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
Another seeming exception to the money-making characteristic of
Economics depends upon individual isolation. That isolated individuals
may gather food and improvise shelter and clothing without thinking of
them in terms of money, is true enough; but the activities of persons
thus isolated are not Economic exceptions, for the science of Economics
is a social science. Although some Economic phases or phenomena may be
picturesquely and aptly illustrated by reference to the experience,
actual or imaginary, of isolated individuals like Robinson Crusoe
on his island, states of human isolation are outside the limits of
Economics.
Inasmuch, then, as the object of the human factor in the science of
Economics is to make money, and as there can be no science of Economics
without the human factor, Economics is comprehensively and accurately
definable, on the surface, as the science of making money.
But making money in the Economic sense must be distinguished from
narrower uses of the phrase. To manufacture coins legitimately, as at a
mint, is to “make money,” but only in one Economic particular--only in
the narrow mechanical sense in which weaving cloth is “making cloth.”
Like weaving cloth, it is but an item in the multitudinous phenomena of
that money-making which superficially defines the science of Economics.
The same observation is applicable to the occupations of engraving and
of printing paper currency legitimately.
Illegitimate makings of either paper currency or coin, like all other
forms of forgery, are not in any sense making money within the purview
of Economic science. They are varieties of theft, and Economic science
excludes theft of every kind, even legal kinds, such as slavery. This
exclusion is not for moral reasons, it may be well to interject for the
benefit of such advanced students of Economics as recoil from mixing
moral principles with Economic science. It is due to the fact that
exchange, or trade--an essential element in Economics,--is in theft
utterly lacking.
In the Economic sense, making money is making it for all concerned
in any particular process, and not for one or more of the parties at
the expense of the others. No art of getting something for nothing
can be within the scope of Economic science. One-sided methods
of making money, whether frankly labeled “theft” or “gambling,”
or shrewdly disguised in spurious business ethics, are alien to
Economic money-making. Within the domain of Economics no money-making
transaction belongs unless it involves the making of money by all
parties to the transaction.
To make money in that mutual sense is to augment the supply or the
serviceableness of whatever commodities money terms may measure and
express, and of the portions or shares of all who contribute to the
augmentation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
The basic facts of economics : $b A common-sense primer for advanced students — John Shaqi
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