Description
After nearly a decade of privatization, monetarist economic policies, and deregulation of markets, the phrase 'the mixed economy' has all but disappeared from serious political discourse. It used to stand for a recognition of the possibility of a halfway house between a free enterprise and a planned economy. It used to stand, also, for a recognition that people work for a variety of motives, that the pursuit of self-interest can, and in a decent society is, mixed with other desires to do a good job, to serve society, to share in effort and reward, to evoke smiles and not frowns from other people.
Motives are what this book is primarily about. There is nothing like spending one's life studying Japan and thinking about the differences between Japan and Britain and America for making one reflect: why do people work? Why do they do what their foremen and managers tell or ask them to do? Why do people sometimes cooperate, sometimes compete? What makes them sometimes obstinate, sometimes ready to compromise? What makes things seem fair to some people and not to others, and what makes some people care more than others whether something is fair or not?
ISBN:0804714010
