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
But division of Labor would be useless were it not for Trade. Each
of those frontiersmen must trade his share in the other’s habitation
for the other’s share in his habitation; each of those messengers
must exchange his claim to compensation for delivering one of the
other’s two messages for the other’s claim to compensation for
delivering one of his. This, then, is the sum and substance of Trade
in Economics--adjustments of compensation for specialized Production
through division of Labor.
The effect is magical. By division of Labor and Trade the single
individual becomes a vital part of a comprehensive human organism, of
a greater man, of the Social or Economic Man--a Man of almost infinite
Economic powers.
Those two kinds of Economic energy, making and trading, permeate the
multitudinous phenomena of that Productive Process in the course
of which Man draws forth Artificial Objects from and upon Natural
Resources, for the satisfaction of human desires; or, to use the
technical Economic terms, in the course of which Labor produces Wealth
from and upon Land.
3--_Utility, Value, Money, Price, Banks_
In connection with division of Labor and Trade we are brought into
contact with the phenomena of Economic Utility and Economic Value.
Utility is an absolute term indicative of essential desirability. Value
is a relative term indicative of the relative Utility of commodities;
or, more precisely, of the degree of desirability of one variety of
Labor or Land or form of Wealth in comparison with other varieties.
One variety of Labor or of Land or of Wealth may be twice as desirable
as another, unit for unit, in which case one unit of the former will
exchange in Trade for two units of the latter. Thus the relative
Utility of a Commodity is indicated in Trade by its Value.
For measuring Value in all its variations from least to greatest and
comparing these in the Productive Process, the Economic instrumentality
is Money, that surface layer of Economics through which we passed in
our exploration down to the Basic Facts; and the synonym for Value in
terms of Money is Price.
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