6: Effects of Social Progress
In an interconnected society, no change affects a single person. A small change to a single person may scarce be noticed, but a large change such as sudden wealth affects many as that wealth is spent in the local market. A small change to a large number will also have ripples that affect producers, their suppliers, and the employees of all.
Much of the progress in the author's time came from the automation of production, from inefficient manufacturing techniques to more efficient ones that created more goods with less cost. But this phenomenon is not entirely new. Even among tradesmen, techniques have been gradually improving, though the pace has been slow and progress incremental: a weaver will discover a technique or an adjustment to his loom that made is work easier or faster, and others would adopt the change he had made. Each generation of tradesmen teaches apprentices more and more effective techniques, enabling the apprentices to be more productive.
Labor is often spoken of as if it is a commodity - a good worker will produce more than a poor one, but he also demands higher compensation. In the same way, a high-quality tool will make work better and easier but costs more than a low-quality one. The best worker with the best tools does far more than the opposite. The only commodity is unskilled labor - and even unskilled workers vary in the quality and quantity they will produce and how quickly they will learn to produce more and better.
Just as any good goes to the customer whose need for it is greatest, demonstrated by his willingness to pay the highest price, so does labor go to the employer whose need for it is greatest, demonstrated by offering the highest wage. (EN: This is a bit simplistic, because it assumes people are motivated by wage alone. In the present day, it's been found that work satisfaction holds a lot of people in positions and employers where they are paid less and some even choose to pursue professions they know to be low-paying.)
The labor force is also highly dynamic and interactive - when a worker changes his situation, it causes change at two workplaces (the one he left and the one he went to), some other worker is hired to fill his former position, his former co-workers must work more until his replacement is experienced enough to pull his weight, etc. While workers and employers alike favor long-term employment, there is constant motion and the market for labor is as dynamic as the market for any other good or service. There's quite a lot on this topic, because many economists seem to speak as if conditions are the same, and that a universal formula may be created.
In the process of automation, capital and labor are exchanged for one another: it is often said that a machine "can do the work of ten men," meaning that by employing that machine, there is no need to employ the men. In the model of land, labor, and capital, capital even exchanges for land - if it is possible to get twice as much wheat from an acre, then the farmer needs rent half as many acres to produce the same outcome. And capital substitutes for capital when a new machine will do three times the work of an old machine.
In a free market, the price of everything is negotiated - for goods, for labor, for resources, for investments, and so on - as it is only sensible for customers to seek the lowest price they can get, vendors to seek the highest price they can get, and investors to seek the best return they can get. In many instances this seems to encourage men to seek to gain advantage by cheating one another, but in a larger sense it encourages men to gain advantage by being innovative and efficient. And this is the sense in which the economic behavior of man causes evolution in society.
It is largely economics that have caused societies to progress. Much of "science" is undertaken to achieve some practical benefit, and improving the lives of men is essentially economic (to have more for less effort). The chief purpose that nations interact with one another is trade, as is the reason that the nations of the old world set sail to discover new lands. The side-effect of this has been a dramatic change in society - from a largely settled state where men were happy to stay at home, do what they have been doing, and make do with what they have to a more dynamic state where men go out into the world and change what they are doing in order to achieve a better state.
"Progress" is also the reason that quest for universal and permanent truths is futile. We can perhaps explain why things were a certain way, at a certain time and under certain conditions - but those conditions are no longer the same in the present time and cannot be expected to remain the same in future.
Population which is constantly increasing. Each new person to enter a market (local or global) is a new consumer, but also a new producer. Also, technology enables the individual worker to be more and more productive, producing more than is needed for consumption. Taken together, these two factors suggest a trend of increasing wealth in industrialized nations.