The wealth of nations implies some sort of political arithmetic – the calculation either of an immense sum or of some descriptive ratio, a distribution or per capita allotment. Adam Smith referred to "the distribution of the necessities of life." Benjamin Franklin pondered a four-hour working day that had been "computed by some political arithmetician." Thomas Jefferson's friend, the Marquis de Chastellux proposed a formula for ascertaining public happiness, which Jefferson summed up as a cautionary tale: "If we can prevent government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy."
Would an alternative vision of the good society evince a similar fascination with numbers? I will argue here that it must, if only out of strategic and transitional necessity. The outline of the kind of reckoning required was already implied in Chastellux's and Franklin's speculations and has been a recurrent, if dissident and subterranean, theme in political economy since the earliest days. Even Adam Smith somewhat ambivalently upheld "ease of body and peace of mind" as "what constitutes the real happiness of human life." But how does one measure ease of body and peace of mind? We will get to the question of how presently, but first I would like to explain why it is crucial to calculate it, not merely to exalt it... http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/p/time-on-ledger-social-accounting-for.html -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
