Evidently, this work of the pecuniary magnate bears a great resemblance to the creation of intangible assets under the ordinary competitive system. This is, no doubt, the point of its nearest relation to the current capitalistic enterprise. But, as has already been indicated above, it cannot be said that the magnate's peculiar work is the creation of intangible, or other assets, although there is commonly some recapitalisation involved in his manoeuvers, and although his gains commonly come as assets, _i.e._, in the capitalised form. Nor can it, as has also been indicated above, be said that the wealth which serves him as the means of his peculiar enterprise stands in the relation of assets to this enterprise or to the gains in question, since this wealth already stands in an exhaustive relation as assets to some corporate enterprise in ordinary business and to the corresponding items of interest and dividends. It may, of course, be contended that the present state of things on this higher plane of enterprise is transient and transitional only, and that in the settled condition which may conceivably supervene, the magnate's relation to business at large will be capitalised in some form of intangible assets, after the manner in which the monopoly advantage of an ordinary "trust" is now capitalised. But this is at the best only a surmise, guided by inapplicable generalisations drawn from a past situation in which this higher enterprise has not engrossed the pecuniary initiative and played the ruling part. FOOTNOTES: [1] Reprinted by permission from _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Vol. XXIII, Nov., 1908. [2] See this Journal for August, 1908. [3] For the connection between prices and prosperity, hard times, unemployment, etc., see _The Theory of Business Enterprise_, chap. vii (pp. 185-252, especially 196-212). [4] By "perversion" is here meant such disposition of the industrial forces as entails a net waste or detriment to the community's livelihood.