I’m reading the latest blast from Phil Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. More on that later—like, when I finish reading it. But for now, here is an intriguing quote he cites along the way. Try to guess who said it, then check to see if you’re right.
Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority.
5 comments:
Richard Stallman? Larry Lessig? Solzhenitsyn? Kroptkin? (I am trying to be counter-intuitive)
My first guess was correct, but my second-guessing guess was Keynes (as in his beauty contest parable, slaves of some defunct economist, and to fail conventionally).
In fairness to the guy who was quoted, his quotation was clipped by Mirowski, and in the following sentences he pulled back from the brink. On the other hand, our eminent quotee has a reputation for ranking his liberties somewhat categorically and jettisoning political liberty when it conflicts with his other priorities.
Hayek?
Ok, knock it off, guys. Who? NancyO
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