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Shane Sanders

The Economic
Reason
A Piecemeal Guide to Your Inner
Homo Economicus
The Economic Reason
Shane Sanders

The Economic Reason

A Piecemeal Guide to Your Inner
Homo Economicus
Shane Sanders
Falk College
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-56042-3 ISBN 978-3-030-56043-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56043-0

# The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
It took me a while, but here it is.
To Dennis Sanders, Debby Sanders, Bhavneet
Walia, Simran Sanders, Nanki Sanders,
Melissa Sanders, Heather Sanders, Angela
Sanders, and Carmen Sanders
Acknowledgments

Thank you to my wife, Bhavneet Walia, with whom I have learned a great deal of
economics, and my adviser, Dr. Yang-Ming Chang, without whom I would not have
developed many good economic ideas at all. Thank you to my former classmates and
current economics collaborators, including (in order of appearance) Joel Potter,
Michael Makowsky, Justin Ehrlich, James Boudreau, Christopher Boudreaux,
William Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Merril Silverstein, Shankar Ghimire, Brittany
Kmush, Arthur Owora, and others.
I would like to thank Shankar Ghimire for a helpful review of the book. Thank
you to Niko Chtouris, Yvonne Schwark-Reiber, Lorraine Klimowich, Chitra
Sundarajan, and others at Springer for seeing promise in this book and for all their
editorial help and expertise. Thank you to all of my helpful department chairs, deans,
and senior colleagues over the years, including (in order of appearance) Evan Moore,
Ken Linna, the late and great R. Morris Coats, Tej Kaul, Thomas Sadler, Tara
Westerhold, Kasing Man, Jana Marikova, Clifton Ealy, Kishore Kapale, Rodney
Paul, Mary Graham, John Wolohan, Katherine McDonald, Rick Welsh, and Diane
Lyden Murphy. Thank you to my many other friends, including (in order of
appearance) Greg Brinkman, Yoshitaka Umeno, Budd Glassberg, John Roberts,
Karan Gulati, Nick Klinger, Christopher Vahl, Sailesh Vezzu, Harkamal Walia,
Mark Trietsch, Richard Dietz, Brian Jacobson, and Pratap Arasu, for all the high-
level conversations. I have learned a great deal from you and other friends over the
years.
And finally, thank you to Carmelo Anthony for not shooting a long two-point
jumper that one time. That play, isolated from your larger body of work, gave me the
feeling that anything can happen in this world.

ix
About the Book

Economics is a far more general paradigm than many people believe it to be. It has
been typecast, in a sense, as a theoretical construct with which to study business or
large-scale economic conditions. However, economics is the science of human
choice and all that definition encompasses. The discipline helps us understand,
through a set of assumptions and methodologies, the nature of individual and
group decisions. In a series of conversational essays, this book discusses the manner
in which economic thought addresses a broad array of everyday issues. In the spirit
of the popular economics books of Steven Landsburg, David Friedman, Robert
Frank, Daniel Hamermesh, and Gary Becker, to name a few, the book uncovers
economic issues and solutions in a decidedly non-technical manner. Should the
federal government mandate use of child safety seats on commercial airlines? Can
genetic information substitute for a college degree? Who is served by economic
regulation? The contents of this book touch on many such contemporary topics in an
accessible manner.
Unless referring to a specific gender, this book uses the gender pronoun “she” to
atone for the imbalanced gender pronoun usage behavior of many a fore-author.
Gender references are not meant to narrow the analysis in any way. At its best,
economic thought applies to humankind generally, and perhaps beyond. . .

xi
Contents

1 Economic Thinking on the Road (or Thereabouts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2 Economic Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Labor Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4 Information and Misinformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5 The Things We Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
6 Contest and Conflict in Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
7 More on Politics and Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8 Restricting the Marketplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
9 Bringing It All Back Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Appendix: R Code for Trend World Battle Casualty Rate Plot

of Chap. 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

xiii
About the Author

Shane Sanders is Professor of Sports Economics in the

Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics at Syracuse
University. He holds a Ph.D. in economics and has
published more than 50 academic articles in the areas
of political economy, sports economics, and sport
health. Many of these articles have appeared in leading
journals of economics, statistics, and sports medicine,
including Journal of Business & Economic Statistics,
Economics Letters (4), Public Choice (5), Orthopaedic
Journal of Sports Medicine, JAMA Network, Journal of
Sports Economics (3), Journal of Quantitative Analysis
in Sports, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems,
Theory and Decision, Journal of Economic Education,
European Journal of Political Economy, and several
others. For his collaborative research efforts, Sanders
has received numerous grants, as well as a Finalist
Award at the 2019 Carnegie Mellon Sport Analytics
Conference.
Sanders teaches courses in sports economics and
sport analytics at Syracuse University and also serves
as a player analytics consultant to professional and
NCAA basketball teams. In his teaching, Sanders enjoys
the challenge of reducing complex ideas into their sim-
plest elements and then building those ideas back up for
students in a relatable manner. Moreover, he believes
that economics literacy could be much greater in con-
temporary societies toward the betterment of humanity
and that it is partly the role of economics professors to
help realize this potential.
Sanders lives in Fayetteville, New York, with his
wife, Bhavneet, and two daughters, Simran and Nanki.

xv
Economic Thinking on the Road
(or Thereabouts) 1

We spend a large portion of our lives moving from point to

point. In a series of short, accessible essays, this chapter
discusses some of the current economic issues surrounding
how we do so.

