"Instead of pointing out to people that they might better put their money into education on a private basis that would permit free choice of teachers or into utility cars with a low gas consumption rate and a short wheel base or into voluntary medical cooperatives, all of which would permit an individual the mature exercise of his own will, Galbraith falls back into a Papa Knows Best attitude. To protect people against Madison Avenue, he would send the tax collector around to relieve them of a good part of their income.
“Personally, I find this superior, top-down attitude offensive. It is an echo of Thurman Arnold's old theory that the government should treat people as the superintendent of an insane asylum treats his charges, as wards to be watched over and provided for."
In conclusion Chamberlain said, presciently, that Galbraith’s famous book “contains the subtle poison that will someday drug us into reconstituting society in the image of a public institution, with only the ‘planning’ officials exercising the power of choice. If enough people listen to Galbraith, the ‘underlying population,’ to use Veblen's old phrase, will simply be on the receiving end of whatever the government wants to dispense in the name of ‘social balance.' And the ‘social balance’ will be maladministered, at that.”
Bill Steigerwald
Bill Steigerwald, born and raised in Pittsburgh, is a former L.A. Times copy editor and free-lancer who also worked as a docudrama researcher for CBS-TV in Hollywood before becoming a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a columnist Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Bill Steigerwald recently retired from daily newspaper journalism..
TOWNHALL DAILY:
Sign up today and receive Townhall.com daily lineup delivered each morning to your inbox.