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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.

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Table of Contents

Modern Business Capital

financiering for which corporate capitalization affords a basis.'

German writers have familiarized economic readers with the terms " credit economy," *' money economy" (Geldwirtachaft), and "natural economy " (Naturalwirtschaft), the later-modem scheme of economic life heing characterized as a " credit economy." What characterizes the early-modern scheme, the " money economy," and sets it off in contrast with the natural economy (distribution in kind) that went before it in West-European culture, is the ubiquitous resort to the market as a vent for products and a ' source of supply of goods. The characteristic feature of this money economy is the goods mar-

1 mat' = mat + - f — - 1 > mat, in which mat' (a the cmrenl value of

the material equipment, as increued (over mat] by tbe compelitiTe

demand tor equipment due to the credit clement — -. One of the anb-

Btantial secondary benefits to be Dot«d as flowing from these modem basiness eipedienU is tbe effect of corporation finance npon the aggregate nominal wealth of the community. A given community, possessed of a given complement of material wealth, is richer in capital if a large proportion of its industrial equipment is capitalized and managed by corporation methods, quite apart from any increase Id the material items of which the communily ia possessed. (Cf. Tieelflh Centia of the United States, "Manufactures," pt. I. p. xcvi.) Wealth may ia this way be increased (about twofold on an average), ineipensively, by the simple expedient of incorporating the community's buslneM concerns in the fonn of joint-stocb companies. Tbe more highly involved and the more widely ertended the corporation financiering is, tbe richer, in statistical terms of capital, is tbe community, other things equal. Among these otber thlnge are the material facts of tl

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