Paul Samuelson Was a Commie Sympathizer

Great find in a Gary North article, "Memory Hole: Socialist Failures" (classic Gary North style title),

No better example of this intellectual self-deception can be found than the case of Paul Samuelson, economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics (1970), former Newsweek columnist, and the author of by far the most influential economics textbook of the post-war world (1948-present): at least three million copies, 31 foreign languages. He announced in the 1989 edition of his textbook: 'The Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.'

And yet, his economics textbook is in its 18th edition. Does it mention that the Federal Reserve is a cartel? I mentioned all of this to a correspondent, who replied,

"Samuelson also publicly wrote that the stock market was efficient but meanwhile invested his prize money and other treasures in Commodities Corporation, an early hedge fund which sought to profit from market inefficiences.

Do you think that this shows a problem with the non-market nature of academia? I.e. Samuelson is a discredited brand, like a laundry detergent that causes cancer, but he is still on the shelves instead of going away."

Speaking of the non-market nature of academia, the thing to read is this essay, University Guildsmen and Anticapitalism,

"We do not necessarily know what public universities would be capable of achieving in the marketplace if they — like any regulatory and interventionist government — simply allowed their industry to be structured from the bottom up in the hands of private management for the sake of consumer (namely, student) sovereignty. If we could cut tax funding and establish an educational price on the market, we might see where the most profitable ideas lie."

Maybe someday.