I invited former Czech President Václav Klaus to the launch of my new book. He apologized that he had another program for the same evening. I mention this to show that I respect him very much as a person.
However, that does not change the fact that he drags behind him stupid dogmas about the free market like a convict dragging a ball on his foot. Take this statement from a speech at a meeting of food producers: ‘The word self-sufficiency is economic nonsense. Economics is based on the principle of exchange, i.e. on the advocacy of anti-sufficiency. It is no accident that the word exchange is at the heart of economics.” He really believes that values are not created by work, but by trade and marketing! According to economic theory, if we give up our agriculture and buy all our food from abroad, we will get rich. Every second devoted to such economic theory is a second wasted.
If anyone thinks that today’s huge increases in energy prices and the war in Ukraine and the like will sober up the comrades in Brussels who are pushing the Green Deal, I warn you. Not by a millimetre.
Where reality clashes with economic theory, Václav Klaus is absolutely clear. “If anyone thinks that today’s huge increases in energy prices and the war in Ukraine and the like will sober up the comrades in Brussels who are pushing the Green Deal, I warn you. Not by a millimetre. They will push the Green Deal all the harder and all the more aggressively.” That is accurate and analytical.
And, finally, he’s got his personal life in order with the food stuff, too. “Well, as much as I love cheese, I wouldn’t buy French cheese on principle. If I get it somewhere, I’ll happily eat it, but I wouldn’t buy it in real life, I’d buy Madeta.” Of course! That’s what sensible people do. But once neoliberal economic theory comes into it, all reasonableness is gone.
