The Unreasonable Society: Foster and the Limits of Instrumental Valuation

The world during the first half of the twentieth century accumulated a great deal of experience with unreasonable societies. Economists tend to consider value theory on many levels of analysis that always impinge upon social valuation. Individuals often employ a combination of valuational processes. Some of them are readily recognizable. Students employ the labor theory of value when evaluating their own work. In contrast to feudal societies, in twentieth-century European fascism, the non-rational social valuation permeated the entire political system, from national politics to the family. A modern unreasonable society, therefore, can persist as long as it does not interfere with the day-to-day reasonable judgments that people need to make to get on with their lives. Today's is an age of unreason in the US. Therefore, it is important to understand how individuals who eschew reason and instrumental valuation manage to live in a technologically advanced society and successfully translate their irrational beliefs into public policy, or accomplish institutional adjustment on societal level so effectively.