Via Catallarchy, I just found this critical obituary of John Kenneth Galbraith. I was kinda stunned that nobody at work knew who he was, but I guess news junkies aren’t always economics junkies too.

Anyway, although Galbraith, as an influential public intellectual, certainly deserved all the media coverage he got at his death, there’s no reason to ignore the fact that he was so incredibly wrong so much of the time. From the article:

The respect and even reverence that the modern American Left has accorded to Galbraith — regarding him not just as a brilliantly effective writer, which he was, but also as a deep thinker about capitalism and society, which he was not — is telling. It reflects a tenacious reluctance to concede the ethical and material superiority of the capitalist system. For an intelligent and pragmatic liberal (in the American sense of that word) this surely ought to be a minimal, painless concession, barely any concession at all. Obviously, a radical, ambitious, and productive agenda of social and economic reforms could still be spread out before voters — reforms addressed to genuine failures of the market (which are numerous) and to legitimate egalitarian purposes of many kinds. But for some reason that does not quite satisfy.

Much of the Left still longs to sneer at the very idea of capitalism, especially at the claim that it has real ethical foundations (all the more so, in comparison with the attempted alternatives). There is still a wish to regard the whole thing as a scam: gulled and witless consumers; scheming and rapacious businesses; phony markets and bogus “competition”; politicians, media hacks, and other assorted apologists for “the system,” all cozily in the pockets of the people in charge. It is a comprehensively false diagnosis. From a narrower political point of view, it is also, most likely, a self-defeating sentiment, because in America (though not in Europe) this mind-set makes it harder to win elections, not easier.

Galbraith dignified that self-defeating sentiment, dressed it in professorial robes, and expressed it with wonderful wit and elegance. He did his followers, who loved him for it, no favors.

I’m curious, though, about what the author considers to be “genuine failures of the market,” and his recommended “fixes” for them. If the public choice school has taught us anything, it’s that government intervention almost always makes perceived market failures worse.