Policies of the Oscar Wilde Variety

Policies often have unintended consequences. This is a familiar point among

economists and students of economics. Since Samuel Peltzman’s result that seatbelt
mandates lower the effective cost of reckless driving and thus increase the incidence
of auto accidents [1], the profession has been on the lookout for perverse effects of
even the most well-intentioned government policy. The hunt has been bountiful.
Social issues are often akin to bacteria in that their very treatment can lead to
unexpected mutations. Of course, unintended consequences can also be fruitful in
nature. In the book Freakonomics [2], economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen
J. Dubner point out that the legalization of abortion in Romania caused a decline in
crime rates 20 years hence. Drawing on earlier academic work by Donohue and
Levitt [3], Levitt and Dubner interpret this result as an unintended consequence of
the abortion policy. Legalization decreases the price and thus increases the incidence
of abortion. As ill-prepared parents are disproportionately likely to select into
abortion, legalization essentially limits the relative number of at-risk children
being born. Whatever one’s personal view on abortion, the economic lesson from
this policy analysis is universal. Such policies, whose effect turns out to be more
(or less) than meets the eye, can cause targeted problems to persist and untargeted
problems to diminish without apparent explanation.
As with laws mandating seatbelt use or those banning abortion, the Federal
Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) consideration of a child safety seat mandate on
commercial airlines provides an example of a prospective policy in the mold of
Dorian Gray [4] (i.e., apparently beautiful but masking a less appealing core). This

# The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to 1
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
S. Sanders, The Economic Reason, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56043-0_1
2 1 Economic Thinking on the Road (or Thereabouts)

very policy issue was evaluated in an academic paper that I co-authored with Dennis
Weisman and Dong Li [5]. As the study indicates, it is often difficult to anticipate all
effects of a commercial regulatory policy.

History of a Policy

Since the beginning of US commercial flight, children under the age of 2 years have
been allowed to ride on the lap of an accompanying adult. This policy, or non-policy
really, raised no controversy for many years, as an effective child safety seat did not
exist until the 1980s. Following technical advances in that decade, public pressure
grew for a child safety seat mandate on US commercial flights. The situation reached
a boiling point after a commercial airplane crashed over Iowa in 1990, causing three
infant lap ejections. In the aftermath of this incident, Congress, the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and various private lobby groups demanded
that the FAA institute a child safety seat mandate.
After a long-standing debate that included input from safety engineers, medical
personnel, politicians, and economists, the FAA announced in 2005 that it would not
mandate the use of child safety seats on commercial airlines due to the unintended
consequences of such a policy. My study with Dennis Weisman and Dong Li finds
that such consequences are present and potentially large in magnitude. Namely, we
estimate that a child safety seat mandate would save 0.3 infant lives per year in the
air but cause an additional 11.5 deaths per year on the nation’s roadways. Thus, the
policy is estimated to result in a net loss of life. In fact, it is expected that such a
policy would cause a net loss of infant life. In this setting, the unintended policy
effect turns out to be so strong in expectation partly because highway travel and
commercial airline travel are fairly strong substitutes. Two goods are said to be
substitutes if an increase in the price of one of the goods causes demand for (sales of)
the other good to increase. For example, Coca-Cola sales rise when the price of
Pepsi increases, ceteris paribus. In the present case, those who choose not to fly due
to an increase in price often engage in road travel instead. Further, highways are
many times more dangerous than airways. Figure 1.1 shows the discrepancy
between US highway fatalities and airway fatalities per 100 million passenger miles.
Even in the terror-stricken year of 2001, Fig. 1.1 shows that air travel was many
times safer per passenger mile than highway travel. Thus, a policy that makes
commercial airlines safer for infants but also more costly to families has the net
effect of putting travelers into harm’s way. In informal discussions, Weisman has
further considered the effect of heightened security measures in United States
airports. Of course, these measures benefit citizens of the United States in the
sense that they decrease the likelihood of a terrorist attack. However, they also
increase the cost of commercial airline travel and therefore cause many travelers to
substitute toward relatively risky highway travel. If implemented in excess, airport
security has a similar potential to do more harm than good.
In the same vein, the late economist R. Morris Coats discussed popular policy
recommendations during the early spread of swine flu (i.e., when we thought the
Traffic Citations: Road Safety Regulation or Municipal Revenue Source? 3

Fig. 1.1 Fatalities per 100 million passenger miles by transportation mode (USA) . Source Data:
US Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation
Statistics, annual [6]

disease to be more deadly). At the time, several legislators encouraged individuals to

forego commercial airplanes and other closed-air environments. Coats pointed out
that such knee-jerk statements by people of influence raise the perceived (health risk
associated) cost of air travel and, as intended, cause fewer people to fly. This may
have the effect of saving lives by reducing the spread of disease. However, many of
those choosing to forego air travel will once again take to the decidedly less safe
roads. This is not to say that it is never a good idea to discourage commercial airline
travel. Rather, it is to say that the benefits from doing so should be expected to offset
the costs before such a recommendation is ever made. The relative danger of road
travel should never be lost on a policy discussion involving transportation issues.
Economic goods are often related. Therefore, a regulatory policy placed directly
upon one market almost inevitably affects outcomes in other markets. In general,
these indirect effects must be considered if one is to predict the outcome of a given
policy.

