy" and "jungle" and that afterwards there will be order, justice, and planning. His opponent, defending not "Capitalism" but the market economy, will explain that both theory and ample experience prove that socialism is most likely to be a bitter disappointment. All the time it is quite probable that they will talk at cross purposes because the socialist has in mind quite different problems to be solved whereas his opponent never meant the market economy to be the answer to all these problems but only to one of them, i.e., our special problem of economic order. He will say with Shaw that "no sane person refuses to wear spectacles because they do not cure a tooth-ache.""

"It is no use seeking salvation in institutions, programs, and projects. We shall save ourselves only if more and more of us have the unfashionable courage to take counsel with our own souls and, in the midst of all this modern hustle and bustle, to bethink ourselves of the firm, enduring, and proved truths of life."

"Since men obviously cannot live in a religious vacuum, they cling to surrogate religions of all kinds, to political passions, ideologies, and pipe dreams—unless, of course, they prefer to drug themselves with the sheer mechanics of producing and consuming, with sport and betting, with sexuality, with rowdiness and crime and the thousand other things which fill our daily newspapers."

"All these peculiarities of the structure of modern tyranny, whose ugliest and extremest form was Nazism, are marked by the entire dissolution of the values and standards without which our society, or any other, cannot exist in the long run: a pernicious anaemia of morality, a cynical unconcern in the choice of means, which in the absence of firm principles become ends in themselves; a nihilistic lack of principle, and, in a word, what may be described literally as Satanism and Nihilism. Everything rots away, and finally there remains only one fixed aim of the tyranny, to which all moral principles, all promises, treaties, guarantees, and ideologies are ruthlessly sacrificed—the naked lust for domination, for the preservation of the continually threatened power, a power held on to for no other purpose than the continued enjoyment of all its fruits. […] All the ideals and emotions blatantly appealed to—social justice, national community, peace, religion, family life, welfare of the masses, claims in the international field, the return to simpler and more natural forms of life, and so forth—prove as a rule to be nothing more than crudely-painted inter-changeable boards for the staging of mass propaganda."

"However, and here we return again to our main theme, we would merely be deluding ourselves if we drew such a sharp dividing line between the realm of the spirit and the conditions of man's existence."

"The place of any good in this scale of values is determined ultimately by the strength of the subjective demand for it."

"The market economy is not everything. It must find its place in a higher order of things which is not ruled by supply and demand, free prices, and competition. It must be firmly contained within an all-embracing order of society in which the imperfections of and harshness of economic freedom are corrected by law and in which man is not denied conditions of life appropriate to his nature."

"The processes peculiar to economic life in a free society make evident the fundamental superiority of the spontaneous order over the commanded order."

"The questionable things of this world come to grief on their nature, the good ones on their own excesses."

"It is economism to allow material gain to obscure the danger that we may forfeit liberty, variety, and justice and that the concentration of power may grow, and it is also economism to forget that people do not live by cheaper vacuum cleaners alone but by other and higher things which may wither in the shadows of giant industries and monopolies."

"We need a combination of supreme moral sensitivity and economic knowledge. Economically ignorant moralism is as objectionable as morally callous economism. Ethics and economics are two equally difficult subjects, and while the former needs discerning and expert reason, the latter cannot do without humane values."

"Freedom can be saved only for those who are willing to hold and defend it, and for whom it means more than a desirable, but not really essential luxury. Freedom demands above all self-restraint, and it does not flourish in an atmosphere that is indifferent to values. Even where we speak of individual freedom, we think of it in relation to the human conscience, and having its proper place in the community and the body social. I repeat what I have often said: "Freedom without order will only too easily drift into chaos—order without freedom will deliver us to coercion.""

"Who carries the real responsibility and who is responsible to whom? Naturally the Christian reply is: Let every man carry responsibility, and in fact each man is responsible to his conscience, his fellowmen and finally to God. But when I, for example, have the pleasure of holding discussions with representatives of various groups, I seldom feel that they are aware of this responsibility; on the contrary, I hear talk of nothing but a unilateral responsibility to the interests they are representing. In such cases, if the concept of 'responsibility' is not turned upside-down, it is at least so devalued and falsified that one can only speak of rank misuse."

"Erhard was a man who had his moment in history and grasped it. As head of the Economic Department of the administration which preceded the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, he was the author of the decision to combine the currency reform of 1948 with the abolition of rationing, and of restrictive regulations concerning production, distribution and capital movements. Many have argued that Germany’s ‘economic miracle’ (and not less the political miracle) owes much to these decisions which at the time were regarded as either unrealistic or indefensible by many, including the Occupation Powers."

"It seemed a miracle when West Germany—a defeated and devastated country—became one of the strongest economies on the continent of Europe in less than a decade. It was the miracle of a free market. Ludwig Erhard, an economist, was the German Minister of Economics. On Sunday, the twentieth of June, 1948, he simultaneously introduced a new currency, today's Deutsche Mark, and abolished almost all controls on wages and prices. He acted on a Sunday, he was fond of saying, because the offices of the French, American, and British occupation authorities were closed that day. Given their favorable attitudes towards controls, he was sure that if he had acted when the offices were open, the occupation authorities would have countermanded his orders. His measures worked like a charm. Within days the shops were full of goods. Within months the German economy was humming away."

"Thomas Hazlett: Do you have any examples in mind of countries that, once having flirted with socialism or the welfare state, have been able to reinstitute the rule of law? Friedrich Hayek: Oh, very clearly Germany after World War II, although in that case it was really the achievement of a single man, almost. Hazlett: Ludwig Erhard? Hayek: Ludwig Erhard, yes."

"Ludwig Erhard had by this time [1975] retired from any involvement in active politics, but apparently he had heard that my politics (and economics) were sufficiently different (that is to say similar to his own) to make a discussion appealing. I was glad to discover that the former Chancellor, as well as being the architect of German prosperity, had a considerable presence and shrewdness. He asked me a number of searching questions about my economic approach, at the end of which he seemed satisfied. I felt I had performed well in an important tutorial."

"In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder [Miracle on the Rhine]. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty -- that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders -- the German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled."

"As I have said time and again, the focal point of our economy is the individual."

"A collectivist-totalitarian economic system, which in the final analysis serves only to glorify and increase the power of the state, can achieve great success in the easily controllable field of the basic industries but it will always remain incapable of serving man, in other words of providing the rich abundance of goods which gives the individual consumer a free choice and which enriches and beautifies his life."

"What Erhard said was breath-taking in its simplicity. Provided the state defends the currency, he said, there is no need to control prices, wages, goods, capital or anything else. In fact, so long as these controls remain, we shall continue to suffer from both inflation and scarcity. Abolish the lot and all will come right. The miracle was that he got away with being allowed to do it. ... In the early stages of his policy, Erhard was surrounded by capitalists and unionists, economists and bankers, crying “Woe, woe” and warning of the dire and imminent consequences of removing what they imagined were the foundations on which the fabric of things rested. As he used to say, “My room resounds with catastrophe from morn to night.” But he was right, and they were wrong: the new mark stayed rock hard and Germany in a decade was contemplating the economies of her victors with patronising contempt."

"[Erhard] emphasized that the aim of a common market was to free the movement of goods and capital. It did not exclude differentiation in tariffs, but he had been at pains to allay any anxiety lest the establishment of a common market by the six countries would mean discrimination against Britain. He believed that he had succeeded in dissipating some of the fears regarding European integration."