Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

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Title:: Alternatives seen as basic economic facts / Franklin H. Giddings

Collection:: Economics Books

ALTERNATIVES SEEN AS BASIC ECONOMIC FACTS 199 gressive economic production is just one part of a continuing interchange of matter and energy between organism and environ- ment in combinations of increasing complexity. The evolution of utility I said is a process of correlation and coordination. In capitalistic production we have a lengthening series of pre- liminary correlations and coordinations. Every intermediate product must be a complex of such preliminary correlations and codrdinations, and if it is to be in fact einer Hilfskraft it must be the precise complex that fits exactly into a combination of increasing complexity. The fitting in of exactly the right product in exactly the right place is specifically what is involved in the “capitalization” of “stock.” It calls for invention in the ordinary meaning of the word, and a good deal more. It calls for the organizing and adjusting functions of the entrepreneur and of the financier. Capitalization, then, as here described, is the creative thinking which is imperative if we are to escape from the economics of exploitation. These considerations bring us to our fourth basic economic fact, which is the alternative: Speed up and work overtime or fail to capitalize; fail even to have stock to capitalize. Many of the complexes of preliminary correlation and coordi- nation are provided for us by nature. Primitive man, the tool making animal, invented others, the first intermediate products of Bohm-Bawerk’s lengthening series. Modern man, the machine maker, has added an incredible number, all of marvelous complexity. How has the accumulation of these intermediate products been effected? I confess to amazement that economists should ever have taught that the word “saving” conveys an adequate answer. To have saving there must be something that can be saved, and there must be a motive for saving. Consider, then, the case of a man who is so circumstanced that he must toil from sun to sun to obtain enough food, fuel and other necessaries to sustain life. That man, at least, whatever may be true of another, can get something to save only by working over-time or harder. Or consider the case of a man content with a low standard of living. He does not save. But, we are reminded, multitudes of human beings have enjoyed the luck of living indolently in bountiful environments, and as for the rest of us tools and capitalistic processes have enabled us

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