The "income-stream" in question is a pecuniary income-stream, and is in the last resort traceable to transactions of sale. Within the confines of business--and therefore within the scope of capital, investments, assets, and the like business concepts--transactions of purchase and sale are the final terms of any analysis. But beyond these confines, comprehending and conditioning the business system, lie the material facts of the community's work and livelihood. In the final transaction of sale the merchantable goods are valued by the consumer, not as assets, but as livelihood;[9] and in the last analysis and long run it is to some such transaction that all business imputations of value and capitalistic appraisement of assets must have regard and by which they must finally be checked. Dissociated from the facts of work and livelihood, therefore, assets cease to be assets; but this does not preclude their relation to these facts of work and livelihood being at times somewhat remote and loose. Without recourse, immediately or remotely, to certain material facts of industrial process and equipment, assets would not yield earnings; that is to say, wholly disjoined from these material facts, they would in effect not be assets. This is true for both tangible and intangible assets, although the relation of the assets to the material facts of industry is not the same in the two cases. The case of tangible assets needs no argument. Intangible assets, such as patent right or monopolistic control, are likewise of no effect except in effectual contact with industrial facts. The patent right becomes effective for the purpose only in the material working of the innovation covered by it; and monopolistic control is a source of gain only in so far as it effectually modifies or divides the supply of goods.