Traffic Citations: Road Safety Regulation or Municipal Revenue

Source?

What is the overriding goal of a local police officer when she patrols traffic? Is it
simply to improve road safety? Economists Michael Makowsky and Thomas
Stratmann [7] show that the local police officer may have less benign considerations
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
I know a man who says he will not take chances of the
demoralization and the deterioration which would be worked in his
nature by associating with habitual failures. He will have nothing to
do with such people. He avoids doing business with them, for he
says he finds that no matter how he may protest against it, he is
unconsciously influenced by them.
There is no denying that there is much truth in this. We are
unconsciously affected by the atmosphere surrounding us. Like
attracts like. Successful people attract successful people. Failure
attracts failure. Unlucky people attract unlucky people. Slovenly,
slipshod people attract others of the same sort. “Birds of a feather
flock together.” The failures get together; the successes come
together naturally.
On every hand we see young men who started out with brilliant
prospects when they left college. Their friends predicted great things
for them, but somehow or other, the enthusiasm of their school or
college days soon oozed out. The continual suggestion of possibility
which came to them from their school environment, the contagion
from the ambitious spirit all about them, seemed then to multiply
their prospects, to magnify their ability and to stir up their ambition
until they really thought they were going to amount to something in
the world, were going to accomplish something; but after they got
away from the battery-charging institutions, they gradually lost their
enthusiasm; their ambition dwindled. Their ideals changed with their
environment. Little by little their dreams faded, and they resigned
themselves to mediocrity or hopeless failure.
There is no environment so unfavorable, so discouraging, no
situation so disheartening that a youth who is made of the right kind
of material cannot change it. Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Fred
Douglas, John Wanamaker, Marshall Field and thousands of other
American boys found themselves in the midst of the most
disheartening environment but made a new environment for
themselves. It is possible for you to do the same.
The great trouble with most of us is that we never get aroused,
never discover ourselves until late in life,—often too late to make
much out of the remnant that is left. It is very important that we
become aroused to our possibilities when young, thus we may
overcome the most unfavorable environment and get the greatest
possible efficiency out of our lives.
 CHAPTER IV
UNWORTHY AMBITIONS

