Knowledge And Decisions

Merely moving any asset backward and forward in time changes its value substantially. This is demonstrable with economic assets measured in money, but the principle applies far more broadly in social institutions in general: “Justice delayed is justice denied” is an old legal axiom — and “the law’s delay” is an expression that goes back at least as far as Shakespeare.⁴ The dispatch or delay inherent in various institutional processes can be equally (or more) important than the end result conventionally expressed as if it were a constant value. The popular habit of referring to a fixed dollar amount, or a given physical thing, or a particular social outcome, as if these were also fixed values, without regard to the time involved, means more than intellectual confusion. It means opportunities for rule changes affecting “only” time to make major arbitrary changes in people’s fate. Merely by such apparently innocuous decisions as changing the effective date of a law, modifying the retirement age, or lengthening a waiting period, the government can transfer billions of dollars around the economy, including directing some of it towards itself. Merely by lending to enterprises (including government-run enterprises) at an artificially low interest rate, the cost of their whole operation can be grossly misstated and a venture made to appear to be “paying its own way” — on paper. The movement of assets through time is a two-way movement. Not only may present benefits be postponed; future benefits may be moved forward into the present — at a discount corresponding to the interest premium paid (in market transactions) for postponement. An agricultural society can eat up the seeds needed for the next crop, increasing current food consumption at the expense of future food consumption. A nation may reduce its ability to defend itself militarily, thereby gaining additional consumer or governmental spending power in the present, at the expense of either higher military expenditures or forced capitulations in the future. The individual may gain in various ways by betraying his pledges and obligations, at the expense of lower future benefits from activities requiring credibility.

INVESTMENT AND DISINVESTMENT

Moving assets from the future to the present is never costless to the recipient, just as moving assets from the present to the future is never costless to the donor. The process of transforming current assets into future assets is known in economics as “investment.” However, the process itself extends far beyond financial activities. When someone carefully puts his things away, at home or at work, he is deliberately sacrificing present time that could be used for other activities in order to require less time to find his things again in the future. When someone takes the trouble (and sometimes pain and embarrassment) to make his feelings clear to someone else, it is a deliberate loss of present psychic well-being in order to forestall a greater loss of future psychic well-being through misunderstandings. The purpose is to have a greater net psychic well-being over the relevant time span, just as the purpose of financial investments is to have a greater net worth over some relevant time span. The essential similarity between financial and nonfinancial “investment” processes has been noted by such economists as John Stuart Mill in the nineteenth century and Adam Smith in the eighteenth century, but it has been only the past generation of economists who have elaborated theories of “human capital” in its various forms of education, health care, migration, and other activities designed to enhance future well-being of either a financial or a psychic nature, so the term “disinvestment” can also apply to moving assets from the future into the present, without regard to whether financial or psychic assets are involved. Such phrases as “burning the candle at both ends,” “a short life and a merry one,” “eating up your capital,” or “living off future generations” all refer to similar processes although measured in different units. Most expressions describing disinvestment have pejorative connotations, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a ninety-year-old man’s selling some of his half-grown apple trees to pay for current expenditures on things to promote his present health, comfort, and happiness. To try to hold the trees until maturity might make less sense.