It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in … - Joan Robinson

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Real French people don't bake! At least they don't bake anything complicated, finicky, tricky or unreliable.

Joan Robinson

It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.

Fall, Two, Errors, Enterprise, Department, Bureaucracy

Same Author Quotes

The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.

Money, Nature, Orthodox, Traditional, Work

When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.

Cambridge, Economics, Idea, Ideas, October

Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.

Capitalism, Deeper, Looming, Lying, Overcoming, Running

I came away from the talk with the perception that the risk of adverse side effects is so much greater than the risk of cervical cancer, I couldn’t help but question why we need the vaccine at all.

Cancer, Effects, Greater, Risk, Vaccines

In general, the nightmare quality of Marx's thought gives it, in this bedevilled age, an air of greater reality than the gentle complacency of the orthodox academics. Yet he, at the same time, is more encouraging than they, for he releases hope as well as terror from Pandora's box, while they preach only the gloomy doctrine that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Air, Complacency, Gentle, Gives, Giving, Reality