There are scores of people in our great cities who do not really live at
all. They merely exist. They are the slaves of a morbid ambition and
a greed that has grown to be a monster. Many of these people take
very little comfort; they are always on a strain to keep up
appearances, to maintain homes in portions of the city where they
can ill afford to live, to keep automobiles when they can barely
afford a bicycle, to wear clothing and jewelry which is beyond their
means, and they keep themselves constantly worried over it, killing
their legitimate comfort and enjoyment through the exhaustion of
the strain and stress,—and all for nothing that is real or permanent,
nothing that adds to their character or well being.
Such people have a perfect mania for trying to make other people
think they are better off than they really are, that they amount to
more than they really do, that they cut a bigger figure in the world
than is actually the case. In other words, they make themselves
pitiable slaves of other people’s eyes. They go through life not doing
the things they ought to do, what is best for their welfare and
growth. Their lives are superficial because they do not live in or deal
in realities. Everything about them is deceiving. They live masked
lives. Few people know them as they really are. They only know
them as they pretend to be. What do these people, who are always
chasing shadows, get out of life, anyway?
There is an ambition which reminds one of a bird whose voracious
appetite can never be satisfied. It grows on what it feeds, and the
more it eats, the more ravenous the appetite. Woe be it to him who
caters to a false ambition! He follows it blindly, expects that it will
give him peace when it is satisfied, but alas, it is never satisfied. It is
like the water in the enchanted story: the more the victim drank of
it, the greater was his burning thirst. Such an ambition is fatal, and
will surely wreck him who blindly pursues it. It will ruin his health
and will rob him of all that is dearest and sweetest in life.
There are a great many people in this country who are committing
suicide upon many years of their lives by being slaves of an
inordinate ambition.
One of the most pathetic phases of our civilization is that men and
women in poor health, devitalized from over-work, are goaded on
way beyond their strength by a fiendish ambition. Their pride and
their vanity say to them, “Now, it will not do to slow down. We must
keep up the pace with our neighbors. People who do not keep up
appearances in these days are nobodies. We must keep going, no
matter how we feel. We must make more money, we must show
more evidence of our prosperity. We must put up a better front or
Mrs. Grundy will pass the suspicion along that we are, after all, not
much of a success, that we lacked the ability to do what people
thought we were going to do. No matter how we feel we must keep
up, keep pushing, keep going, crowd on more steam, take
stimulants and drugs, if necessary, goad ourselves on. It is
absolutely imperative to keep pushing.”
Oh, what fools pride and vanity make of us, especially when we are
in no condition to keep up the pace, when we owe it to ourselves to
slow down, when it is positively wicked to crowd on more steam!
How many people are driven into the grave by the lash of a
mortgage on a farm, on a home, or on their business, put there in
an attempt to satisfy some over-vaunting ambition!
Debt has made more people miserable, ruined the peace of mind of
more human beings, the comfort and the happiness of more homes,
than almost anything else in the universe. It is a terrible thing to so
mortgage oneself to others that we must make slaves of ourselves.
How much better to live simply, to struggle on in poverty until we
can improve our position than to compromise ourselves with debt,
sell ourselves to a mortgage, or a bill of goods!
What an easy thing it is to borrow money, to give a note or to give a
mortgage! We believe at the time that we can pay all right, but no
one can be certain that things will go all right with him. No one
knows what the times may bring forth. No one knows whether his
health and strength will be spared, or how soon he may be
physically or mentally disabled.
The only true measure of real success is the quality of the ambition.
If the animal figures too largely in your ambition, if the quality is
coarse, the success will be cheap, no matter how great the quantity.
It is an unfortunate thing that so many of our youth should start out
in life with only one aim; and that is to make money. This becomes
the leading purpose in their lives and warps their way of looking at
things. Everything else is seen in dwarfed proportions. They do not
consider making a life, building character; they are bent only on
making money. This is the all-absorbing topic everywhere.
The goal we hold in the mind is the model which shapes our lives,
and its character is reflected in everything we do. Think, therefore,
what the influence must be of pointing all our faculties, focusing all
of our energies upon the money-making goal! How it must warp and
twist and wrench out of their natural orbit the more delicate
sentiments, the finer faculties. When everything in us looks
moneyward, and the gaze is held persistently upon the dollar and
what it will bring, what must be the havoc, the tragedy, the fatal
damage in the affections, the friendships, and the social faculties!
When the affections are chilled and the friendships strangled what is
there left in a man but the monster, brute qualities?
This is why a youth who starts out with noble aspirations, with fine
sensibilities and responsive affections, often becomes hardened in
his business career. His finer sensibilities and more delicate faculties
atrophy from disuse, because he overdevelops the grasping, greedy,
selfish faculties by the modern mania for the almighty dollar.
The transformation is so insidious that he does not half realize it
until he finds himself stooping to scheming and plotting and
underhand cunning, which would have shocked him a few years
earlier.
When a man once gets in the power of the selfish, greedy, grasping
monster within him, which he has fed and catered to so long that it
has become a giant, it is almost impossible to wrench himself away,
and he often becomes the slave of the very thing he once despised
and loathed.
It is always a question of what is uppermost in the ambition, the
dominant aim, that shapes the life most. When a man has pursued
an aim for years which tends to dry up the best within him, when he
has used all of his life forces, all of his energies, to feed that
unworthy ambition until it has become a monster which controls
him, he is a pitiable creature. There is no more distressing sight in
the world than that of one who is completely in the clutches of a
heartless, grasping, greed. Spurred on by the morbid ambition which
has taken possession of him, he is madly pursuing the dollar which
haunts him, until he is deaf to all appeals of his finer self, and has
lost all taste for that which he once enjoyed.
Multitudes of people seem to think that if they were only in an ideal
environment, where they would be free from worry or anxiety
regarding the living-getting problem, if they were free from pain and
in vigorous health, they would be perfectly happy. As a matter of
fact, we are not half so dependent for happiness upon our
environment, or upon circumstances, as we sometimes imagine we
are. False ambition, envy and jealousy are responsible for much of
our uneasiness, our restlessness and discontent. Our minds are so
intent upon what other people have and are doing that we do not
get a tithe of the enjoyment and satisfaction out of our own work,
out of our own possessions, that they should afford us.
An inordinate ambition, a desire to get ahead of others, a mania to
keep up appearances at all hazards, whether we can afford it or not,
all these things feed selfishness, that corrosive acid which eats away
our possible enjoyment and destroys the very sources of happiness.
The devouring ambition to get ahead of others in money making, to
outshine others socially, develops a sordid, grasping disposition
which is the bane of happiness. No man with greed developed big
within him need expect to be happy. Neither contentment,
satisfaction, serenity, affection, nor any other member of the
happiness family can exist in the presence of greed, or an
inordinate, selfish ambition.
We have had some conspicuous examples of political aspirants who
have put their personal ambition above their duty to their party and
their country. Time and again one or the other of the great political
parties has been well-nigh ruined by a man who could put his own
personal ambition against even his country’s welfare.
It is a dangerous thing to put personal ambition above duty, anyway,
but especially so to a politician or statesman, who is rendered doubly
dangerous if he possesses great magnetic qualities.
We do not always know where the following of ambition’s call will
lead us, but we do know this, that by being loyal to ambition and
doing our best to follow it in its normal, wholesome state, when not
perverted by selfishness, by love of ease or self-gratification, it will
lead to our best and highest welfare, that when we follow, when we
put ourselves in a position to give it the best and the freest scope, it
will lead us to the highest self-expression of which we are capable,
and will give us the greatest satisfaction. We know, too, that when
our ambition is perverted to base ends our lives go all awry; when
we are false to the higher voice within us, we are discontented,
unhappy, inefficient, and our lives are ineffective.
When a man becomes so infatuated with the mania for wealth,
position, fame or notoriety that he focuses his whole soul, all his
powers and energies, upon a false ideal,—upon a selfish, narrow
goal, he develops only a very small part of himself and he becomes
very narrow. He lives most who lives truest. He lives most who
touches life in the largest number of the largest and highest points.
Don’t start out in life with a false standard; a truly great man makes
official position and money and houses and estates look so mean
and poor that we feel like sinking out of sight with our cheap laurels
and our ill-earned gold.
 CHAPTER V
AMBITION KNOWS NO AGE LIMIT

