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Comment on Canice Prendergast's A Theory of 'Yes Men'

The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics

Tags InterventionismProduction Theory

07/30/2014Walter Block
 

Volume 4, No. 2 (Summer 2001)

 

It is within the bowels of government where the real yes-men problem lies. Here, there is no automatic feedback mechanism of the market to rely upon, to quell any incipient tendencies in the direction of yes-manning. At best they are extraordinarily weak; at worst they are nonexistent. Thus, far from Prendergast being able to make her point that the yes man phenomenon is a market failure, the truth of the matter is that it is a government failure. If market firms rely upon or are involved in yesmanship, they lose money and tend to go bankrupt; if and to the extent that governments become embroiled in this economic virus, the forces for their dissolution are either very much attenuated, or totally absent.

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Cite This Article

 Block, Walter. Comment on Canice Prendergast's  A Theory of "Yes Men."  The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 4, No. 2 (Summer 2001): 61–68