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
So also as regards the discretionary abuse of the community's industrial
efficiency vested in the owner of the material equipment.
Disserviceability may be capitalised as readily as serviceability, and
the ownership of the capital goods affords a discretionary power of
misdirecting the industrial processes and perverting[4] industrial
efficiency, as well as of inhibiting or curtailing industrial processes
and their output, while the outcome may still be profitable to the owner
of the capital goods. There is a large volume of capital goods whose
value lies in their turning the technological inheritance to the injury
of mankind. Such are, _e.g._, naval and military establishments,
together with the docks, arsenals, schools, and manufactories of arms,
ammunition, and naval and military stores, that supplement and supply
such establishments. These armaments and the like are, of course, public
and quasi-public enterprises, under the current regime, with somewhat
disputable relations to the system of current business enterprise. But
it is no far-fetched interpretation to say that they are, in great part,
a material equipment for the maintenance of law and order, and so enable
the owners of capital goods with immunity to inhibit or pervert the
industrial processes when the exigencies of business profits make it
expedient; that they are, further, a means--more or less ineffectual, it
is true--for extending and protecting trade, and so serve the
differential advantage of business men at the cost of the community; and
that they are also in large part a material equipment set apart for the
diversion of a livelihood from the community at large to the military,
naval, diplomatic, and other official classes. These establishments may
in any case be taken as illustrating how items of material equipment may
be devoted to and may be valued for the use of the technological
expedients for the damage and discomfort of mankind, without sensible
offset or abatement.
Typical of a class of investments which derive profits from capital
goods devoted to uses that are altogether dubious, with a large
presumption of net detriment, are such establishments as race-tracks,
saloons, gambling-houses, and houses of prostitution.[5] Some spokesmen
of the "non-Christian tribes" might wish to include churches under the
same category, but the consensus of opinion in modern communities
inclines to look on churches as serviceable, on the whole; and it may be
as well not to attempt to assign them a specific place in the scheme of
serviceable and disserviceable use of invested wealth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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