3 John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes on Efficiency

John Kenneth Galbraith quotes on efficiency

57. Almost 60-odd years ago in Canada. I was studying agriculture, how to produce better chickens, better cattle, better horses - horses in those days - better fruit, better vegetables. This was in the early years of the Great Depression, and the thoughts crossed my mind that there wasn't a hell of a lot of use producing better crops and better livestock if you couldn't sell them, that the real problem of agriculture was not efficiency in production but the problem of whether you could make money after you produced the stuff. So I shifted from the technical side to, first, the study of agricultural economic issues and then on to economics itself.

71. Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

84. You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.