excerpted from Human Goods, Economic Evils: A Moral Approach to the Dismal Science

Any distinctions we might care to make among contemporary would be quite superficial; scratch the surface and a profound cultural unity emerges. Thanks to a remarkable globalization of ideas and practices, the same economic approaches, expectations, technologies, and techniques are now found everywhere. To be sure, these forces of industrialization are less thoroughly and successfully deployed in poor countries than in rich, but failure does not change the accepted economic standard, which is industrial. As for the differences among the various economic models of rich countries, they are microscopic in comparison with the similarities.

A lazy or time-bound philosopher might wish to study only this universal modern economy, forgetting or dismissing its newness; it started sometime between two hundred and fifty years ago (the exact time depends on what features are identified as essential). That, however, would be as philosophically inadequate as a philosophy of religion that took only monotheistic or “world” religions into account. The thorough philosopher should be concerned with what is constant in human nature, not what is found only in the modern world, no matter how widely the modern notions have spread or how obviously true and good they currently seem to be. The deeper, philosophical unity of economics must take in not only all contemporary economies but all economies in the past (and in the future, to the extent that they can be imagined)—hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial, and postindustrial. This philosophical challenge has a big practical effect, because the differences between industrial and nonindustrial economies are significant. Indeed, the contemporary economies of Afghanistan and Austria probably have more in common than the Austrian economies of the twenty-first and sixteenth centuries.

What follows, then, is a description of the economic aspect of society, of all societies. It has five parts: stuff, capital, service, authority, and social importance. Each part includes comments on how the industrial and preindustrial economies differ, as well as on the key confusions of conventional economists.

Economies produce stuff. More exactly, they transform raw materials—the earth itself, currently living creatures and the residues of past life, the powers and dominions of natural forces (such as light and electricity)—into goods that men can use. Some of those goods, most notably food and fuel, are used up by their very nature, so the economy has to keep producing them at a fairly steady rate. Others, such as clothing and shelter, would ideally last forever, but in fact eventually wear out, so the economy also has to produce them at a steady rate. Some stuff, such as food and fuel, are necessary to stay alive. Other stuff, such as sacred books and tools for worship, are considered necessary for spiritual life. Yet other items, for example pillows and the latest model of an electronic gadget, are enjoyed but in no way required. Some stuff, for example food, is assigned primarily to individuals; some, for example houses, to families; and some, for example roads, to whole communities. The diverse collection of economic stuff hardly changed from the beginning of history to sometime around 1500 (or perhaps 1700 or even 1800). Foodstuffs were the preeminent good, at least in terms of the amount of labor dedicated to their production and their importance in social relations. Fuel, for cooking and warmth, was just as vital but its production usually required less effort. Clothing and shelter were the other basic economic goods; their production absorbed much of the effort left over after food and fuel had been assured for the community. In many preindustrial economies, little was left over, so clothing and shelter were minimal. Then there was the stuff made by craftsmen, most notably furniture, containers, jewelry, and the tools of war. An economy was considered rich when these were available to a significant minority of the population. However, most economies were poor.

By preindustrial standards, all industrial economies are fantastically rich. They produce enormous amounts of stuff. Items that were available but scarce in preindustrial societies are almost all abundantly available. There is an ample supply of not only food, fuel, shelter, and clothing but also of candles, chairs, cleaning products, combs, decorations, dishes, nails, pottery, soap, and weapons. In addition, there is always a surplus of totally new and innovative products, from paved roads to this or that electronic gadget. Virtually every category of worldly human desires has been addressed with remarkable effectiveness.