Читать книгу A Treatise on Political Economy - Antoine Louis Claude Destutt De Tracy - Страница 20

From the faculty of will arise also the ideas of riches and deprivation.

Whatsoever contributes, mediately or immediately, to the satisfaction of our wants is for us a good; that is to say, a thing the possession of which is a good.

To be rich is to possess these goods; to be poor is to be without them.

They arise all from the employment of our faculties, of which they are the effect and representation.

These goods have all two values amongst us; the one is that of the sacrifices they cost to him who produces them, the other that of the advantages which they procure for him who has acquired them.

The labour from which they emanate has then these two values.

Yes, labour has these two values. The one is the sum of the objects necessary to the satisfaction of the wants that arise inevitably in an animated being during the operation of his labour. The other is the mass of utility resulting from this labour.

The latter value is eventual and variable.

The first is natural and necessary. It has not however an absolute fixity; and it is this which renders very delicate all economical and moral calculations.

We can scarcely employ in these matters but the considerations drawn from the theory of limits.