Probability, Uncertainty, and Liquidity in the General theory (1936) and the General theory of Employment (1937) Always Comes in Degrees: Ergodicity-Nonergodicity Does not Come in Degrees

Abstract

Post Keynesians, starting with the work of Joan Robinson, G. L. S. Shackle, Sydney Weintraub, and Paul Davidson, have portrayed Keynes’s General Theory and Post General Theory work on the concepts of uncertainty and probability in strictly binary terms, like knowledge-unknowledge, certainty-uncertainty, open–closed, or ergodic-nonergodic. There is no room for Keynes’s fundamental concept of degrees in these Post Keynesian binary representations, which directly conflict with Keynes’s constant categorization throughout his lifetime that probability, liquidity, liquidity preference, disquitetude and uncertainty came in degrees, simply means that Post Keynesians are not Keynesians. There are no binary concepts that appear in Keynes’s decision theory anywhere in anything that he published in his lifetime, be it the A Treatise on Probability, A Treatise on Money, General Theory, or The General Theory of Employment.