The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What To Make of It by Charles E. Lindblom (Yale University Press, 200; 296 pgs.)
Normally, the pool of suckers is limited to people who are at least somewhat ignorant of the capitalist system, and therefore don’t know what is reasonably possible in terms of investment returns. Suckers tend to think that profits are based on theft and exploitation, instead of on hard-work and entrepreneurship, and they want a piece of the action.
A Rothbard obituary of Mises: “For those of us who have loved as well as revered Ludwig von Mises, words cannot express our great sense of loss: of this gracious, brilliant and wonderful man; this man of unblemished integrity; this courageous and lifelong fighter for human freedom; this all-encompassing scholar; this noble inspiration to us all.”
Keynes loved the pyramids. The attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the pyramid project is part of a larger cultural effort to prop up the respectability of government in general and the nation-state in particular.
As an economist, I must admit to more than a passing interest in who receives the annual Nobel Prize for Economics. While the results generally have been disappointing--witness one of last year’s winners, Joseph Stiglitz, who has argued that socialism and other forms of government intervention can serve as a “signaling” device to denote high quality--I still am interested in what these economists have to say.
The answers we receive from the academics in response to the collapse of the Enron Corporation and the implosion of other firms are not answers at all. At best, they deal only with effects, or, at worst, reverse the pattern of cause and effect. To put it another way, writes William Anderson, the people who are supposed to know the answers don’t even know what questions they should pursue.
