... Mr. Rifkin is the archetype of that creature known as the policy entrepreneur. He is a consistent generator of bad ideas, and it is bad ideas, more than anything, that help governments grow.
... For decades, he has been exploiting technophobia, junk science, postmodern psychobabble and folk economics to peddle a long list of anti-capitalist, anti-corporate scares, along with matching Big Government “solutions.”
... Mr. Rifkin, like his predecessors since Karl Marx, is very keen to “retire Adam Smith,” which in fact amounts to the continued rejection of a bunch of ideas that Smith never promoted, such as an alleged “conventional, top-down, centralized approach to organizing economic activity.”
... He teaches in the executive education program at the Wharton School of Business, and is an advisor not just to Chancellor Merkel but to the whole European Union. He is likely to get an enthusiastic hearing tomorrow from all those Queen’s Parkers supervising Ontario’s Green Energy Act.Rifkin sounds like Maurice ("Mo") Strong on stilts, big stilts. Given that list of "buyers" he's unquestionably a master "visionary" snake-oil salesman.