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Ostensibly the Carverian argument is based on the following premise, which is treated as an axiom:Human beings like other living creatures seem to be driven by a force that they neither understand nor care to resist, to keep on living, to consume food and transform it into human energy, and to increase their numbers, thus, in every way, enlarging the stream of human energy. In short, they act unconsciously, driven by their own nature, precisely as they would act consciously if they were convinced by unanswerable logic that the most valuable thing in the world was human energy or human life, and the most profitable thing in the world was to transform the largest possible sum of solar energy into human energy. (p. 12)

The appearance of the present chapter six years after the publication of Marx's Capital and more than a year after its translation into Russian might seem somewhat untimely, if not entirely superfluous. Who in our country has not read Marx's works, or at least heard of him; who does not know that besides interesting and instructive facts, his work contains new and important socio-political truths? No doubt many have read it and heard of it, but I permit myself to doubt, and not only in an a priori fashion, but on the basis of extensive observation, whether many have gained from a reading of the book a clear and precise understanding of the topics which are treated therein. Are there many who have managed to distinguish in it what is significant from what is of small importance, who have noticed what constituted the core elements or the framework of the whole theoretical edifice as opposed to the detail, which serves only to decorate it, who have been properly aware, what Marx introduced that was new into the consciousness of his contemporaries, and what, on the contrary, did not belong to him, but to his predecessors? We repeat that from frequent observations we have become convinced of the contrary. With some very few exceptions, we have so far not managed to come across people who have understood the significance of Marx's researches in their entirety. Some – and these constitute the majority – are barred on the way to an elucidation of the essence of the matter by Marx's doctrine of the forms of value; others – by the difficult, and, if the truth be told, somewhat scholastic language in which a considerable part of the book is written; and others again are put off by the unaccustomed complexity of the subject and the ponderous argumentation encased in the impenetrable armor of Hegelian contradictions. And not only in Russia, but abroad as well Marx has fared no better. One only has to read reviews by some Baumert, Siebel or the reviewer in Bruno–Hildebrand's Jahrbücher, R. (presumably Rössler) to see at once that all these gentlemen possess one important advantage over the majority of Russian readers in that they not only could not, but also would not understand Marx's investigations. Thus, the above reviewer puts to Marx, among others, the following question: “we would like it if someone were finally to explain to us why the food which finds its way into the stomach of a worker serves as the source of the formation of surplus value, whereas food eaten by a horse or an ox lacks the same significance.” If such a “someone” were really to be found, in which the author of the review expresses serious doubt, then he would probably explain the matter in the following way: that economists and sociologists, to whose number Marx belongs, had to date the weakness to think that the chief object of their investigations was human society, and not the society of domestic animals, horned or otherwise, and therefore they are concerned with that surplus value which is produced by human beings. If, like Darwin, they studied natural science, they would probably have found something like surplus value among various other animals, for example, among different species of ant or bee. Generally speaking, not counting Lange's book on the worker question, and the reviews of some people directly involved with the practical consequences of Marx's ideas, the foreign press presents almost not a single line which would evince in its author the desire and the ability to understand the general significance of Marx's work. These deficiencies, especially the second one, are characteristic of even those writers, like Schäffle, who are quite favorably disposed towards Marx and are aware of his scientific achievements.

Health outcomes are often described according to two dimensions: quality of life and quantity of life. We analyze the measurement of inequality of health distributions referring to these two dimensions. Our analysis relies on a novel treatment of the quality-of-life dimension, which might not have a standard mathematical structure. We single out two families of (absolute and relative) multidimensional health inequality indices, inspired by the classical normative approach to income inequality measurement. We also discuss how to extend the analysis to deal with the related problem of health deprivation measurement in this setting.

There is a strong tradition in cross‐cultural research to posit a relationship between culturally‐derived values and work‐related attitudes, with the most notable work conducted by Hofstede (1980). The deeply‐held culturally‐derived values have a powerful influence on the specific cognitions and behaviors that workers develop. On the other hand, this research suggests that situational variables, including the workers' daily activities and work experiences, also influence work‐related attitudes. Situational demands and salient information from one's current experiences affect the nature of attitudes, and on self‐report questionnaires may explain more variation than reported deep‐seated values. Research was conducted on samples of 64 Americans and 47 Chinese workers to contrast the influences on attitudes. Situational variables were shown to strongly influence attitudinal measures, especially in the American sample. Implications for worker education and training and cross‐cultural management are offered.

