A blupete Essay

A Note on Enterprise and Money, Part 9 to blupete's Essay
"On Property Rights"

On looking up the definition of the word enterprise one should find this, "the readiness to engage in undertakings, to obligate oneself to do something." Enterprise, is, to the right of ownership, as a house is to its foundation; enterprise is dependant on the right of ownership. Except in certain private relationships, it is in the nature of an enterprise for a person to give over his or her labour, or the fruits thereof, in exchange for the labour, or the fruits of labour, of another. The fruits of labour are objects which, if desired by a significant number of other humans, may be valuable in exchange of other objects or goods. In our system of free exchange it is goods which we exchange; more often than not, in our modern society, goods will be found only on one side of the exchange, on the other side will be found money. Money is a voucher which the population readily recognizes as an answerable call on goods in the system, now or in the future. While money is not the only voucher acting as evidence of transferable rights of ownership, it is, by far and away, in a stable system, the most readily recognizable, the most acceptable and the most transferable. Things do not work well without money; without money one is left with a very primitive and unwieldy system of barter. Money is property rights. Money only works well as a medium of exchange when people have an absolute faith in it as a way to store, even for a small amount of time, the fruits of labour. Without faith in their country's money, people will be inexorably drawn first to a barter system, and its inefficiencies; then to anarchy and revolution and the human misery attending. Thus, property rights are essential to the constitution of a country.

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Peter Landry

2011 (2019)