Hadn’t seen this recent video of Ronald Coase from a University of Chicago School of Law conference last fall until it was posted by Peter Boettke. Coase, now in his 100th year (his centennial birthday is in December), continues to be brilliant, modest and displays his sly sense of humor, as when he says he is puzzled by a speaker’s talk titled “Keynes and Coase” because he didn’t address any of Keynes’ main areas and he only met the man once when he shook his hand after being introduced by Keynes’ assistant. There was a class system in England then, Coase said, and Keynes was an “old Etonian.” “He was one of them, not one of us.”
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Coase is, perhaps, the most creative economist of the last 100 years. His understanding of the dynamic creative interactions that make up the complex array of voluntary arrangements that constitute the market is outstanding. His view that economists should build their "theories" from observations has gone unheeded by almost all mainstream economists – and, sadly, even many libertarians. The issues that confuse people today – the marginal cost controversy (with its underlying aspects addressing intellectual property), the role of property rights in lowering the costs of realizing positive-sum transactions, his understanding that the market is a discovery process (with many false steps). An amazing man – and (to the discerning viewer) one with an extremely clever wit.
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