There was a time when I had fairly clear ideas on what constitutes the quality of life. But three years at the BBC, responsible not just to an academic community but to the whole of society, brings home to me how diverse are people's interpretations of that elusive concept. So much so that I felt tempted to make an Orwellian amendment to the title of this article, and write not about the quality of life but the quantity of it. For that is something that, as a biologist, I really know about.

Improving the commercial success rate of innovations requires alternative approaches based on social science methodologies for identifying subtle, emerging changes in consumer needs and behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to address this call by proposing trend spotting to guide innovation researchers and service managers towards innovations that are more in accordance with emerging consumer needs.

The authors develop, describe, and employ a methodology for trend spotting to derive eight consumer trends that will have a strong influence on their choices. To provide further insights into these trends, the authors label and describe three customer segments as a function of life-cycle. The goal is to provide a framework for identifying innovations that are of higher value consumers.

The authors identified eight consumer trends, i.e. Always on the go, Always logged-in, Quality information faster, Nowism, Look at me now, Privacy, Sustainable living, and return on time (RoT), present across the three life-stage segments, i.e. Young free and single, Chaos in my life, and Got my life back.

For illustration purpose, the authors elaborate on the trend RoT and employ their findings and framework to illustrate how the airline industry may derive ideas for valuable innovations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time trend spotting has been employed in the field of service marketing and service innovations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an exposition of the concepts relevant to measuring the economic effect of premature mortality and the conception of how the social loss from premature mortality can be incorporated into social welfare measurement. None of the conventional welfare measures currently pick up this welfare signal.

Various concepts are examined in the conventional and “new” literatures of welfare measurement. Six Venn diagrams show how various concepts “fit together”.

This paper outlines a framework for measuring the economic effect of premature mortality in a conceptually appropriate way. Thus the paper shows how the welfare loss associated with premature mortality can be incorporated into social welfare measurement.

Accurate premature mortality measurement is difficult but this data problem hardly limits this exercise. Sensitivity analyses can alleviate this measurement problem.

The main practical implication is that empirical applications are feasible. Time series data can be analysed from this conceptual framework to determine whether the problem of the social loss from premature mortality is improving through time, or worsening.

Knowing the size of the welfare impact of premature mortality is useful not only on policy fronts concerning premature mortality prevention.

“New welfare measurement” has not yet been applied to the notion of the social loss from premature mortality.

The system for the provision of supplies in the UK National Health Service is being continually ‘redisorganised’ in an effort to improve efficiency and get better value for money. Alongside these reorganisations, the regulation of the supply of pharmaceuticals to the NHS is also being altered. What are the differences between these two processes and can any obvious lessons be learnt from the ways in which the NHS seeks to control the prices, qualities and quantities of products in these two closely related areas of supplies?

Numerous randomized clinical studies have shown that psyllium fiber lowers serum cholesterol in patients with hyperlipidemia and is thus recognized by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a dietary fiber that may help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) by lowering cholesterol. The purpose of this paper is to assess the potential economic implications for health-care cost savings and quality of life productivity gains if the cholesterol-lowering effect of psyllium, consumed daily as a fiber supplement, could be applied to a broad at-risk population.

A cost-benefit analysis tool was used to examine evidence that the use of psyllium as a cholesterol-lowering agent can reduce overall CHD-attributed medical care service costs in the USA among those at high risk of experiencing disease-related events.

Results of the analysis showed that the potential net annual avoided medical care service costs and annual quality of life productivity gains among US adults 45 and older with low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels = 130 mg/dL could be up to an average of $870m per year from 2013 to 2020 if everyone in the target population used seven grams of soluble fiber from psyllium daily, corresponding to a net benefit-cost ratio of $1.19 savings in annual medical service cost and annual productivity gains per $1 spent on a psyllium regimen.

Thus, the use of psyllium fiber as a daily supplement could be recommended as a means to help control the risk for potentially costly cardiovascular-related medical events and to maximize the economic potential for an improved quality of life in adults 45 and older with LDL cholesterol levels =130 mg/dL.

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.