The ultimate "causes of price"

 

The ultimate "causes of price" - to use a Classical term - lie deeply embedded in the psychology and techniques of mankind and his environment, and are as manifold as the sands of the sea. All economic analysis is an attempt to classify these manifold causes, to sort them out into categories of discourse that our limited minds can handle, and so to perceive the unity of structural relationship which both unites and separates the manifoldness. Our concepts of "demand" and "supply" are such broad categories. In whatever sense they are used, they are not ultimate determinants of anything, but they are convenient channels through which we can classify and describe the effects of the multitude of determinants of the system of economic magnitude.
--
Boulding (1944) "A Liquidity Preference Theory of Market Prices". In: Economica, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 42 (May, 1944), pp. 55-63.
--
C. Brown (2003) "Toward a reconcilement of endogenous money and liquidity preference" in: Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. Winter 2003–4, Vol. 26, No. 2. 323 commented on this article, saying: "Boulding (1944) argued that if liquidity preference were divorced from the "demand for money," the former could come into its own as a theory of financial asset pricing. According to this view, rising liquidity preference or a "wave of bearish sentiment" is manifest in a shift from certain asset categories, specifically, those that are characterized by high capital uncertainty (that is, uncertainty about the future value of the asset as a result of market revaluation) to assets such as commercial paper or giltedged securities."

 

Kenneth Boulding

» Kenneth Boulding - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

One of Parmenides' merits is to have been the first philosopher who strove to handle general concepts like "being", "not-being", "knowing", "unity", "identity", in their systematic connection.

 

Parmenides

 

The appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic hermaphroditism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of "perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified.

 

Michel Foucault

 

As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types of political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind. It does not do to take the one type as merely marking a lower order of civilization and the other a higher; they are commonly so taken, but erroneously. Still less does it do to classify both as species of the same genus — to classify both under the generic name of "government," though this also, until very lately, has been done, and has always led to confusion and misunderstanding.
A good understanding of this error and its effects is supplied by Thomas Paine. At the outset of his pamphlet called Common Sense, Paine draws a distinction between society and government. While society in any state is a blessing, he says, "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." In another place, he speaks of government as "a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world."

 

Albert Jay Nock

 

All reading, in truth, is reading in a content area. To read the phrase "the law of diminishing returns" or "the law of supply and demand" requires that you know how the word "law" is used in economics, for it does not mean what it does in the phrase "the law of inertia" (physics) or "Grimm's law" (linguistics) or "the law of the land" (political science) or "the law of survival of the fittest" (biology). To the question, "What does 'law' mean?" the answer must always be, "In what context?"

 

Neil Postman

 

"What has increasingly happened in the last few decades is that many Muslims, it seems, have used and are using the criteria of the kuffar. Thus there has been, by them, a rejection, knowingly or unknowingly, of the fundamental Muslim truth that only Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is the provider of ilm al-yaqin: of that knowledge about which we can be certain. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says: "They had no knowledge of such things: only assumptions, and assumptions are no guide to Truth." (53:28 Interpretation of Meaning). Instead of the criteria of the reliance upon Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, there has been a reliance upon the fallible concepts, categories and ideas which the kuffar have manufactured and to which they have assigned names and terms, which concepts, categories and ideas the kuffar, and those following them or imitating them, believe give them, or will lead them to, understanding, knowledge, and truth. However, all these manufactured concepts, categories and ideas are based upon certain conjectures and assumptions which the kuffar have made."

 

David Myatt