The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
To seek to confine value to exchange relations, moreover, makes it
impossible to speak of the value of such things as the Capitol at
Washington City, or the value of an entailed estate, or of values as
existing _between_ exchanges. Nor can we make the price which a good
would command at a given moment the test of its value, except in the
case of the highly organized, fluid market. Land, at forced sale,
notoriously often brings prices which do not correctly express its
value. Moreover, even for wheat in the grain pit, the exchange test is
valid only on the assumption that a comparatively small amount is to be
sold. If very much is put on the market, the situation is changed, and
the value falls. In other words, if "bulls" cease to be "bulls," and
shift to the other side of the market, the very elements which were
sustaining the value of the wheat have been weakened, and of course its
value falls. "Power in exchange" is a function of two factors, (1) value
and (2) saleability. A copper cent has high saleability, with little
value, while land has high value with little saleability.[8] Some things
have value with no saleability at all. In a socialistic community, where
all lands, houses, tools, machines, etc., are owned by the state, and
where such "prices" as exist are authoritatively prescribed, value and
exchange would have no necessary connection. Values would remain,
however, guiding the economic activity of the socialistic community,
directing labor now here, now there, determining the employment of lands
now in this sort of production, now in that. Exchange is only one of the
manifestations of value. More fundamental, and more general, including
"power in exchange," but not exhausted by it, is the power which objects
of value have over the economic activities of men. This is the
fundamental function of values. The entailed estate, which cannot be
sold, still has power over the actions of men. The care which is taken
of it, the amount of insurance which an insurance company will write on
it, etc., are manifestations and measures of its value. The same may be
said of the Capitol at Washington.[9]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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