Costs of economic growth

This distinction assumes importance once it is recognized that economic presumption may be effectively undermined, and many popular propositions qualified, by recourse to economic analysis proper, especially that branch of it entering into the modern study of allocation problems. Thus, some part of Professor Galbraith's rejection of the economists' conventional preference for privately produced goods as against public goods might have been more formally expressed using the terminology of 'external diseconomies explained in Part Two of this volume. And if, for his own purposes, Galbraith eschewed this concept in favour of a more direct and intuitive appeal, there are good reasons, notwithstanding, for elaborating the more formal arguments connected with this concept in the present volume. By inculcating more discriminating economic criteria in the public mind, the stock appeal to profits, exports, growth, or national interest may lose its efficacy, and people may come to expect discussions of economic policy to comprehend a far broader range of alternatives than those in the news today. In the second place, an under standing of the formal arguments will add authority to the re presentations of the many associations in this country committed to the thankless aims of protesting against noise, smoke, pollution and the destruction of wild life and natural beauty, that follow in the wake of expanding industry and communications.