200 The Waning Role of Laissez Faire 



American agriculture wish to commend him for this last statement. At 

 another point he says that "it is clear that stabilization schemes will 

 continue to be attempted." I would add that even if all past efforts 

 had failed, that fact alone would be no reason to stop trying. 



Since attempts at stabilization will continue, he suggests that there 

 is a "legitimate task for economic analysis in helping distinguish the 

 better means from the worse." But then he adds (while reserving his 

 own opinion) : "This may be considered by some to be a relatively 

 low type of economic employment." I have been associated for thirty 

 years with people engaged in this employment. Sometimes we, too, 

 venture some judgments on the value of different kinds of economic 

 work and our kind does not come out at the bottom of the scale. 



Aside from all this. Professor Mason has written a thoughtful paper 

 that should be helpful to all students of natural resource use. Its 

 breadth of scope is a testimonial to his scholarship and great analyti- 

 cal powers. What I think he has done, essentially, is to point up the 

 limitations of laissez faire economics in dealing with the political 

 economy problems of natural resource use. One of these limitations 

 is our cultural affinity for laissez faire doctrine, especially on the part 

 of those who have special-interest axes to grind that not only are not 

 public interests but are also often in direct conflict with the public 

 interest as it would be defined by any representative group of interests. 



Perhaps a part of the significance of his paper is to be found in the 

 fact that a nationally known Harvard political economist considered 

 it fruitful to discuss in the year 1958 the central question he poses. 

 Too much of our economics tends to glorify individual action to the 

 virtual exclusion of all else; while collective action and the working 

 rules of collective action are the dominant facts of modern economic 

 life everywhere. Political economy finds a place for, and studies, both 

 kinds of action. And that includes the action of the makers of both 

 economic and political "demand," who too often mean by the un- 

 fettered price system only the absence of public fetters in the public 

 interest. 



