The complex of human activities directed to these four objectives is called economizing, and goods standing in the quantitative relationship involved in the preceding discussion are the exclusive objects of it. These goods are economic goods in contrast to such goods as men find no practical necessity of economizing-for reasons which, as we shall see later, can be traced to quantitative relationships accessible to exact measurement, just as this has been shown to be possible in the case of economic goods.9
But before we proceed to demonstrate these relationships and the phenomena of life ultimately determined by them, we will consider a phenomenon of social life which has assumed immeasurable significance for human welfare and which, in its ultimate causes, springs from the same quantitative relationship that we
became acquainted with earlier in this section.
So far we have presented the phenomena of life that result from the fact that the requirements of men for many goods are greater than the quantities available to them in a very general way, and without special regard to the social organization of men. What has been said to this point therefore applies equally to an isolated individual and to a whole society, however it may be organized. But the social life of men, pursuing their individual interests even as members of society, brings to view a special phenomenon in the case of all goods whose available quantities are less than the requirements for them. An account of this phenomenon may find its place here.
If the quantitative relationship under discussion occurs in a society (that is, if the requirements of a society for a good are larger than its available quantity), it is impossible, in accordance with what was said earlier, for the respective needs of all individuals composing the society to be completely satisfied. On the contrary, nothing is more certain than that the needs of some members of this society will be satisfied either not at all or, at any rate, only in an incomplete fashion. Here human self-interest finds an incentive to make itself felt, and where the available quantity does not suffice for all, every individual will attempt to secure his own requirements as completely as possible to the exclusion of others.
In this struggle, the various individuals will attain very different degrees of success. But whatever the manner in which goods subject to this quantitative relationship are divided, the requirements of some members of the society will not be met at all, or will be met only incompletely. These persons will therefore
have interests opposed to those of the present possessors with respect to each portion of the available quantity of goods. But with this Opposition of interest, it becomes necessary for society to protect the various individuals in the possession of goods subject to this relationship against all possible acts of force. In this way, then, we arrive at the economic origin of our present legal order, and especially of the so-called protection of ownership, the basis of property.
Thus human economy and property have a joint economic origin since both have, as the ultimate reason for their existence, the fact that goods exist whose available quantities are smaller than the requirements of men. Property, therefore, like human economy, is not an arbitrary invention but rather the only practically possible solution of the problem that is, in the nature of things, imposed upon us by the disparity between requirements for, and available quantities of, all economic goods.
As a result, it is impossible to abolish the institution of property without removing the causes that of necessity bring it about-that is, without simultaneously increasing the available quantities of all economic goods to such an extent that the requirements of all members of society can be met completely, or without reducing the needs of men far enough to make the available goods suffice for the complete satisfaction of their needs. Without establishing such an equilibrium between requirements and available amounts, a new social order could indeed ensure that the available quantities of economic goods would be used for the satisfaction of the needs of different persons than at present. But by such a redistribution it could never surmount the fact that there would be persons whose requirements for economic goods would either not be met at all, or met only incompletely, and against whose potential acts of force, the possessors of economic goods would have to be protected. Property, in this sense, is therefore inseparable from human economy in its social form, and all plans of social reform can reasonably be directed only toward an appropriate distribution of economic goods but never to the abolition of the institution of property itself.
Taken From : PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS
