Preface
The distribution of wealth in society is often characterized as an unnatural phenomenon, and it is typically implied that by some perverse and corrupt methodology that a few men unethically amass great fortunes to the detriment of society. However, the author's observation that the aggregation of wealth is an entirely natural phenomenon and it instead a perversion and corruption of the political system to seek to prevent an inevitable and natural occurrence.
In solitude, no man can have any more than he produces - and by an large this is the same in societies. While some may swindle and rob others, this is not a common or widespread occurrence and most people possess only that which they have made by their own effort. In the modern world the worker, the manager, the investor, and may other individuals collaborate in a process of production and receive a share of the profits. What remains can best be characterized as squabbling among them for who is owed what share, with each party seeking to involve outsiders to intervene to their advantage.
He does concede that changes causes upheaval - and the great changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution have changed the way men behave economically. There remain few who produce everything for their own consumption, and that way of life is now regarded as primitive and inefficient. Again, production in modern society is collaborative - the product is made and sold, the cost of production paid, and the remainder shared out among the investors. This way of life is relatively new, and our culture has not yet settled into a static model by which the profits of production are shared out. Hence this squabbling. And because change and progress continue apace, the situation continues to evolve and culture and custom are constantly struggling to catch up.
(EN: While this was written over a century ago, it remains true today. The pitch and panic of the squabbles are even more intense because it seems to many unimaginable that one could produce for one's own consumption and walk away from the deal provided by any employer. And to some degree, it is true that people are incapable of being self-sufficient. One may raise a garden to produce food, but an individual cannot produce for himself an automobile, a cellular telephone, an antibiotic, or many of the other luxuries and conveniences that are widely regarded as being necessities.)
A self-sufficient man profits by what he creates. If he catches a fish he profits a meal, if he weaves cloth he profits a shirt, etc. In a money economy a man can produce excess beyond what he consumes - this is his wealth - and because he can sell it for coin that can be traded for other things, he can enjoy the convenience and luxury of goods other than that which he produces, in equal value to what he has traded to others. By any moral standard the producer's wealth is his own, to be used at his discretion and for his own pleasure, because he created it. But when two or more men collaborate to produce wealth, there arises the question over how that wealth is to be distributed among them.
The matter becomes more convoluted in a political economy - where one ignores the source of the money and considers only the money itself. It is said that a man "has" money, ignoring how he earned it; and when one man has more money than his neighbor, it is also ignored that he worked more productively in order to obtain it. The topic of wages is thus convoluted - it is said that all men are owed a given wage regardless of the work they have done. Or it is said that all men who do a given type of labor (fishing, carpentry, etc.) are owed an equal wage regardless of whether their labor was productively employed in the creation of things that others would find useful. To the honest man this is plain enough to see - but to the swindler or politician, it is a fact they would prefer to ignore.
And yet, it is the attempt of political economists to attempt to create "fariness" by interfering in the private affairs of citizens, attempting to define a standard method for distributing wealth across all professions and industries. A history of failure and economic disaster has been insufficient to convince them that they are fighting against nature itself, and there remains the notion that it is necessary to merely work out a better theory of distribution to remedy the problem that nature has created so that some may reap more than they sow and others should accept less than nature provides in exchange for their efforts.
There are numerous references to the author's previous works on this topic, as well as lists of the names of other economists who have weighed in on various elements of the problem - but because there has been no systematic approach, the author felt the present book was necessary to address the issue, and to state simple things in a great amount of detail while addressing many of the specious arguments and misguided points of view. For the honest man of good reason and common sense, this preface may alone be sufficient.