Jay Albert Nock, a
hero of the Old Speculators’ Association, believed three laws defined social
life: Epstean's law; Gresham's law; and, the law of diminishing returns. These
are explained fully in his highly recommended book, Memoirs of a Superfluous
Man. Wendy McElroy, in Nock on Education, provides the following
summary.
Nock's first law of
social/human order was named after his friend Edward E. Epstean from whom he
first heard the principle stated. As rephrased in "Free Speech and Plain
Language", the law is, "Man tends to satisfy his needs and desires
with the least possible exertion. Not, it must be understood, that he always
does so satisfy them, for other considerations -- principle, convention, fear,
superstition or what not -- may supervene; but he always tends to satisfy them
with the least possible exertion, and, in the absence of a stronger motive,
will always do so." Nock applied this law to politics. He believed that as
long as the State could "confer an economic advantage at the mere touch of
a button," people would maneuver to "get at the button, because
law-made property is acquired with less exertion than labor-made property.”
Nock's second law
of social order was adapted from Gresham's law on the nature of currency: Bad
money drives out good. The worst form of currency in circulation will set the
value for the others, causing them to disappear. Nock explained, "In
Germany, for example, shortly after the war, the flood of paper money sent all
metallic money out of circulation in a hurry, because it was worth more as old
metal than as currency"
Nock extended
Gresham's law to cover culture. He asked the reader to imagine a concert being
played for an audience of 300 randomly chosen people. He argued that the
program would not include the best music produced through the
centuries, but the
most popular music of the moment. So, too, with education: bad education would
drive out good. Mass-education did nothing more than reduce the quality of
education to what Nock called "the dreadful average."
Nock's third
principle of social order was based on Newton's law of diminishing returns. He
wrote, "The law of diminishing returns is fundamental to industry. It
formulates the fact, which strikes one as curiously unnatural that, when a
business has reached a certain point of development, returns begin to decrease,
and they keep on decreasing as further development proceeds."
Source:
by Wendy McElroy
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/nock.htm