“It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.”

— Thorstein Veblen

Veblen (1917) An Inquiry Into the Nature of Peace, and the Terms of Its Perpetuation, p. 168

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American academic 1857–1929

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