What has become of that something which in your youth keyed your
determination up to such a lofty pitch? What has become of that
something in you which would not let you rest, which robbed you of
sleep, which constantly prodded you, bombarded you with visions of
the great and wonderful things you were going to do in the future?
One of the earmarks of old age is the cooling down of the fires of
ambition. While they burn brightly, as long as you feel just as eager
and as determined as in your younger days to do your level best, to
get up and to get on in the world, to keep growing, to keep
improving, you are not aging very much. Your years may dispute
this, but as long as a man aspires, as long as he is eager to grow, as
long as he yearns and struggles to better his best he is not old.
When we are getting along in years there is always a great
temptation to make ourselves believe that we have a right to let up
a bit and to take things easier, to get rid of as much drudgery as
possible. We have less and less inclination for the strenuous struggle
to attain that which characterized our youth. The great danger at
this time is that as we let up a bit in our efforts our ambition will
decline, all of our life standards drop.
Many people are not quite as painstaking, not quite as particular
when they get along in years as in their younger days. It is so much
easier then to slide along easily, not to trouble about one’s dress and
personal appearance, to hypnotize oneself into thinking, “Well, it
does not matter very much now, I am no longer young.”
One of the most difficult things one is called upon to do as the years
pass is to keep his ambition from dying, his ideals clear and clean-
cut, his interest in his work from getting stale.
The secret of keeping the ambition fresh and bright is in keeping up
the interest. The artist who is in love with his work, no matter how
old, never loses his zest, his enthusiasm. He goes to his canvas in
old age with all the interest and eagerness of his youth.
Many men and women age through sheer laziness, mental inertia,
indifference. They are only half alive. They are not willing to take the
trouble to pay the price for perpetual youth, to keep their ambition
from lagging.
Some people seem to think that the ambition to do a certain thing in
life is a permanent quality which will remain with them. It is not.
One of the first symptoms of age and deterioration in one’s work is
the gradual, unconscious oozing out, shrinkage, of one’s ambition.
There is no one quality in our lives that requires more careful
watching and constant bracing up, jacking up, so to speak, than our
ambition, especially when we are advancing in years, and do not
keep in an atmosphere which tends to arouse one to life’s
possibilities. Without realizing it, or meaning to, we then easily
become victims of the human inclination to take things easy, not to
exert oneself very much.
No matter how high our youthful ambition, it is very easy to let it
wane with the years, to allow our standards to drop. The moment
we cease to brace ourselves up, to watch ourselves, we begin to
deteriorate, just as a child does when his mother ceases to pay strict
attention to him and lets him have his own way. The tendency of the
majority at every age of existence is to go along the line of least
resistance, to take the easiest way. The race instinct to climb is
continually at war with the lower nature which would drag it down.
Even the noblest beings are not free from the struggle of the higher
with the lower which goes on ceaselessly throughout nature. It is
the triumph over the lower that keeps the race on the ascent.
There is no more pitiable sight in the world than that of a person in
whom ambition is dead,—a man who has repeatedly denied that
inward voice which bids him up and on, a man in whom ambition’s
fires have gone out from the lack of fuel. There is always hope for a
person, no matter how bad he may be, as long as his ambition is
alive; but when that has disappeared, the great life-spur, the
impelling motive is gone.
It requires a great deal and a great variety of food to keep the
ambition vigorous. Unless it is well fortified it does not amount to
anything. It must be backed by a robust will power, stern resolve,
physical energy, and great powers of endurance, to be effective.
The habit of watching the ambition constantly and keeping it alive, is
absolutely imperative to those who would keep from deteriorating.
Everything depends on the ambition.
If we lived and thought more scientifically there would not be such a
dropping of standards, such a dulling of ideals, and letting down in
our efforts with advancing years.
Whatever our ambition may be, nothing else can be quite so
precious to most of us as life, and we want that life at its best. Every
normal person dreads to see the mark of old age, the symptoms of
decrepitude, and wants to remain fresh, buoyant, robust, as long as
possible. Yet most people do not take sensible precautions to
preserve their youth and vigor. They violate the health laws,
longevity laws; sap their vitality in foolish, unnatural living, in
deteriorating habits.
I have a friend who is always referring to his age. He has formed a
habit of constantly dwelling upon his declining years, and keeping
the picture of decrepitude in his mind. “You know, when a man gets
past sixty he can’t stand what he once could,” he will say.
The idea that our energies and forces must begin to decline and the
fires of ambition die out after a certain age is reached has a most
pernicious influence upon the mind. We do not realize how
impossible it is for us to go beyond our self-placed “dead-line” limits,
to do what we really believe we cannot do.
No one is old until the interest in life is gone out of him, until his
spirit becomes aged, until his heart becomes cold and unresponsive;
as long as he touches life at many points he can not grow old in
spirit. A man is old, no matter what his years, when he is out of
touch with youth, with its ideals, its points of view, out of touch with
the spirit of his times; when he has ceased to be progressive and
up-to-date.
Many of the grandest characters that ever lived have retained their
youthful mentality up to the very last of a long life. There was no
deterioration in the mind of Marshall Field. When in his advanced
years he never showed any inclination to take less pains, any cooling
of ambition, any inclination to bank his fires, to drop his standards,
to lower his ideals. We know that Gladstone’s mind was right in its
prime at eighty.
Many a man signs his death warrant when he retires from business.
Retiring from business to many means practically retiring from life,
that is, from real living, because they have nothing to retire to. They
have not prepared themselves for retirement to anything outside of
routine business life. They have lost most of their friends in their
absorption in business and their exclusive mode of living. They have
never developed their social faculties, their love of art, of music, or
of reading. The whole life has gone into one business channel and
when out of this they are lost.
Life means little without a purpose. Once his life aim is gone man
simply exists—he does not really live. A high ideal, a lofty purpose, a
noble aim, whatever tends to make man look up and struggle up,
tends to improve his health condition and prolong the life. The soul
that aspires, other things being equal, has the longest life. Aspiration
is a perpetual tonic; it stimulates all the faculties.
 CHAPTER VI
MAKE YOUR LIFE COUNT

