Word: galbraithe
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John Kenneth Galbraith implies that corporations have already killed Adam Smith's self-regulating market. In his view, the larger a corporation grows the more it can escape from the workings of the market to become a law unto itself, thus paralyzing Adam Smith's "invisible hand." According to Galbraith, large companies can set prices more or less independently of demand, produce what they rather than consumers want, and in effect ram the products down consumers' throats by the power of advertising. If corporations cannot defy the market, they can sometimes resist it for a long time when it refuses...
Despite his almost legendary absences from the campus, Galbraith, 66, is one of Harvard's best-known professors, and probably one of the world's most famous economists. He also emerged as a jet-set superstar who is as likely to be skiing in Gstaad, speech-making in Washington or writing in New Delhi as he is to be lecturing in Cambridge. Active in liberal politics, he introduced J.F.K. to Harvard intellectuals (and became J.F.K.'s Ambassador to India). In addition, Galbraith wrote bestsellers in which he chided capitalism and the American compulsion to produce ever more...
...When Galbraith was on campus recently, his colleagues gave him a portable electric typewriter as a retirement present. Last week he received another tribute from the Harvard and Radcliffe senior classes, which chose him as their Class Day faculty speaker. Said Class Marshal Harden Wiedemann: "He is respected because of his scholastic endeavor, but more than that, though he is not often available to students, when he is, he is totally devoted to them." In his Class Day speech Galbraith himself chose to "reflect on the 41 years that I have been at Harvard, or, as some of my colleagues...
...hide his feelings, Galbraith has often put off the administration and some of his colleagues. In 1969 he was a leader of the liberal wing of the faculty in denouncing the administration after a student strike and a police bust. Galbraith's fans, like Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief, say that "as economic theory has gotten narrower he has provided a bridge to the real world." Others demur. Says Harvard Business School Lecturer Daniel Fenn: "I think his field has not primarily been Harvard. He has used it mainly as a base of operations. My feeling is that...
Mixed Reviews. Galbraith has not taught a course at Harvard since the fall semester, 1973. When he had classes, he earned mixed reviews from his students. In describing Galbraith's Social Sciences 134 course, the students' confidential guide noted in 1968: "The long ambassador, as he was known affectionately in India, has failed in all of his past courses to demonstrate either economic rigor or an interest in undergraduates." A year later, however, the guide praised the same course: "People accustomed to the usual outline form lecture say they find him hard to listen to. But they should...