This volume studies the production process, where resources must be committed to specific technological purposes long in advance of the ultimate sale of goods to the consumer.
Production is a complex system of interdependent activities, necessary to the system as a whole, which itself depends on the continuance of each individual activity that composes it
It is Shackle's view that human conduct is chosen with a view to its consequences. But these are in the future, which cannot be directly known. Expectation will confine itself to what is deemed possible, but this leaves it free to entertain widely diverse and rival hypotheses. How can such skeins of mutually conflicting ideas serve the formation of individual or institutional policy? This is the chief question this book examines.
Production is a complex system of interdependent activities, necessary to the system as a whole, which itself depends on the continuance of each individual activity that composes it. In such a system, resources must be committed to specifi c technological purposes long in advance to the ultimate sale of goods to the consumer.
Economics is as wholly entangled with time as is history. It is within this framework that Professor Shackle takes a critical look at business decisions and in so doing brings the philosophical problems right into the market place.