Everywhere we see men and women doing the lower, the commoner
things, seemingly satisfied to do them all their lives, when they have
the ability to do the higher.
Many people do not start out with ambition enough to spur them to
do big things. They make a large career practically impossible at the
very outset, because they expect so little of themselves. They have a
narrow, stingy view of life and of themselves which limits their
ambition to a little, rutty, poverty-stricken groove.
If I could give the American youth but one word of advice, it would
be that which Michael Angelo wrote under a diminutive figure on a
canvas in Raphael’s studio, when he called and found the great artist
out, “Amplius,” meaning “larger.” Raphael needed no more. This
word meant volumes to him. I advise every youth to frame this
motto, hang it, up in his room, in his store, in his office, in the
factory where he works, where it will stare him in the face. Constant
contemplation of it will make his life broader and deeper.
A fine ambition is a splendid life steadier. It holds us to our task;
keeps us from yielding to the hundred temptations that might ruin
us.
What chaos there would be but for man’s ambition to get up and get
on in the world and to improve his condition.
Nothing so strengthens the mind and enlarges the horizon of
manhood as a constant effort to measure up to a worthy ambition. It
stretches the thought, as it were, to a larger measure, and touches
the life to finer issues.
“I am determined to make my life count,” said a poor young
immigrant with whom I was talking not long ago. Now, there is a
resolution that is worth while, because it is backed by a high
ambition, the determined purpose to be a man, to make his life one
of service to humanity.
This young fellow works hard during the day, studying in a night
school, and improving himself in every possible way in his odds and
ends of time.
This is the sort of dead-in-earnestness that wins. This is the sort of
material that has made America distinctive among all the nations of
the earth. This is the sort of determination that gave us a Lincoln, an
Andrew Jackson, an Edison, a John Muir—all our great men, native
born or adopted sons.
Could any one have a nobler ambition than this—to make his life
count? One cannot imagine its failure, backed up by dead-in-
earnestness.
The quality of the ambitions of a people at any time locates them in
the scale of civilization. The ideals of an individual or a nation
measure the actual condition and the future possibilities and
probabilities.
The trouble with many youths is they start out with no definite plan,
no one unwavering aim, for success, no worth while goal in view.
They just look for a job. It may fit them or it may not, and they plod
along, doing their work indifferently, with no spirit or ambition to
push them towards the heights.
© Underwood & Underwood

