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References
Thomas R. DeGregori, “Parsimony of Prodicality: The False Dilemma in Economic Development Theory”, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 7, No. 2, June 1973. An egregious exception and still an outstanding work is K. William Kapp,The Social Costs of Private Enterprise, New York: Schocker 1971 (irst published 1950).
Thorstein Veblen, “{bcWhy is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science}”, in Veblen,The Place of Science in Modern Civilization, New York: Russell & Russell, 1961, reprint, p. 73–74.
Adam Smith,The Wealth of Nations, New York: Modern Library, 1937, p. 423.
John Locke,Treatise of Civil Government, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1937, pp. 25, 30–32.
op. cit., Adam Smith, p. 66.
See, for example, Robert A. Mundell,Man and Economics, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968, Preface: “Economics is the science of choice ... But the science won't stay put ... There is also an economics of welfare, manners, language, industry, music and art. There is an economics of war and economics of power. There is even an economics of love” “Economics seems to apply to every nook and cranny of human experience. I is an aspect of all conscious action. It has alays been so...” “It can be because economics is more that just the most developed of the sciences of control. It is a way of looking at thins, an ordering principle, a completepart of everything.”
Thomas S. Kuhn,The Structure of Scientific Revoutions, 2nd edition, Chicago: University of chicago Press, 1970, p. 37.
See, for example, comments by John Kenneth Galbraith, in “Power and the Useful Economists”,American Economic Review, Vol. 63. No. 1, March 1973, p. 2. This article was Balbraith's presidential address delivered at the American Economic Association, Dec. 29, 1972. He stated: “In leading centers of instruction faculty responsibility is either secure or increasingly so. But in place of the old censorship has come a new depotism. That consists in defining scientific excillence as whatevr is closest in belief and method to the scholarly tendency of the people who are already there. This is a pervasive and oppressive thing, not the least dangerous for being, in the frequent case, both self-righteou and unconscious:”
See, for example, John Kenneth Galbraith,The Affluent Society, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1958, p. 121. In response to Democratic attacks on their best year in history." Galbraith notes all the things best didn't mean arts, human security from war, education, etc. No one challenged the meaning of best. “Second best could mean only one thing -- that production of goods was the second highest in history.”
A good portion of advertising is informational in the sense that it provides data as to location, price, etc., for items already desired by the consumer, but admen would be less than candid if they suggested that informational advertising is the dominant form.
op. cit., Galbraith,The Affluent Society, p. 260.
Steffan B. Linder,The Harried Leisure Class, New York: Colombia University Press, 1970. Reading this book, one finds it difficult to tell if the author is being satirical and what it is that he is satirizing. The name and conclusions (pp. 144–146) of the book clearly indicate a malaise with things as they are. Without a doubt, the book's theses follows logically from micro-economic theory. There is a mathematical appendix.
Ibid., pp. 83–89. This section is delightful reading and obviously satirical.
This aspect of consumption was most cogently observed by Thorstein Veblen (inthe Theory of the Leisure Class, New York: The MacMillan Co. 1899), but unfortunately few scholars have taken this work seriously.
This ad is a favorite of mine and I have used it in many papers. See Thomas R. DeGegori “Economic Violence in America”Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas, Vol. VI, 1975, pp. 24–29.
Dennis Meadows et al.,The limits of Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of manking. New York: Universe Books, 1972.
Ibid., p. 139–140.
Increased family income wil likely lead to an increased demand for goods and pollution. An additional child in a family without an increase in income merely redistributes consumption within the family. Later the child will be consuming social services and still later carning income, both being pollution-generating activities. The pollution effect of an increase in income is immediate; the pollution effect of an additional child is delayed unless it is a causal factor in an increase in income. Possibly, we should be talking about “raise control” as well as “birth control.”
One of the voices in the wilderness of economics and resources was Frich Zimmerman. He long argued that we should not say “resources are” but rather “resources become.” According to Zimmerman, to understand resources, one had to comprehend the processes of science and technology and cultural usage that created resources. See Erick W. Zimmerman,World Resources and Industries: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability of Agricultural and Industreal Materials. Revised Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951; see particularly pp. 6–14.
John Stuart Mill,Principles of Political Ecomony, edited with an introduction by W. J. Ashley, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909, pp. 748–749.
The one analysis of the environmental issue that recognizes the importance of the value question is the document, “A Blueprint for Survival”, special issue ofThe Ecologist, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1972.
Barry Commoner, “Salvation: It's Possible”,The Progressive, Vol. 34, No. 4, April 1970, p. 14. Our past success with technological change gives us the sometimes false sense that, even in the face of ever-whelming evidence for adversity, technology will somehow rescue us. “The history of this country is that, as the need arose for anything, somebody was there with the right tool to take care of it. That is the way this country was built.” - Mayor W. D. Rogers of Lubbock, Texas, quoted in Donald E. Green,Land of the Underground Rain, Austin: 1973, p. 230.
The idea of greed is sufficiently widespread not to attribute to it the causal agency is western industrialization. However, it was causal in a negative sense in that these ideasallowed the forces of industrialization, while in other cultures ideological forces restricted (and in many cases still do) industrial development.
Thomas B. Blackburn has suggested that we might even need to go deeper and rethink the basic premises of scientific inquiry. Like Commoner, Blackburn shows that “Scientist's quantifying, value-free orientation” has been tremendously successful in advancing certain types of knowledge but has been “helpless to avoid (and often a willing partner in) the use of science for exploitive and destructive ends.” He does not advocate “abandoning these intellectual traditions but complementing or enriching them with other forms of sensuous knowledge. The human mind and body process information with staggering sophistication and sensitivity by their direct sensuous experience of their surroundings.” Thomas R. Blackburn, “Sensuous-Intellectual Complementarity in Science”,Science, Vol. 172, June 4, 1971, pp. 1003–1007.
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DeGregori, T.R. The poverty of affluence: The limits of growth in a world of technology and change. FSSE 8, 8–19 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02826171
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02826171