Long-time conservative columnist George Will wrote about airline competition in The Washington Post today, April 15, 2012. It is an important and serious subject. But along the way he said, "Intellectuals are often the last to learn things," to attack a 1958 claim by John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist who taught at Harvard University.
Why smear people who try to think seriously about important matters? Aren't columnists who write about airline competition pretty close to being "intellectual" if they are not actual "intellectuals?"
Will writes, "Undiscouraged by evidence, in 1967 Galbraith, full of the progressive's enthusiasm for the administrative state, asserted in 'The New Industrial State' that the U.S. economy would soon be dominated by large corporations essentially immune from competition and hence from market turbulence."
If this is what Galbraith wrote, it seems that he was wrong about immunity from competition but was he wrong that the economy would be dominated by large corporations?
Why be so snarky -- especially about 50 and 60 year old arguments? It doesn't seem to be the case that Galbraith was writing specifically about airline regulation or competition. And considering that the sixth anniversary of Galbraith's death is in two weeks, it seems downright rude to be so gratuitously insulting to someone who is dead.
This kind of writing does not contribute to a more civil or more thoughtful society -- just a more nasty one.
No comments:
Post a Comment