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nydus/The Theory of Business EnterprisePublic

Thorstein Veblen examines the modern industrial system as a structure defined by the machine process and investment for profit. He analyzes how business enterprise and the pursuit of financial gain serve as the primary forces directing contemporary economic organization.

Page 120 of 422
Table of Contents

The Use Op Loan Credit

liquidation is the redistribution of the ownership of industrial property incident to the liquidation. The funds obtained on credit are in great measure invested competitively in the same aggregate of material items that is already employed in Industry apart from the use of loan credit, with the result that the same range of items of wealth are rated at a larger nimiber of money units. In these items of wealth — which, apart from the use of credit, are owned by their nominal owners — the creditors, by virtue of the credit extension, come to own an undivided interest proportioned to the advances

Tbo enbuicpiiient of the market value of the output does not, in fact, keep pace with the inflation of buainess capital during a period of speculative advance. In order that it should do so, and aSord nominal earnings proportionate to tlie inflated capital, it would be necessary thnt incomes should increase proportionately Ui the inflaiiou of capital ; but, even if this happened, the ei:penaea of production would thereby be so increased (througli the advance of vagea and the like) sa to oSaet the entire inflation of values for all consumptive goods lud leave only the advance In the valueis of productive goods as a net margin from which to draw an increase of earnings. The discrepancy under dlBCtiaslon, however, is not due entirely to the presence of credit, tnd a fully detailed analysis of the causes out of which it aclMs can, therefore, not properly be presented in tbia place.

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