A collection of Op-Ed pieces on capitalism that appeared in the New York Times. There are a few very worthwhile essays in the collection. Leonard Silk's wide ranging ruminations on the nature of capitalism in America are as relevant today as in 1973. He considers among other issues the economic and political implications of interlocking corporate directorships, the growth of monopolies, the use of religious fringe movements as surrogates for spiritual nourishment in a materialistic society, the tension between profits and corporate responsibility, the dominance of the financial industry, and case studies in how the free market harnesses and creates new technologies. Ken Arrow's careful assessment of so-called contradictions of capitalism is also very interesting and informative. The famous Marxist Paul Sweezy's essay is a succinct statement about why capitalism needs and breeds war. He claims that Keynesian fine tuning is a miragevandvthatbaggregate demand has been maintained through military spending. Furthermore, that the drive for profit-making leads to over-investment and that the excss production must be destroyed by wars or by increased sales to colonial countries. But to say that the capitalist's drive for profits results in overproduction is a contradiction in terms. No profit-maximizer would choose to over invest and thereby accept a diminished rate of return on equity. In fact, if Marx was right about capitalist overproduction, it can only be if capitalists are insufficiently greedy! That is to say, they care less about profits and personal wealth than they do about creating legacies of great companies. That's why they are willing to reinvest corporate earnings to maximize growth but not profits. Steve Jobs said as much to his biographer. The book concludes with a longer essay by Galbraith in which he clains neo-classical economics is irrelevant because it abstracts from the political power of large corporations to shape not only legislation but consumer desires and social values. It is a powerful thesis. He says, "When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state, poeer over belief, it is a political instrument, different in form and degree but not in kind from the state itself." Galbraith argues that a glaring example of mistaken belief by economists is that, since large corporations have monopoly power, they would exploit their position by supplying too little outpu (in order to hike prices), whereas he claims there is actually way too much production of cars, cosmetics, weaponry, etc. In contrast, competitive industries such as health services and housing, far from being the paradigm of efficiency, arevso under-resourced that government intervention in these areas are demanded by local citizens out of desperation. In any case, this is a thought-provoking little book, though some of the essays are too short to be meaningful, or appear quite outdated in the 21st century.… (meer)