A False Yardstick

Men, therefore, may prefer to use money as a yardstick even in efforts which do not have the aim of making additions to a society’s stock of utility. Even where the aim is to add to solidarity, collective effectiveness, or societal authenticity, men, once committed to rationalization, deployed a variety of cost-benefit analysis to measure their performance … A whole host of social problems from urban renewal to delinquency-prevention projects remain a mess in part because of the use of money for ends that money alone cannot serve.R.C. Baum, ‘On Social Media Dynamics’ quoted by Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Cambridge 1987, vol. 2, p. 293