Oh, that's OK then. I'll stop my carping and let PK continue
his tireless task of speaking truth to power.
Carl
I know you're being ironic, but I'll reply in a non-ironic way: PK doesn't
speak truth to power except within the usual political context of what's
good for capital (the real world of power that's idealized by economists
like PK as a market system perceived as good -- with some technocratic
fiddling -- for the public interest as long as special interests like
labor unions don't have excessive influence).
What's really venial among academic economists is the winner-take-all
system in which super-star economists (who are selected by
similarly-minded neoclassical ideologues) run the top graduate programs,
get abundant research grants, attain high-paying positions, publish in
prestigious journals, etc., which allow them to in turn pull in cash from
corporations as consultants, to publish in establishmentarian outlets like
the NY TIMES, and to choose the next group of super-stars, while deciding
which departments are top, who gets grants, who gets promoted, which
journals are prestigious and who gets published in them, etc. In this
context, PK is what C. Wright Mills termed a new entrepreneur (in his
WHITE COLLAR), a person who prospers by jumping back and forth between
academic, business, and government bureaucracies (like Henry the K).
Jim Devine
