If one wants to bring about an old-fashioned liberal economic utopia, it will not be industrialised.
No, it's the right conclusion, because, you have to remember that when he was writing "liberal" meant "Manchester liberal" and thus the quote could be rewritten from modern understanding as:
If one wants to bring about that cliche of a glibertarian economic utopia, it will not be industrialised.
We still have some taxes and a few social services, but it hasn't exactly been happy time for neo-Keynesians.
It's true that glibertarian utopias have a habit of imploding, but I'm not sure he's suggesting that.
Er - haven't we had the industrialised cliche glibertarian utopia for the last couple of decades?
Only in Somalia...
ThatBritGuy:
I know it seems odd now, but back when he was writing, "liberal" really did mean something different, much closer to glibertarian than it does now.
Metatone:
After Reagonomics?
It's amazing, really, because in the 1960's Galbraith was ready to pronounce neoclassical marginalist economics dead. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
