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
By what magic was all that brought about? By an infinite variety
and complexity of specialized Labor, which, applied to a variety of
special kinds of Land (Natural Resources)--in country, town and
city,--produced all the Wealth (Artificial Objects) necessary for the
production of more Wealth, namely the Capital; and this consisted
of implements and structures made from and upon Land by Labor; of
implements and structures for the production of those implements and
structures, also made from and upon Land by Labor; of transportation
facilities of many kinds similarly made and operated. Also buildings
for stores as well as factories--all in a confusion of industrial
specialties that can be unraveled only by generalizing the details in
accordance with natural law as disclosed by the Basic Facts.
Let that unraveling be done and still we may be bothered by collateral
problems to which those details give rise--banking, for instance, and
book-keeping all along the productive lines.
To follow in detail the ramifications of the Production of that needle
from the first effort of Labor to which it owes its existence, to its
delivery at the retail store in a “paper of needles” to the house-wife
in whose deft hands we find it, would drive even a magician mad. But
all confusion is banished if we classify the multitudinous details
according to their natural characteristics respectively, as Labor, Land
and Wealth.
And as of the details of that needle’s production, so of all Economic
details, from least to greatest, from simplest to most complex,
throughout the labyrinthine intricacies of the Productive Process in
Economics. To study separately all the Economic constituents of even
the simplest civilized habitation and their respective relations to
it, Economically, one would need training in many different kinds of
specialties, from forestry to decoration. Yet systematic Economic
thinking assigns every Economic detail to three categories which
can be studied without risk of confusion. It need hardly be again
explained that those three categories are Labor, Land and Wealth. Every
constituent of such a habitation, no matter how minute, is assignable
for primary Economic study to one or another of those Basic Facts--to
Land for the site, and for all the rest, from architectural designing
to decorative completion, to composites of Land and Labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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