natural resources are capital, not income. philosophical. spiritual touch. deep. intense. where is humanity heading? we follow the ustoms which were probably made by some people who had intellectual capacity either equal or probably less than that of ours. recommends us to be temperant, as Buddha suggested with middle-way what is metaphysics? A man driven by greed or envy loses thepower of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundnessand wholeness, and his very successes become failures.The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It isalso the antithesis of freedom and peace, Every increase of needs tends toincrease one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needscan one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are theultimate causes of strife and war.However that may be, about the fragmentary nature of the judgments ofeconomics there can be no doubt whatever. Even within the narrow compassof the economic calculus, these judgments are necessarily and methodicallynarrow. For one thing, they give vastly more weight to the short than to thelong term. because in the long tem~. as Keynes put it with cheerful brutality.we are all dead. And then, second, they are based on a definition of costwhich excludes all 'free goods'. that is to say, the entire God-givenenvironment, except for those parts of it that have been privatelyappropriated. This means that an activity can be economic although it playshell with the environment, and that a competing activity, if at some cost itprotects and conserves the environment, will be uneconomic.Economics, moreover, deals with goods in accordance with their marketvalue and not in accordance with what they really are. The same rules andcriteria are applied to primary goods, which man has to win from nature, andsecondary goods, which presuppose the existence of primary goods and aremanufactured from them. All goods are treated the same, because the pointof view is fundamentally that of private profit-making, and this means that itis inherent in the methodology of economics to ignore man's dependence onthe natural world.Buyer is exempted from all responsibility and market is institutionalized non-responsibility. I think it is the role of the government to make the market run in a way that a buyer's disregard for responsibility isn't derogatory to the environment. Economists and others arewont to treat such eccentric behaviour with derision if not indignation. Thereligion of economics has its own code of ethics, and the FirstCommandment is to behave 'economically' - many case when you areproducing, selling, or buying. It is only when the bargain hunter has gonehome and becomes a consumer that the First Commandment no longerapplies: he is then encouraged to 'enjoy himself' in any way he pleases. Asfar as the religion of economics is concerned, the consumer is extra-territorial. This strange and significant feature of the modern world warrantsmore discussion than it has yet received.In the market place, for practical reasons, innumerable qualitativedistinctions which are of vital importance for man and society aresuppressed; they are not allowed to surface. Thus the reign of quantitycelebrates its greatest triumphs in 'The Market'. Everything is equated witheverything else. To equate things means to give them a price and thus tomake them exchangeable. To the extent that economic thinking is based onthe market, it takes the sacredness out of life, because there can be nothingsacred in something that has a price. Not surprisingly, therefore, if economicthinking pervades the whole of society. even simple non-economic valueslike beauty, health, or cleanliness can survive only if they prove to be'economic'.To press non-economic values into the framework of the economiccalculus, economists use the method of cost/benefit analysis. This isgenerally thought to be an enlightened and progressive development, as it isat least an attempt to take account of costs and benefits which mightotherwise be disregarded al- together. In fact, however, it is a procedure bywhich the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless isgiven a price, It can therefore never serve to clarify the situation and lead toan enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or thedeception of others; for to undertake to measure the immeasurable is absurdand constitutes but an elaborate method of moving from preconceivednotions to foregone conclusions; all one has to do to obtain the desiredresults is to impute suitable values to the immeasurable costs and benefits.The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the undertaking:what is worse, and destructive of civilisation, is the pretence that everythinghas a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values.Economic calculus has its limits and are generalizations to a bigger scope of universe. They are certainly notultimate set of rules as biblical quotations can not define physics. meta-economics: man plus natureAn expansion of man's ability to bring forthsecondary products is useless unless preceded by an expansion of his abilityto win primary products from the earth. for man is not a producer but only aconverter, and for every job of conversion he needs primary products.powerful arguments. market mechanism = invisible hand'If the nature of the work is properly appreciated and applied, it will standin the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the physical body. Itnourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges him to produce the best heis capable of. It directs his free will along the proper course and disciplinesthe animal in him into progressive channels. It furnishes an excellentbackground for man to display his scale of values and develop hispersonality."What is to take the place of the soul- and life-destroying metaphysicsinherited from the nineteenth century? The task of our generation, I have nodoubt, is one of metaphysical reconstruction. It is not as if we had to inventanything new: at the same time, it is not good enough merely to revert to theold formulations. Our task - and the task of all education - is to understandthe present world, the world in which we live and make our choices.Education which fails to clarify our central convictions ismere training or indulgence. corruptio optimipessima.