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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

as if this were their most salient and consequential bearing. What speculative risk there is in these lines of business is incidental, and it neither affords the incentive to engaging in these pursuits nor does it bound the scope of their bearing upon economic affairs. The speculative risk involved is no greater, relatively to the magnitude of the interests involved, in this larger traffic that deals in vendible capital than it ia in the ordinary lines of business traffic that deal in vendible products. In both cases there may be speculation, but in both cases it ia a side issue. Indeed, as near as one may confidently hold an opinion on so dark a question, the certainty of gain, though perhaps not the relative amount of it, eeems rather more assured in the large-scale manipulation of vendible capital than in business management with a view to a vendible product.

What may obscure the question is the fact that the manipulations involved in this traflBc in vendible capital commonly impose increased

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