L'économie politique de la gratuité

The Political Economy of Unmeasured Values
Are reproduced here some long extracts from a text on the political economy of unmeasured values by Bertrand de Jouvenel which were published in the Virginia Quarterly Review in 1959 and reprinted in his book Arcadia: Essays on a Better Life.
The text begins with a long quotation from Pigou reminding us that the progress of economic science demands that it be limited to those phenomena which can be measured in money terms, even though other factors (good and services given for free) are necessary to a human existence.
This text, in print for almost forty years, calls attention to the limits of national accounting (and by extension, to the value of economic indicators in general) while at the same time addresses issues of what today is called sustainable development.