Michael wrote: > The Bell Labs incident is somewhat different. > It seems like individual profit maximizing > behavior. The Feldstein incident and Samuelson's > attack on the Sraffa reswitching theory were driven > by higher motives -- to protect a defunct (but well > funded) ideology.
I beg to differ Michael. I don't know anything about Samuelson's attack on Sraffa and don't deny the possibility of the presence of "higher motives" to protect whatever but "well fundedness" in my view is a serious force behind most of these. Once the problem posed to me is as simple as "survival", as it is now in the current academic world, I will do as much as I can to survive. I have never been sure as to what human nature is but whatever it is, the survival instinct is a major part of it. I am not going to let my son suffer because I cannot get one more paper published. I will fight to the tooth and nail to get that paper published, if not getting it published means we are in trouble. Think about a UC Berkeley Economics professor watching the San Francisco Bay from the North Berkeley hills (Did we not have one of them here?). Do you think he would let what he has go without fighting back? Sabri
