The Scope and Significance of Economic Misrepresentation, II.

The article focuses on the significance of the economic misrepresentation. The actual or potential threat of economic misrepresentation has many dimensions. The purely ethical issue will tend to merge into the practical issues of daily life at large when the virus of irresponsibility and falsehood is permitted to thrive in any one area from which it can readily spread elsewhere. The threat of economic misrepresentation extends beyond the diffused general effects just traced. If it continues to thrive it is likely to undermine important foundations upon which the stable structure of our economic democracy depends. To the extent that economic misrepresentation succeeds in influencing voters' party preference or their choice of representatives, it diminishes the effectiveness of our democratic methods. The new and highly favored role of statistical reference in public debate is obviously due to the rather recent development in the scope and reliability of statistical data. In support of such privately organized measures of preventing and correcting economic misrepresentation, legal action may be desirable in order to enforce universally the rules which the well mentioned have already voluntarily accepted.