The basic facts of economics : $b A common-sense primer for advanced studentsPost, Louis F. (Louis Freeland)
General
The basic facts of economics : $b A common-sense primer for advanced students
Post, Louis F. (Louis Freeland)
Economics
All commodities are subjects of Trade. Artificial commodities, such
as depend upon human service for production, are not only subjects of
Trade but are also its products. This is absolutely true of every kind
of artificial commodity that is produced to completion, inclusive of
final delivery, by means of Economic specializations--specializations
in human service. The primary materials and the unfinished parts are
gathered together and delivered, both in the intricate process and
finally, by means of Trade.
A loaf of bread, for example, is brought to completion from
harvest-field to bakery, and thence as a finished product, through
many deliveries (including delivery to its ultimate consumer) by means
of Trade. So is the implement with which it is cut at the consumer’s
table, and the plate on which it rests, the table at which it is
served, the cloth which covers the table, the chair in which the
consumer sits at the table, and the dining room floor beneath them all.
Of the vast variety of such commodities as loaves of bread and knives
for cutting them and plates and tables and tablecloths by means of
which they are served for ultimate consumption, very few if any at all
of that variety of commodities--whether finished, as a loaf of bread on
the consumer’s table, or unfinished, as the growing grain or the flour
of which the loaf is composed, or the fuel that bakes it, or the bricks
or the metal of the baker’s oven, or the finished oven itself--give
distinctive expression to all the human services they embody.
That fact could be further illustrated with any artificial commodity
in course of Trade. A hogshead of molasses on a wharf would answer
the purpose. To thoughtless observation this commodity might seem
to embody no other human service than work on a sugar plantation
and by barrel-makers in a coopering shop. But if we think about it
with penetration and clarity, we readily realize that it embodies
the services also of lumbermen, of miners, of railway workers, of
bankers, possibly of importers and mariners, probably of exporters and
their assistants, certainly of draymen, of wharfmen, of merchants, of
book-keepers and other accountants--a veritable host of specialists
whose contributory services are not emphasized by the tangible
commodity (a hogshead of molasses on a wharf) as are the services of
plantation-hands and barrel-makers. Multitudes of human services in
distracting variety are concealed in that familiar commodity from the
vision of all but specialists; perhaps from their vision too in so far
as the services are outside of their respective specialties. And if we
were to follow that hogshead of molasses to its Economic destination,
we might perceive many an additional human service embodied and
concealed in commodities of Trade for which the material would have
been supplied in part by molasses from the hogshead and probably in
part by the hogshead itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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