profit, and repudiated the idea that the mere fact that goods change hands necessarily means general enrichment.729 The central truth in their protest needed to be spoken, though both erred in not sufficiently recognizing that the labor involved in exchange creates an added time and place value, and therefore has a right to be called productive. They also failed to observe the fact of the necessary risk involved in the business of exchange, which should be repaid with a fair additional profit. For the cornering of markets and the manipulation of prices, for the sake of individual enrichment, modern economists and statesmen, with Aristotle and Ruskin, are fast coming to have only words of protest.
Moreover, contrary to Barker’s assertion, demand, as an element of price, is prominent throughout this discussion of Aristotle. He objects, however, to allowing the effect of demand to overcome unduly the cost of production, thus causing inequality and injustice. According to his idea, each receives the equivalent in value of what he gives, in the sense that it is a resultant of the proportionate influence of both cost and need.730 We may, nevertheless, observe an excellent example of inconsistency in the fact that, despite his insistence upon just exchange, he appears to treat monopoly as a legitimate principle of finance for both men and states,731 though his intention in the passage may have been to discuss actual conditions, rather than to idealize.