John Kenneth Galbraith

by Liberty and Power

John Kenneth Galbraith died at age 97 over the weekend. The nicest thing I can say about him is that he spent his long career trying to subjugate the individual to an all-powerful state administered by him and people like him. His answer to concentrated corporate power was concentrated political power, which is the source of corporate power in the first place.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

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Craig J. Bolton - 5/3/2006

Galbraith reminded one of the old graduate school joke of the contrast between the Ph.D economics programs at Chicago and MIT. At Chicago the questions on the qualifying examination changed ever year but the answer was always the same ["the market will provide the solution"]. At MIT the question was the same each year ["how do you model the economy"] but the answer changed depending on the latest twicks to the econometric GRAND MODEL OF EVERYTHING.

Galbraith was a Chicago-style economist. He could think up a new explanation for what drove the economy every year [sheep like consumer preferences for tailfins, huge corporations that looked like the bureaucracies in which he started his career, etc.], but the answer was always the same: ["we need more collectivism"].