Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: The relation between statics and dynamics / John Maurice Clark

Collection:: Economics Books

THE RELATION BETWEEN STATICS AND DYNAMICS S57 satisfaction, or may be reasonably satisfied without knowing that a different policy would not have worked stili better. Even successful business policies are commonly of this latter sort. They are not the best that could have been done; but so long as the errors are not greater than those of one’s competitors, one may never be forced to those further experiments by which alone it can be determined that anything better is possible. Even where sampling is relatively easy, as with consumption goods which are bought repeatedly, it involves some trouble, and is not likely to be carried to anything like completeness. And thus many errors persist, and it is possible to fool some of the people all of the time. Some errors are cumulative in their effects rather than self- correcting. They have permanent effects on the individual’s char- acter or opportunities for revising his course for the future. This is particularly true of the choice of an occupation. By accepting a poverty wage and a low standard of living one may be accepting also a low level of efficiency which will tend to make the poverty permanent; * or by entering the field of casual labor, one may be accepting also the mentality and social ideas and ideals which go with it, and which may be inconsistent with those qualities we think of as the “economic virtues,” and with the ability to strive effectively for something better. This does not mean that free choice is not still the best system, but it does give added meaning to the well-known principle that freedom needs to be limited and safeguarded to prevent it from being so used as to destroy or limit effective freedom for the future: and it emphasizes the point made by Cooley, that freedom and degenera- tion are definitely linked together. Moreover the ideal to be sought is not a static one of perfect use of freedom, but a dynamic one of an educational character. It involves tasks proportioned to one’s ability to perform them with sufficient success so that one may grow in the process, and safeguards against the most disastrous results of errors. This raises the question of levels of intelligence and capacity, and here we are faced with the fact of great differences within the population. Dynamic economies cannot work successfully with the idea of one “economic man.” Even if the non-existent average individual could be found, still departures from this average would be important enough to demand consideration. ! Cf. Marshall, Principles of Economics, (5th ed.), pp. 560-63. 569.

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