Temporal goods

“ And as in persons, so in things, the time is a matter of great consequence; an eye to the rise and fall of goods; the favorable season of importing and exporting;—these are some of the things which require the attention of those who expect any considerable share of success. ”

“ As business has become more and more complicated, the time element has become larger and larger. The time element as we know it does not exist in simple barter—a man weaves a piece of cloth and exchanges it for a bushel of corn: time is of no account in the transaction. ”

“ On closer inspection, a business cycle is often found to be complicated by minor changes, such as the interruption of depression by a premature resumption of activity, the occurrence of a pause or even a slight crisis in the midst of prosperity, and the like. ”

“ The irreversible time of production is first of all the measure of commodities. The time officially recognized throughout the world as the general time of society actually only reflects the specialized interests that constitute it, and thus is merely one particular type of time. ”

“ Time, the soother of all sorrow, might restore her worn energies, recruit her wasted population, cover her fields with abundance, and, turning the activity of an intelligent people into industrial channels, clothe her with renewed wealth and power. ”

“ But on these instructive complications I must not enlarge more than to say that they could all be resumed in the one word: Delay.
A mankind which has invented the proverb, "Time is money," will understand my vexation. ”

“ On the contrary, there are long periods during which growth in some directions is [115] going hand in hand with decay in others; losses in one kind are being compensated, or more than compensated, by gains in another; during which a language changes, but only as the bud changes into the flower, and the flower into the fruit. A time indeed arrives when the growth and gains, becoming ever fewer, cease to constitute any longer a compensation for the losses and the decay; which are ever becoming more; when the forces of disorganization and death at work are stronger than those of life and order. ”

“ A general survey of the history of every industrial nation reveals the fact that business [114] conditions undergo alternate periods of prosperity and depression extending in clearly defined cycles of substantially uniform length. ”

“ I believe in work, in hard unceasing labour, in patient and painstaking research, in untiring searchings, and in diligent collection and arrangement of facts—to make time [viii] and labour and money subservient to the end in view, rather than that the end in view, and the time and labour and money expended, should bend and bow and ultimately break before time. ”

“ While the material economy, constituting the order of things which belonged to their temporal existence, was in conspicuous manifestation around them, pressing with its realities on their senses; while nature presented to them its open and distinctly-featured aspect ”

“ But as has been said before, being on a world and not on a Titanic, we have time to think.
On what principles could we make out a schedule or inventory of human nature, and decide on world-values in men? ”

“ This general time of human nondevelopment also has a complementary aspect — a consumable form of time based on the present mode of production and presenting itself in everyday life as a pseudocyclical time. ”

“ It is monstrous that, as these come late and |F| slowly to their own, our house and farm and other goods and chattels should get the benefit of them, while, in a public way, to our country and our fellow-citizens, we make ourselves of no further use because of ‘time’. ”

“ Understood aright, money, being the measure and representative of wealth, is in the main, the measure and the representative of dead men's toil; for, rightly understood, wealth is almost entirely the product of the labor of by-gone generations. This product, we have seen, involves the element of time as the chief factor. And so we discover how money, properly understood, is connected with time—the main function of money is to measure and represent the accumulated products of the labor of past generations. ”

“ A period may indeed arrive, discoveries may be in store, which may render a change in the standard of value an absolute necessity. Such a period, however, must be remote, and must be met by wise legislation as it gradually approaches. Meanwhile, we see nothing to stop the development of our resources, nor the increase of our wealth, so long as we use our good gifts and do not abuse them. ”

“ With the aid of memory and imagination he forecasts the future, and compares it with the present. The diminishing utility of goods, therefore, is modified by this fact that a thing has want-gratifying power at different periods. ”

“ But anticipation has no less charm than retrospect, and to an Englishman landing upon your shores for the first time, travelling for hundreds of miles through strings of great and well-ordered cities, seeing your enormous actual, and almost infinite potential, wealth in all commodities, and in the energy and ability which turn wealth to account, there is something sublime in the vista of the future. ”

“ But time, which is spent in rest or amusement, is often as usefully employed, as if it were devoted to labor or devotion. In employing our time, we are to make suitable allowance for sleep, for preparing and taking food, for securing the means of a livelihood, for intellectual improvement, for exercise and amusement, for social enjoyments, and for benevolent and religious duties. And it is the right apportionment of time, to these various duties, which constitutes its true economy. ”

“ But no series of experiences upon which attention is fixed is wholly indifferent to us; and the temporal aspect of such series always involves some element of expectancy and some sense of something that no longer is; and both these conscious attitudes color our interest in the presented succession, and give the whole the meaning of life. Time is thus indeed the form of practical activity ”

“ If time, like money, could be hoarded up, we could get all our work done. Is there any time outside of man? The animals take no note of time.
That is a good saying of Juvenal's, "He who owns the soil, owns up to the sky." ”

“ Our reason for choosing a logical analysis of existing psychic forces instead of a temporal regressus—instead, even, of an accurate historical study of the past—is a two-fold one: first, we wish to coördinate the new factors we are to emphasize with factors already recognized, and to emerge with a value concept which shall serve the economists in the accustomed way—it is illogical to mix a logical analysis with a temporal regressus. ”

