Note 69: Demand for consumption is satisfied not from
hoards of accumulated wealth, but from the stream of
current production. Broadly speaking there can be no
accumulation of wealth in the sense of saving up wealth
from generation to generation. Imagine a man's satisfying
his demand for eggs from the accumulated stores of his
ancestors! Yet eggs do not differ in this respect from
other forms of wealth, except that some other forms will
keep a little longer, and some not so long.
The notion that a saving instinct must be aroused
before the great and more lasting forms of wealth can be
brought forth is a mistake. Houses and locomotives, for
example, are built not because of any desire to
accumulate wealth, but because we need houses to live in
and locomotives to transport us and our goods. It is not
the saving, but the serving, instinct that induces the
production of these things; the same instinct that
induces the production of a loaf of bread.
Artificial things do not save. No sooner are the
processes of production from land complete than the
products are on their way back to the land. If man does
not return them by means of consumption, then through
decay they return themselves. Mankind as a whole
lives literally from hand to mouth. What is
demanded for consumption in the present must be produced
by the labor of the present. From current production, and
from that alone, can current consumption be
satisfied.
"Accumulated wealth" is, in fact, not wealth at all in
any great degree. It is merely titles to wealth yet to be
produced. A share in a mining company, for example, is
but a certificate that the owner is legally entitled to a
proportion of the wealth to be produced in the future
from a certain mine.
Titles to future wealth may be both morally and
legally valid. This is so when they represent past labor
or its products loaned in free contract for future labor
or its products; for example, a contract for the delivery
of goods of any kind today to be paid for next week or
next month, or next year, or in ten years, or later.
They may be legally but not morally valid. This is so
when they represent the product of a franchise (whether
paid for in labor or not) to exact tribute from future
labor; for example, a franchise to confiscate a man's
labor through ownership of his body, as in slavery, or a
franchise to confiscate the products of labor in general
through ownership of land.
Or they may be both legally and morally invalid, as
when they are obtained by illegal force or fraud from the
rightful owner. ... read the book