Several things may be said of the facts discussed in this passage. There is, presumably, a decrease, in bulk, weight, or number, of the appliances that make up the industrial equipment at the time when such a technological change as is contemplated takes place. This change, presumably, increases the productive efficiency of the equipment as a whole, and so may be said without hesitation to increase the equipment as a factor of production, while it may decrease it, considered as a mechanical magnitude. The owners of the obsolete or obsolescent appliances presumably suffer a diminution of their capital, whether they discard the obsolete appliances or not. The owners of the new appliances, or rather those who own and are able to capitalise the new technological expedients, presumably gain a corresponding advantage, which may take the form of an increase of the effective capitalisation of their outfit, as would then be shown by an increased market value of their plant. The largest theoretical outcome of the supposed changes, for an economist not bound by Mr. Clark's conception of capital, should be the generalisation that industrial capital--capital considered as a productive agent--is substantially a capitalisation of technological expedients, and that a given capital invested in industrial equipment is measured by the portion of technological expedients whose usufruct the investment appropriates. It would accordingly appear that the substantial core of all capital is immaterial wealth, and that the material objects which are formally the subject of the capitalist's ownership are, by comparison, a transient and adventitious matter. But if such a view were accepted, even with extreme reservations, Mr. Clark's scheme of the "natural" distribution of incomes between capital and labor would "go up in the air," as the colloquial phrase has it. It would be extremely difficult to determine what share of the value of the joint product of capital and labor should, under a rule of "natural" equity, go to the capitalist as an equitable return for his monopolisation of a given portion of the intangible assets of the community at large.[11] The returns actually accruing to him under competitive conditions would be a measure of the differential advantage held by him by virtue of his having become legally seized of the material contrivances by which the technological achievements of the community are put into effect.