ABSTRACT
Twenty-seven years ago Clarence Ayres published an enormously optimistic book titled Toward a Reasonable Society (Ayres 1961). His optimism was always a part of his perspective and sprang from a belief that economics, specifically institutional economics, in the process of discovering instrumental value had uncovered a principle that not only could potentially revolutionize economics, but merely awaited general recognition to spread from economics to the entire human experience (Ayres 1944, Chap. 10). Enshrining instrumental value was the secret to harnessing the forces of nature and the technological process in the direction of human betterment.
