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
Browning struck a key-note when in his “Abt Vogler” he wrote of the
“manifold music” evolved by bidding the organ obey, that--
... “effect proceeds from cause,
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, _but art in obedience to laws_.”
If any Economic experiment “works” (as a pragmatist might say of
it), why does it work? What other explanation can there be than that
it “works” because it is a correct adaptation of cause to effect in
obedience to mandates of natural Economic law.
Consumption of food is a natural effect of the natural necessity for
food--a natural law. Production of food is a natural effect of the
natural need of food for consumption--a natural law. Resort to Natural
Resources as the sole source and foundation from and upon which to
produce food is a natural effect caused by the natural need for food--a
natural law.
Nor can natural law be limited to the individual man any more than it
is to trees. Associated man also is governed by it. It is the latter
relation that distinguishes it as Economic. From the natural desire
of individual man for production from and upon Natural Resources,
social Trade develops, not arbitrarily but as a natural consequence of
a related natural cause. Let thoughtless students and professors of
Economics who deny natural Economic law--the normal conditions of cause
and effect that govern cooperative mankind in making a living--explain
Economic phenomena, if they can, without reference to Economic cause
and effect, or Economic cause and effect with natural Economic law left
out.
Natural Economic law might, perhaps, be given another and more
accurately descriptive name. Yet its existence and its potency for
good results or bad, according to obedience or indifference to it, are
beyond all possibility of denial by any Economic student who knows
what it means and who, thinking with clarity, speaks with a sense
of responsibility. Its name, “natural law,” is simply a common and
convenient term, whether truly descriptive or not, for indicating the
undeniable fact that in Economics as in every other science, identical
effects invariably proceed from identical causes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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