Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 2Roscher, Wilhelm
General
Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 2
Roscher, Wilhelm
Economics
Thus laws, the barriers interposed by tariffs, etc., may hinder the
too-much of one country to flow over into the too-little of another.
England, for instance might be suffering from a flood of manufactured
articles and the United States from an oppressive depreciation in the
value of raw material; but the tariff-laws places a hermetic dike
between want on one side and superfluity on the other. Strong national
antipathies and great differences of taste stubbornly adhered to may
produce similar effects; for instance between the Chinese and Europeans.
Even separation in space, especially when added to by badness of the
means of transportation may be a sufficient hinderance especially when
transportation makes commodities so dear that parties do not care to
exchange. In such cases, it is certainly imaginable that there should be
at once a want of proper vent or demand for all commodities; provided,
we look upon each individual class of commodities the world over as one
whole, and admit the exception that in individual places, certain parts
of the whole more readily find a market because of the general crisis.
Lastly, the mere introduction of trade by money destroys as it were the
use of the whole abstract theory.[217-5] So long as original barter
prevailed, supply and demand met face to face. But by the intervention
of money, the seller is placed in a condition to purchase only after a
time, that is, to postpone the other half of the exchange-transaction as
he wishes. Hence it follows that supply does not necessarily produce a
corresponding demand in the real market. And thus a general crisis may
be produced, especially by a sudden diminution of the medium of
circulation.[217-6] And so, many very abundant harvests, which have
produced a great decline in the value of raw material, and no less so a
too large fixation of capital which stops before its completion,[217-7]
may lead to general over-production. In a word, production does not
always carry with itself the guaranty that it shall find a proper
market, but only when it is developed in all directions, where it is
progressive and in harmony with the whole national economy. To use
Michel Chevalier's expression, the saliant angles of the one-half must
correspond to the re-entrant angles of the other, or confusion will
reign everywhere. Even in individual industrial enterprises, the proper
combination of the different kinds of labor employed in them is an
indispensable condition of success. Let us suppose a factory in which
there are separate workmen occupied with nothing but the manufacture of
ramrods. If these now exceed the proper limits of their production and
have manufactured perhaps ten times as many ramrods as can be used in a
year, can their colleagues, employed in the making of the locks or
butt-ends of the gun, profit by their outlay? Scarcely. There will be a
stagnation of the entire business, because part of its capital is
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