And so on. Common Reductions x Finance Current finance and commerce and accountancy seems often to be reduced to this aspect. While keeping within a budget is truly of the economic whose kernel is frugality, the emphasis in business today is more in a simple numerical maximization e.g. of profits or efficiency and a minimization of costs. In the same way, in many fields there is a desire or tendency to reduce all things to numerical measures or metrics. This, it seems, is the only way we think we can make decisions.
Many laws stipulate a numerical limit to separate legal from illegal activities.
A common one is an age limit. These limits cause no end of trouble. For instance, just recently in the U.K. Parliament has debated whether the age at which consenting adults can engage privately in homosexual activity should be reduced from 18 to 16, to bring it in line with the heterosexual limit, on the grounds that it is unfair to differentiate. Especially when the chronologically younger person is actually more mature in various ways. There are many similar issues, such as limit of alcohol in blood.