Monday, June 07, 2010

Paul A. Baran: The Power of Sharks

The trouble with economics is not that it does not yet "know enough," as many of its practitioners love to repeat. Its fatal shortcoming is that is does not incorporate in its knowledge the understanding of what is necessary for the attainment of a better, more rational economic order. Hemingway's Old Man was a virtuoso fisherman. If he had a fault, it was his incapacity to realize the overwhelmingly destructive power of the sharks.


--Paul A. Baran, "Review of Joan Robinson's Economic Philosophy." in American Economic Review (June 1963)

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