ABSTRACT
Constrained by time preference, man will only exchange a present good for a future one if he anticipates thereby increasing his amount of future goods. More importantly, because actual and potential victims are permitted to defend, protect, and insure themselves against both social disasters such as crime as well as natural ones, the effect of these on time preference is only temporary and unsystematic. In a social context, an individual's supply of appropriated and produced goods, his time-preference schedule, and hence his effective time-preference rate may also be affected by the actions—and the expectations regarding these actions—of others. The process of civilization set in motion by individual saving, investment, and the accumulation of durable consumer goods and capital goods—of gradually falling time preferences and an ever widening and lengthening range and horizon of private provisions—may be temporarily upset by crime.
