Theoretical foundations of government ownership in a capitalistic economy
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Date
1946
Authors
Foster, John Fagg, 1907-
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Someone has remarked that one of the most dangerous things a people can do is to talk one way and act another. I think that this dictum is true in the sense that in so far as a people does not understand what it is doing, it is apt to make mistakes. The peoples of the capitalistic economies always have condoned the government ownership of some enterprises, and at the same time they have talked generally as if government ownership were bad in itself. There is a parallel situation in economic theory. So far as I know, almost all economists who have had occasion to discuss the matter have approved government ownership for some enterprises and disapproved it for others. And at the same time they have set forth a general theory which would seem to say that government ownership, as a category, is uneconomic. I have thought for some time that an inquiry into the problem of government ownership in a capitalistic economy not only should reveal something further in regard to the forces at play in a problem which the peoples of capitalistic nations have found repeatedly but also should throw some light on the validity of the general theories as such