JOHN MUIR
It is astonishing how many people there are who have no definite
aim or ambition, but just exist from one day to another with no well-
defined life plan. Although the great world war has done much to
bring our youth to a realization of their responsibilities and raised
their ideals to a lofty height we still see all about us on the ocean of
life young men and women aimlessly drifting without rudder or port,
throwing away time, without serious purpose or method in anything
they do. They simply drift with the tide. If you ask one of them what
he is going to do, what his ambition is, he will tell you he does not
exactly know yet what he will do. He is simply waiting for a chance
to take up something.
“Between the great things that we cannot do and the small things
we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing,” says Adolphe
Monod.
It is not enough for success to have ability, education, health.
Hundreds of thousands have all these and still fail, or live in
mediocrity, because they do not put themselves in an attitude or
condition for achievement. Their ability is placed at a disadvantage
by the lack of a big motive, the stimulus of a worthy ambition.
“The important things in life is to have a great aim and to possess
the aptitude and perseverance to attain it,” says Goethe.
Of course, many people are hindered in the race through no fault of
their own, but the vast majority of those who cease to climb and
give up (often right in sight of their goal), do so from some
weakness or defect. Many of them lack continuity of purpose or
persistency; others lack courage or determination. Many of these
unfortunates would attain to at least something of real success by
merely sticking to their tasks.
If the motive is big enough the ability to match it is usually
forthcoming. There is not one of you, my friends, who could not be
more alert, more original, more ingenious, more resourceful, more
careful, more thorough, more level-headed; not one of you who
could not use a little better judgment a little more forethought, a
little more discrimination, if you saw a tempting prize ahead of you
as a reward.
“Whatever may be your ambition, play fair with yourself. Quit the
side issues.” Cut out the diversions. Live with and for your big
ambition. Drop all else to attain your end and you will win—you will
be and you will have what you want.
“Take a lesson in pruning and lop off the useless branches which
consume vitality and obscure the sunshine.” That card club that
interferes with early rising; that light reading that takes your mind
off preparation for bigger things, and all other wasteful habits. Have
you cut them off? If you have not it is because you don’t want the
“big thing” hard enough to deserve it, and you won’t get it unless
you prune off the useless habits that are diverting your energy and
keeping you away from the main chance.
“Success in life is a process of selection and elimination—a choosing
between the worthless and the worth while. To get time for things
that count you must save time by eliminating all else. Copy the
athlete at the training table, feed on that which builds you up and
keeps you fit for the struggle.”
Unless you are inspired by a great purpose, a resolute determination
to make your life count, you will not make much of an impression
upon the world about you. The difference in the quantity and quality
of success is largely one of ambition and determination. If you lack
these you must cultivate them vigorously, persistently, or you will be
a nobody. I have never known any one to make a place for himself
in the world, who did not keep his purpose alive by the constant
struggle to reach his goal. The moment ambition sags, we lose the
force that propels us; and once our propelling power is gone we drift
with the tide of circumstances.
“The youth who does not look up will look down, and the spirit that
does not soar is destined to grovel.”
A young stenographer said to me once that if she felt sure she had
the ability to become an expert literary stenographer, she would go
to evening school and would study nights and holidays, and improve
herself in every possible way; but if she was convinced that she
could never attain very great speed, she would simply prepare
herself for ordinary letter dictation, and let it go at that.
She did not seem to think that making the most possible of what
ability she had would give her a correspondingly good position, or
that the best possible training she could give herself would be the
best possible investment she could make, and would give her infinite
satisfaction.
The less ability you have, my young friend, the more important it is
that you make the most possible out of it. If you are obliged to get
your living, and, some of you, to support a family and make a home
with one talent, you certainly need to make the most possible out of
it, and to put forth much greater effort than if you had been given
ten talents.
 CHAPTER VII
VISUALIZE YOURSELF IN A BETTER POSITION

No matter in what business you may be, or what your profession,

your prime ambition should be to attain a high-water mark in it. The
love of excellence is the lodestar that leads the world onward. It is
this that makes not only the successful business or professional
man, but also the all-round successful person in any line of
endeavor.
Andrew Carnegie said, “I would not give a fig for the young man in
business who does not already see himself a partner, or the head of
the firm.”
Do not rest for a moment in your thought of yourself as a head
clerk, foreman, or manager in any concern, no matter how big it is.
Say each day to yourself, “My place is higher up.” Be king in your
dreams. Vow that you will reach the position with untarnished
reputation, and make no other vow to distract your attention.
I am frequently asked by youths and young men whether I think
they really have enough in them to make much of a success in life,
anything that will be distinctive or worth while, and I answer, “Yes,
you have. I know you have the ability to succeed, but I don’t know
that you will. That rests entirely with you. If you have the energy
and the will to succeed nothing can hold you back. But if you have
not, no amount of education, no pull or influence, no power on earth
outside of yourself can push or lead or boost you into success.”
There is nothing so important in your life as your mental attitude
towards yourself, what you think of yourself, the model which you
hold of yourself and your possibilities. If this is small, narrow, and
dwarfed your life will correspond.
You must see yourself above a clerkship or you will never be
anything higher than a clerk. You must visualize yourself in a better
position, and hold constantly a grim determination to reach it or you
will never get there. Never for a moment blur your motive or weaken
your determination by harboring a doubt of your ability to reach your
goal. Whenever you do this you are neutralizing just so much of the
force which would take you there.
Remember, there is a partnership waiting for you somewhere if you
are big enough and determined enough and have pluck enough to
take it. If you do not there is probably someone very near you who
will do so, someone who perhaps has not had nearly as good an
opportunity as you have had. And in the years to come, if you do not
take advantage of this opportunity to climb, you will no doubt,
grumble at your “ill luck” and wonder how Billy or Johnny or Jo, who
worked alongside of you, managed to get the partnership or coveted
position.
A recent writer says: “My advice to all those just starting to travel
life’s turnpike is: ‘Don’t start until you have your ideal. Then don’t
stop until you get it.’”
Very few of us realize how dependent our growth is on some special
stimulus. Every act must have a motive. We do nothing outside of
our automatic habitual acts without an underlying motive. Perhaps
the stronger life motive of the average man is that which comes
from his desire to get up in the world.
 Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.

