With more and more intensity and clarity, we are becoming conscious again that the economy, as regards a science of value or, to take one of the deepest and most widespread definitions, as regards "the science that studies human behaviour as a relationship between goals and scarce means that have alternative uses," is directly connected with ethics. I would dare to say even more: the economy is ethical or it is not economy.

Maybe it is enough to mention and comment on the first words from Aristotle's Ethics to Nicómaco: "All the arts, all the methodical inquiries of the spirit, the same as all our acts and moral determinations apparently always have some good that we want to obtain as a goal. For this reason it has been exactly defined as a good when it has been said that it is the object of all our aspirations." Economic Science is also a methodical inquiry of the spirit that looks to increase the complementary relationship between an immense quantity of diverse things and each human person's immediate, mediate and ultimate objectives as much as possible, of all and each one of the members of a family, managerial, regional or world human community. An inquiry that looks for the good in short because the ultimate objectives transmit their worth to each one of the means that are considered and used in each case.

Although in the first stages of economic analysis emphasis was put on the means, and especially the material means, with the appearance of the subjective theories of value the investigation began to be guided towards the free preferences of the last individual of the relationship, towards man, his necessities, characteristics, objectives and goals. "When the organizers of production have to alleviate a situation of hunger, efficiency is the only virtue. But when this virtue has been broadly exercised and it is applied to less and less vital objectives, the question of the correct choice of objectives will surely arise."

The ultimate suitability of goods and services that are sifted throughout the whole flow of the productive process, are measured and calculated intuitively by the potential client that marks with a special and original stamp the definitive why to the finished product that he consumes or uses. The demand of goods and services on the part of consumers and users in order to be able to fulfil their ultimate objectives constitutes the cause and reason of production and mercantile exchange. The goals and preferences of each and every individual, more than the purposes of those who flaunt management of businesses, are the decisive economic factor. The decisions and performances of the latter are caused by the preferences of the former. At least they should be if they do not want their company to wither, minimize and even go bankrupt.

Those goals, hopes and preferences, differ from person to person, and even in the same individual they vary according to historical moments and times. They are manifested in the real economic environment in a completely subjective way and the productive apparatus and the markets are interested to provide the suitable means to achieve what they choose in each circumstance, to achieve the objectives that man personally expresses that he wants to achieve.

The consideration of ultimate goals is carried out in a personal way and these are the subjective final causes of economic value that stimulates the management of the productive process of goods through the markets. The different goods and services are valued in a derivative way according to the utility or suitability of each one to achieve them. Their valuation will depend on the value assigned in the scale of goals to the desired object.

The gradation of the suitability of the subjective goals and objectives, the same as that of the means that derives from that, is not a cardinal process, with arithmetic operations of adding and subtracting but rather it is an ordinal process and of inexpressible personal reflection where some concrete options are preferred to others. In the scale of preferences of goals and means, the qualitative variable prevails over the quantitative. The personal choices of each individual, rejecting some things and accepting others, structures the market prices in interpersonal exchange. The goals condition the choices and these in turn condition the complex production system through prices.

However not everything is subjectivism. "A decisive step was to see value as something that deserves to be wanted. It is not that the individual attributes or gives value to something, but rather he recognizes it, perceives it as such, and for that reason values it. In the mature interpretation, value is something totally objective: items have value, independently that I perceive and recognize it or not. Values are qualities that items have that because of them they are " goods "..." It would be necessary to distinguish the goals that man marks freely, subjectively, and the authentic goals demanded by human nature. The personal flowchart requires a continuous effort of re-adaptation to the ideal flowchart inserted in human nature. Although the singular human will always looks for what reason proposes to him as convenient, many times he makes a mistake pursuing as convenient something which really is not. Wanting to benefit harms him.

Objective valuations are those that make reference to man's true goals and that increase his humanity. They are a certain person's or community of human beings' ideal but possible valuations which one could arrive at with some certain acts of consumption, work and production. Subjective valuations are those that make reference to the concrete and real interpretations of those objective goals made by a man or community according to their certain preferences and life models and that are the real aim of all their habits and acts of consumption, work and production. If we deceive ourselves, looking for an ultimate goal that is not really, wastes our efforts and we make our deepest inclination fail. Error is constituent of human performance and also, we can recognize that error, with which we admit, also subjectively, that in the previous erred performance the possibility of another better one existed. Besides the effective and historically carried out subjective performances, we recognize the ideal but possible existence of other better performances. The best performance among the possible ideals can be called objective. The existence of never fully cognoscible goals can be founded in that widespread conscience of the recognised mistake.

A corollary of these conclusions is that man comes closer to the accomplishment of that objective, more correct and more convenient, precisely through the correction of error and rectification of the Popperiano style. We learn from mistakes when recognizing them, and we try to avoid them in future performances that will attempt to be more objective and appropriate to the authentic goals. We cannot devise ethics and performance codes in a rationalistic way as if they were entirely certain in their principles and deductively applicable in all cases. Human ethics is not mere rationalism; error is part of it and, learning by error, it can rectify in the future.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
BUSINESS, Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th September 1996