From Cambridge to Eternity: “Praying for World Peace”
The first virtue in life is efficiency, or utility per hour (M ∙ U ∙ T -1 ). The second is fertility, or reproduction of the utile-for-limited-time. As a consequence, wasting time in general and concerning about the futile in particular become the first two vices of all. Depending upon the school of economic thoughts, incidentally, “the moment” or “the extraterrestrial” may or may not be a concern. In economics, we call as good the kind of utility visible while as service the other kind of utility invisible. Alas, some intellectual macroeconomists, honestly or otherwise, miss so many intangible things of utility; on the flipside, others try to build and explain infertile models. How Utile to Whom? Philosophy of life is personal. First, the degree of caring for the present vs. the future is a matter of individual choice. In other words, the “time value of money” varies across people and changes over time of th...