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The New Industrial State

John Kenneth Galbraith

Institutional economics

It is a key work of institutional economics, reframing modern capitalism around planning, scale, and corporate power.

Synopsis

An analysis arguing that giant corporations, run by a technical 'technostructure', plan markets and shape demand rather than obeying them.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Large corporations do not submit to the market but plan production and manufacture consumer wants to serve their own stability.

It overturns the picture of sovereign consumers and free competition, exposing how concentrated corporate power organizes the economy.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.

Reading note

Read it as a product of the mid-century corporate economy, whose claims later critics sharply contested.

Best paired with

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

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