Amartya Sen quotes - page 3
Ken also identified the corporation, not "the market,” as the defining institution of modern economic activity, developing these and related themes both in his teaching and in such widely celebrated books as American Capitalism (1952) and The New Industrial State (1967). But his interest in these ideas persisted throughout his life. The central importance of the corporation, and the fear that government was no longer able to provide an adequate countervailing force against corporate influence exerted both legally and otherwise, was the subject of his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud.
Amartya Sen
If Walter Bagehot was right that "one of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea,” Ken caused an extraordinary amount of pain. Both in his economic thinking and in his political activities, he was dedicated to resisting, and where possible overturning, what he famously called "conventional wisdom” (one of his many turns of phrase that have since become commonplace locutions). Rejecting the standard economic theory based on small, anonymous households and firms that autonomously engage in perfectly functioning markets, Ken instead saw an economic stage dominated by large, nameable actors: big business, big labor, big government. Sorting out their roles and respective power was central to his analysis, and the continually shifting tensions in the interplay among them-"countervailing power” in another of his deft phrases-was the real story of how an economy behaved.
Amartya Sen
The methodological strategy of using the concept of rationality as an 'intermediary' is particularly inappropriate in arriving at the proposition that actual behaviour must be self-interest maximizing. Indeed, it may not be quite as absurd to argue that people always actually do maximize their self-interest, as it is to argue that rationality must invariably demand maximization of self-interest. Universal selfishness as actuality may well be false, but universal selfishness as a requirement of rationality is patently absurd.
Amartya Sen
...a theory of justice that can serve as the basis of practical reasoning must include ways of judging how to reduce injustice and advance justice, rather than aiming only at the characterization of perfectly just societies – an exercise that is such a dominant feature of many theories of justice in political philosophy today.
Amartya Sen