Government and Property
craves. He sells his interest in the coat to the entrepreneur, another worker, by the terms of a wage contract. The entrepreneur likewise has no need for the coat, and the title he acquired to it is also a means to an end. Eventually, the coat reaches its ultimate destination, the desiring consumer. If this one owns goods or tokens of value equivalent to the worth put on the coat in the market place, an exchange takes place and title is transferred to him. No sooner has the new owner put on the coat than it starts to disintegrate, for that is the fate of all labor products. But the coat-desire, the craving for warmth or adornment, does not disintegrate; it is coexistent with life. So, then, the consumption or use of the coat is in itself a signal to the coat factory, to all the specialists in that line, to get busy on a replacement, because a desirer will have property to exchange for it. It is property, the ownership of the fruits of one's labor, that keeps the productive machinery going, automatically and without human intent, unless we identify the will to live with intent. That being so, we can predict that production will always keep pace with the amount of disposable income in the hands of the producers, or that the wealth of Society is in proportion to the property of its members.
Let us consider a negative condition: the would-be coat consumer is without property. The reason is unimportant; either he chose not to produce, or conditions over which he had no control prevented him from producing, or a swindler or a commissar deprived him of his output. He has no property to exchange for the coat he wants. In that case, the coat factory has to shut down; if it continues to make coats we have a condition which economists call "overproduction," but which is really underconsumption. The stoppage is caused not by lack of desire but by a lack of property, and
