TIME PREFERENCE (IMPATIENCE)

tend, at the same time, to reduce impatience. Rae goesso far as to say: 12

“Were life to endure forever, were the capacity to enjoy in per-fection all its goods, both mental and corporeal, to be prolongedwith it, and were we guided solely by the dictates of reason, there-could be no limit to the formation of means for future gratifica-tion, till our utmost wishes were supplied. A pleasure to be enjoyed,or a pain to be endured, fifty or a hundred years hence, would beconsidered deserving the same attention as if it were to befall usfifty or a hundred minutes hence, and the sacrifice of a smallerpresent good, for a greater future good, would be readily made, towhatever period that futurity might extend. But life, and the powerto enjoy it, are the most uncertain of all things, and we are notguided altogether by reason. We know not the period when deathmay come upon us, but we know that it may come in a few days,and must come in a few years. Why then be providing goods thatcannot be enjoyed until times, which, though not very remote, maynever come to us, or until times still more remote, and which weare convinced we shall never see? If life, too, is of uncertain dura-tion and the time that death comes between us and all our pos-sessions unknown, the approaches of old age are at least certain,and are dulling, day by day, the relish of every pleasure.”

The shortness of life thus tends powerfully to increasethe degree of impatience, or rate of time preference, be-yond what it would otherwise be. This is especially evi-dent when the income streams compared are long. A loverof music will be impatient for a piano, i.e., will prefer apiano at once to a piano available next year, because,since either will outlast his own life, he will get one moreyear’s use out of a piano available at once.

(5) But whereas the shortness and uncertainty of lifetend to increase impatience, their effect is greatly miti-gated by the fifth circumstance, solicitude for the welfareof one’s heirs. Probably the most powerful cause tending

“Rae, The Sociological Theory oj Capital, pp. 53-54.

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