John Kenneth Galbraith - The New Industrial State (1967)

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The imperatives of technology and organization, not the images of ideology, are what determine the shape of economics.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.

John Kenneth Galbraith
There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.

John Kenneth Galbraith
There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.

John Kenneth Galbraith
All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.

John Kenneth Galbraith
That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.

John Kenneth Galbraith
A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.

John Kenneth Galbraith
If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition.

John Kenneth Galbraith
In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought.

John Kenneth Galbraith
No hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food.

John Kenneth Galbraith
It is a commonplace of modern technology that there is a high measure of certainty that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved.

John Kenneth Galbraith
According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The enemy of the market is not ideology but the engineer.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles.

John Kenneth Galbraith
THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM requires that prices be under effective control. And it seeks the greatest possible influence over what buyers take at the established prices.

John Kenneth Galbraith
By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Nothing in our time is more interesting than the erstwhile capitalist corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under the imperatives of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant.

John Kenneth Galbraith
To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise.

John Kenneth Galbraith