Steve Cotler Steve Cotler

Tag: Keynes

“Keynesian” Capitalism Bumper Sticker De-Attributed

— 5:31 am · View all 3 comments

During the research for my previous post, I came across a bumper sticker that attributed the quotation in question to John Maynard Keynes. When I informed the purveyor that the quotation was not from Keynes’s oeuvre, they replied:

Well, that is sad. It seems that making things up has been a major accomplishment of the electronic age. We will probably keep the saying but remove the attribution. This seems to be happening a lot more than it used to. Thanks.

Here’s their updated bumper sticker.

A small victory for truth, justice, and scholarship.

*     *     *     *     *

Update 8/13/09: One month later, the bumper sticker is still being sold online with the attribution.

Update 8/20/20: The bumper sticker is no longer available, but several other items with the same quote are: a tee-shirt, a poster, another tee-shirt, a button, and…then I gave up searching for more.

John Maynard Keynes: Capitalism and the “Nastiest/Wickedest of Men”

— 1:28 am · View all 28 comments

Of course you know that not everything on the web is accurate, but what if you find thousands of hits for a quotation, including citations in Wikiquote,  the Washington Post, and the Howard Law Journal (which, in its Vol 48 Issue 1 Fall 2004 issue, blithely quoted the Washington Post article referenced at the end of this post)?

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”

You can find this statement, attributed to economist John Maynard Keynes all over the web. It also appears, somewhat more frequently, in this form:

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.“

In no case, (even in Moving Forward, a book about capitalism) is the quotation accompanied by a citation Continue reading “John Maynard Keynes: Capitalism and the “Nastiest/Wickedest of Men”” →

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