68 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
other methods, by the limitation of output to maintain price, 
and by the adjustment of rights through litigation and 
through the more fundamental process of modifying the 
rights themselves by statutes or court decisions which make 
new law. 
Thus all these things are productive from the purely private 
standpoint, though the gains of some individuals must usually be 
weighed against the losses of others. These activities are also 
essential contributing factors in the process of technical produc- 
tion and of social creation of utilities; performing certain essential 
functions; though they are not the only possible agencies by 
which these functions can possibly be performed: merely the 
agencies to which these functions are entrusted under the present 
economic system. They are thus productive as a whole, in all 
the main senses of the term; but particular acts may still be 
purely parasitic, increasing the gains of one person wholly at the 
expense of others. They involve conflicts of interest, in which 
the gain or loss of any one party cannot be taken as a gauge of 
the resultant gain or loss to the community. 
These conflicts of interests are unavoidable, and any system of 
settling them inevitably involves “wastes” of some sort, and the 
defeating of certain interests that others may prevail. Thus the 
mere existence of “wastes” in the present system does not neces- 
sarily carry condemnation, any more than the fact that the 
present system of handling these conflicts performs a necessary 
productive function carries necessarily a verdict of approval. 
A discriminating study of the facts should furnish the scientific 
basis on which efforts at improvement may be based, but parasitic 
activities can at best be minimized, and never totally eliminated. 
These are some of the difficulties necessarily faced by the dynamic 
concept of production. 
14. Conclusion 
From the foregoing it appears that there are many factors in 
dynamics which involve qualititive or “chemical” changes in the 
static assumptions, and require new inductions to establish their 
effects. Does the change to dynamics, then, mean the disappear- 
ance of statics as such in the pursuit of a study of a wholly 
different type? This is a question which will ultimately be 
answered by the test of experience. Dynamic study must not