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This chapter discusses conceptual links among Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923), the overall work of Thorstein Veblen, and Wesley C. Mitchell’s essays on spending and money. The three authors are concerned with transformations in production, related changes in the organization of consumption, and the effects on people. The approach is based on reading of Kyrk’s book in light of an integrated view of Veblen’s overall work. This chapter explains how Mitchell’s essays on money and spending built on Veblen’s work and discusses their relevance for understanding Kyrk’s book as conceptually linked to institutional economics. This chapter delineates the following commonalities: conception of living humans and money as an institution; distinction between business and industrial concerns; connection between distribution, waste, and consumption; and Veblen’s “machine process” of standardization in production and its relation to consumption. This chapter brings more detail in the conceptual and theoretical discussion of Veblen’s influence on Kyrk’s book.

Students of the social sciences do not need to be reminded that one of the leading modern schools of ethics has been made up chiefly of economists. I refer of course to the utilitarian school. Utilitarianism, or economic ethics, is the type of ethical theory which has been predominant in the past century and a half – the “modern era” if we date from the great overturn in social theory brought in by the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions. If its predominance in literary and academic discussion may possibly be questioned, its predominance in the thought and actions of statesmen, law-givers, publicists, and reformers certainly cannot be. A brief consideration of the utilitarian ethics will form the starting point for my argument.

Modern economics centers in utility theory, which can only be understood by viewing it in relation to ethical as well as to economic thought. Economics stands in a peculiar sense at the meeting point of the two great urges of the mind, the theoretical and the practical interest, the desire to understand the world and the desire to change and use it. In one direction its problems look toward explanation, in the sense of the discovery of laws comparable to those of the physical sciences, while in the other direction they look toward the study of values, criticism of processes and results, and the formulation of objectives and policies.

This paper details the history of the movement, which attempted to turn the occupation of life insurance salesman into an insurance professional. It will relate the criteria for professionalism spelled out by Solomon Huebner and attempt to spell out the ethical obligations such professionalism demands. Using some case studies, the paper will examine some common difficulties faced by insurance professionals. The paper concludes by examining the development of the insurance sales professional into the financial planner and adviser and projects some of the ethical requirements entailed by this future direction.

It's not obvious just what is the relation between this analysis and previous “List of Fundamental Wishes.”