The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other EssaysVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays
Veblen, Thorstein
Economics; Science
Any industrial venture which falls short in meeting the pecuniary
exigencies of the market declines and yields ground to others that meet
them with better effect. Hence shrewd business management is a requisite
to success in any industry that is carried on within the scope of the
market. Pecuniary failure carries with it industrial failure, whatever
may be the cause to which the pecuniary failure is due--whether it be
inferiority of the goods produced, lack of salesmanlike tact, popular
prejudice, scanty or ill-devised advertising, excessive truthfulness, or
what not. In this way industrial results are closely dependent upon the
presence of business ability; but the cause of this dependence of
industry upon business in a given case is to be sought in the fact that
other rival ventures have the backing of shrewd business management,
rather than in any help which business management in the aggregate
affords to the aggregate industry of the community. Shrewd and
farsighted business management is a requisite of survival in the
competitive pecuniary struggle in which the several industrial concerns
are engaged, because shrewd and farsighted business management abounds
and is employed by all the competitors. The ground of survival in the
selective process is fitness for pecuniary gain, not fitness for
serviceability at large. Pecuniary management is of an emulative
character and gives, primarily, relative success only. If the change
were equitably distributed, an increase or decrease of the aggregate or
average business ability in the community need not immediately affect
the industrial efficiency or the material welfare of the community. The
like can not be said with respect to the aggregate or average industrial
capacity of the men at work. The latter are, on the whole, occupied with
production of goods; the business men, on the other hand, are occupied
with the acquisition of them.
Theoreticians who are given to looking beneath the facts and to
contemplating the profounder philosophical meaning of life speak of the
function of the undertaker as being the guidance and cooerdination of
industrial processes with a view to economies of production. No doubt,
the remoter effect of business transactions often is such cooerdination
and economy, and, no doubt also, the undertaker has such economy in view
and is stimulated to his maneuvers of combination by the knowledge that
certain economies of this kind are feasible and will inure to his gain
if the proper business arrangements can be effected. But it is
practicable to class even this indirect furthering of industry by the
undertaker as a permissive guidance only. The men in industry must first
create the mechanical possibility of such new and more economical
methods and arrangements, before the undertaker sees the chance, makes
the necessary business arrangements, and gives directions that the more
effective working arrangements be adopted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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