第31章 Chapter 5(5)

But all the same, the profits of business come out of the product of industry; and industry is controlled, accelerated and slowed down with a view to business profits; and one outcome of this arrangement so far, in America, has been the complacent estimate of this business enterprise formulated in the passage quoted above. The result of a businesslike management of industry for private gain in America has on the whole been a fairly high level of prosperity. For this there are two main reasons: (a) the exceptionally great natural resources of the country; and (b) the continued growth and spread of population, (a) Business enterprise, that is to say private ownership, has taken over these resources, by a process of legalised seizure, and has used them up as rapidly as may be, with a view to private gain; all of which has gone to make private business profitable to that extent, although it has impoverished the underlying community by using up its natural resources, (b) The continued growth and spread of population, by natural increase and by immigration, has furnished the business men of this country a continually expanding market for goods; both for goods to be used in production and transportation and for finished articles of consumption. Hence the American business men have been in the fortunate position of not having to curtail the output of industry harshly and persistently at all points. It is, in effect, for this continued growth of their market, caused by the growth of population, that the business men claim credit when they "point with pride" to the resourcefulness and quick initiative with which they have "developed the country," To their credit be it said, they have on the whole not hindered the country's prosperity beyond what the traffic would bear; and the peculiar situation of this country hitherto has been such that the traffic of business would bear a nearly uninterrupted expansion of industry at perhaps something like one-half of its possible rate of expansion. To their own gain, and to the relief of the underlying community, they have been enabled profitably to let the country's industry run on a moderately high level of efficiency,with more or less, but always a very appreciable amount, of unemployment, idle plant, and waste of resources.

All that industry which comes in under the dominant machine technology -- that is to say all that fairly belongs in the new order of industry -- is now governed by business men for business ends, in what is to be done and what is to be left undone. And wherever business enterprise has taken over the direction of things the management is directed in part to the production of a marketable supply, and in part to arranging for a profitable sale of the supply; and the strategy available for this latter, and indispensable, work lies almost wholly within the lines of competitive management already spoken of. In case these manoeuvres of businesslike deviation and defeat are successful and fall into an orderly system whose operation may be continued at will, or in so far as this management creates an assured strategic advantage for any given business concern, the result is a vested interest. This may then eventually be capitalised in due form, as a body of intangible assets. As such it goes to augment the business community's accumulated wealth. And the country is statistically richer per capita.

A vested interest is a marketable right to get something for nothing. This does not mean that the vested interests cost nothing. They may even come high. Particularly may their cost seem high if the cost to the community is taken into account, as well as the expenditure incurred by their owners for their production and up-keep. Vested interests are immaterial wealth, intangible assets. As regards their nature and origin, they are the outgrowth of three main lines of businesslike management: (a)

Limitation of supply, with a view to profitable sales; (b)

Obstruction of traffic, with a view to profitable sales; and (c)

Meretricious publicity, with a view to profitable sales. It will be remarked that these are matters of business, in the strict sense. They are devices of salesmanship, not of workmanship; they are ways and means of driving a bargain, not ways and means of producing goods or services. The residue which stands over as a product of these endeavors is in the nature of an intangible asset, an article of immaterial wealth; not an increase of the tangible equipment or the material resources in hand. The enterprising owners of the concern may be richer by that much, and so perhaps may the business community as a whole -- though that is a precariously dubious point -- but the community at large is no better off in any material respect.

This account, of course, assumes that all this business is conducted strictly within the lines of commercial honesty. It would only be tedious and misleading to follow up and take account of that scattering recourse to force or fraud that will never wholly be got rid of in the pursuit of gain, whether by way of business traffic or by more direct methods. Still, it may well be in place to recall that the code of commercial honesty applies only between the parties to a bargain, and takes no account of the interests of any third party, except by express injunction of the, law, still less does it imply any degree of regard for the common good. Commercial honesty, of course, is the honesty of self-help, or caveat emptor, which is Latin for the same thing.