The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
In the static state, all speculation is banished. There are no
price-fluctuations to be smoothed out, no new prospects to be
"discounted," no uncertainties to be guarded against by "hedging."
Seasonal goods will, of course, have to be carried over from one season
to the next, but this will involve merely warehousing and the use of
capital--"time speculation," involving many sales, does not come in. One
sale to the capitalist who carries the seasonal goods, with a sale by
him to the man who means to use them, will suffice. It has been shown
before that the great bulk of trade is speculation. But speculation is
banished from the static state. Speculation is a function of dynamic
change, waxing and waning with the degree of uncertainty that exists,
the new conditions to which readjustments have to be made, the
"transitions" that have to be effected. In other words, the laws
governing the volume of trade are dynamic laws, laws of "transition
periods," and so the whole notion which underlies the quantity theory,
of "normal periods," "static" relations, etc., is here irrelevant.
Volume of _trade_, as distinguished from volume of _production_, is
controlled by the number and extent of the "transitions" that have to be
made. The chief work of money and credit is done _in_, and _because of_,
"transition periods." Assume a normal equilibrium accomplished, and you
have little trading left to do. It will still be necessary, if you have
the division of labor, and private enterprise, for goods to pass through
as many different hands as there are different independent enterprisers
in the stages of production, and on, through merchants, to the consumer.
It will still be necessary to pay wages, rents, dividends and interest.
But there will be no selling of lands, of houses, of factories, of
railroads, or of securities representing these. By hypothesis these are
already in the hands best qualified to hold them. The "static
equilibrium" presents "mobility without motion, fluidity without
flow."[298] The static picture is a picture of completed adjustment,
where no one has an incentive to change his work, or his investments,
because he has already done the best that he can for himself. It is,
therefore, a picture of a situation where there is little incentive for
those exchanges which make up the great bulk of the volume of trade in
real life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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