tailieunhanh - Luận án kinh tế - "Human and action" - Chapter 24

XXIV. HARMONY AND CONFLICT OF INTERESTS 1. The Ultimate Source of Profit and Loss on the Market The changes in the data whose reiterated emergence prevents the economic system from turning into an evenly rotating economy and produces again and again entrepreneurial profit and loss are favorable | XXIV. HARMONY AND CONFLICT OF INTERESTS 1. The Ultimate Source of Profit and Loss on the Market The changes in the data whose reiterated emergence prevents the economic system from turning into an evenly rotating economy and produces again and again entrepreneurial profit and loss are favorable to some members of society and unfavorable to others. Hence people concluded the gain of one man is the damage of another no man profits but by the loss of others. This dogma was already advanced by some ancient authors. Among modern writers Montaigne was the first to restate it we may fairly call it the Montaigne dogma. It was the quintessence of the doctrines of Mercantilism old and new. It is at the bottom of all modern doctrines teaching that there prevails within the frame of the market economy an irreconcilable conflict among the interests of various social classes within a nation and furthermore between the interests of any nation and those of all other Now the Montaigne dogma is true with regard to the effects of cash-induced changes in the purchasing power of money on deferred payments. But it is entirely wrong with regard to any kind of entrepreneurial profit or loss whether they emerge in a stationary economy in which the total amount of profits equals the total amount of losses or in a progressing or a retrogressing economy in which these two magnitudes are different. What produces a man s profit in the course of affairs within an unhampered market society is not his fellow citizen s plight and distress but the fact that he alleviates or entirely removes what causes his fellow citizen s feeling of uneasiness. What hurts the sick is the plague not the physician who treats the disease. The doctor s gain is not an outcome of the epidemics but of the aid he hives to those affected. The ultimate source of profits is always the foresight of future conditions. Those who succeeded better than others in anticipating 1. Cf. Montaigne Essais Ed. F. Strowski Bk. I