LINCOLN STUDYING BY THE FIRELIGHT.

There was a force behind Lincoln which drove him from a log cabin
up to the White House. There was a vision of the North Pole which
haunted Peary, filled him with ambition to climb to the earth’s
uttermost boundary, and finally drove him, after repeated failures, to
the Pole. The same indomitable inner force urged the despised
young Jew, Benjamin Disraeli, to push his way up through the lower
classes in England, up through the middle classes, up through the
upper classes, until he stood a master, self-poised, upon the topmost
round of political and social power, the prime minister of the greatest
country in the world.
The story of those men is the same at bottom as that of every man
who has attained greatness. They were continually urged forward
and upward by some inward prompting they could not resist.
This instinctive impulse to keep pushing on and up is the most
curious and the most interesting thing in human life. It exists in
every normal human being, and is just as pronounced and as real as
the instinct of self-preservation. Upon this climbing instinct rests the
destiny of the race. Without it men would still be savages, and living
in caves and huts. Civilization, as we know it, would not exist. There
would be no great cities, no great factories, no railroads, no
steamships, no beautiful homes or parks, pictures, sculpture or
books, but for this mysterious urge which we call ambition.
The best of every man’s work is above and beyond himself, and is
accomplished in the struggle to attain a lofty ideal. The artist stands
aside and points through his work to a glimpse of the universal art.
In his inspired moments the individuality of the orator is melted and
fused into the all-pervading fire of eloquence. In art or business, in
science or the daily commonplace tasks of life, the gods will move
along toward the line of absolute excellence or they will leave us to
our own devices.
We do our most effective work in our struggle to get what we are
after, to arrive at the goal of our ambition. We put forth our greatest
effort, our most strenuous endeavor, while we are climbing, not after
we have arrived at our goal. This is one reason why rich men’s sons
rarely achieve any great personal success. They lack the climbing
motive of necessity, that tremendous urge, the prodding of ambition
which drives us on to achieve what we desire and are capable of
attaining. Ambition is the leader of all great achievement. It is the
forerunner which goes ahead and clears a way for the other
faculties.
The ambition is not always a safe guide, however. There are two
wings to genius. Common sense and good judgment must
accompany the ambition, or it will very often run away with a man.
We have seen splendid pieces of machinery, whose iron fingers
would punch holes through solid steel plates without a single jar.
The machinery accomplishes this wonderful feat because of a huge
balance-wheel. It is the stored-up power, velocity, and momentum
which enable it to accomplish this wonderful task. Take away the
balance-wheel, and the machinery, which does its work as easily as
a cook would make the holes in rolled-out pastry, falls all to pieces
the moment the balance-wheel is removed. The balance-wheel is the
secret. The judgment is man’s balance-wheel—great common sense,
horse sense. His ambition will run away with him if he does not have
this.
The young man who overestimates his ability, who plunges beyond
his depth, who is over-confident, whose self-trust is not based upon
an accurate knowledge of his ability and limitations, almost always
comes to grief. It is just as necessary to know what you are not
qualified for, and to let it alone, as to know what you can do, and do
it.
“Study yourself,” says Longfellow, “and most of all, note well wherein
kind nature meant you to excel.”
It takes a giant to do a giant’s work. What a Morgan or a Carnegie
would do with perfect ease and safety, might be as impossible for
you to accomplish as to lift yourself by your own boot straps. On the
other hand, you may be able to do something which even a Morgan
could not do. Study your own adaptations. Try to get a measure of
your possibilities.
A man should early take an inventory of his ability and locate himself
where he belongs. If he has but one talent he should not try to train
with the ten-talent man. He should simply try to make the most of
his one talent.
It is impossible to make one talent do the work of ten talents, no
matter how ambitious, or how much energy one may fling into his
work.
A great brain does a great thing easily. We all do our best work
without overstraining. It is dangerous to over-tax one’s faculties.
I have seen a college student who has overstrained his brain until he
has seriously marred his mental power in the foolish effort to try to
head his class when he was not a natural scholar. He seemed to
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