“ Of all kinds of social wealth, is not time the most precious? To economize time is, consequently, to become wealthy. Now, is there anything that consumes so much time as those anxieties which I call 'pot-boiling'?—a vulgar expression, but it puts the whole question in a nutshell. ”

“ The problem of time-value is involved in the application of one's energy to repairing one's own possessions. It is a thought of wide bearings that numberless minor decisions in every petty business involve, if they are correctly made, a measuring of the rate of capitalization. ”

“ Now, time is a possession to be parted with for something else; indeed, it forms a large part of the capital with which we trade. We give it and labor, and in exchange get education, money, dexterity, and almost all other things of value. To be watchful of time, then, is wise economy. ”

“ Laborious plans, vast enterprises, schemes that require long long years to perfect, might all be laid aside, and our energies fixed upon the period that is ours. We work in the dark, and half our work is vain. Well, well, time will show; and our labours must not be imperfect, because we know not the result. Yes, with this ever-ready fate yawning before me, nought must be delayed. ”

“ To count time only by sunrises and sunsets omits, in the reckoning, the human equation. Where daily wages and yearly dividends are concerned, it is a very convenient system, but it is no measure of our real life. ”

“ Now, if the vital forces of nature which give an advantage to the element of time be the cause of interest, it would seem to follow that this maximum rate of interest would be determined by the strength of these forces and the extent to which they are engaged in production. ”

“ In brief, only in terms of Will, and only by virtue of the significant relations of the stages of a teleological process, has time, whether in our inner experience, or in the conceived world order as a whole, any meaning. Time is the form of the Will; and the real world is a temporal world in so far as, in various regions of that world, seeking differs from attainment, pursuit is external to its own goal, the imperfect tends towards its own perfection, or in brief, the internal meanings of finite life gradually win, in successive stages, their union with their own External Meaning. ”

“ The formula makes mathematically evident the time-binding capacity characteristic of the human class of life. Properly understood, wealth consists of the fruits or products of this time-binding capacity of man. Animals do not produce wealth; it is produced by Man and only Man. ”

“ Furthermore, if the goods of the earth were equally divided to-day, within a year matters would be about as they are now; for some would hoard, others squander, and the more venturesome would speculate, thus largely increasing their wealth, or losing it all. ”

“ They get an order or a job when they can and at the price they can. During what is called a prosperous time, orders and jobs are plentiful. During a "dull" season they are scarce. Business is always either feasting or fasting and is always either "good" or "bad." ”

“ Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. ”

“ No epoch in the world’s history can be set in comparison with ours in so far as it has been the witness, in the course of a few decades, of almost daily progress and improvement in connection with industry, culture, and the whole field of human knowledge. ”

“ It were far more agreeable to foster the feeling that this age is in advance of any other, that we are at the front of the world’s progress.
So we are in many matters, but those matters are all bent toward one thing—making haste. Economy of time occupies the attention of scientist, inventor, labourer. ”

“ Even without the latter of these adjuncts our instruments would have been far more costly and fragile. Possessing all these gifts of nature, we economise incalculably our time—to us more precious than money! ”

“ The time based on commodity production is itself a consumable commodity, one that recombines everything that the disintegration of the old unitary societies had differentiated into private life, economic life, and political life. The entire consumable time of modern society ends up being treated as a raw material for various new products put on the market as socially controlled uses of time. “A product that already exists in a form suitable for consumption may nevertheless serve as raw material for some other product” (Capital) . ”

“ It has just been said, that the first great secret is to produce work that will last. Now, the conditions of work lasting are twofold: it must not only be in materials that will last, but it must be itself of a quality that will last—it must be good enough to bear the test of time. ”

“ We foresee, then, a future period—however distant may be that future—in which the world’s capital shall have been exhausted, and the energies which are now employed in doing the world’s work will no longer be available. ”

“ I do not need to explain how—civilization (that is, the social fact of the increase of life) multiplying our tasks, rendering our moments more and more precious, and obliging us to keep a perpetual and detailed record of our whole life—the calendar has become to all one of the most necessary things. ”

“ Material progress, as commonly understood, consists of those three elements or directions of progression, in all of which the progressive nations have for some time past been advancing, though in different degrees. ”

“ You have seen by now that the acts of my play are given in terms of modes or basic patterns of human economy—ways in which people get food and protection and safety. The climaxes involve more than human economy. Economics and technological factors may be part of the climaxes, but they are not all. ”

“ From hour to hour the changes in the heavens are observed and what they import considered; for they may import a great deal; the time allowed for bringing the little crops to maturity is so short that the loss of sunshine for a few days may cause anxious thought. ”

“ It is not, therefore, our own time only that is wasted by our want of punctuality, but hours, and days, and months' and years of the precious property of others, over which we had no right, and which was not intentionally submitted to our thoughtless expenditure. ”

“ Time must be redeemed from worldly business and commodity, when matters of greater weight and commodity do require it. Trades, and plough, and profit must stand by, when God calls us (by necessity or otherwise) to greater things. ”