Page:The economics of distribution (IA economicsofdistr01hobs).pdf/10

 been felt to be necessary to the construction of a satisfactory theory of distribution, and various approaches in this direction have been made. This work claims to go farther and to reach a common law of price applicable to every sort of sale.

Some of the reasoning is difficult because it involves a necessary abandonment of commonly accepted terminology and the establishment of a new system of economic notation. If, however, the reasoning is valid, it establishes certain important theoretic conclusions, some of which are fraught with large implications in the direction of progressive politics.

In particular, it claims to prove that all processes of bargaining and competition, by which prices are attained and the distribution of wealth achieved, are affected by certain elements of force which assign “forced gains” and other elements of “economic rent” to the buyers or the sellers. There is thus established the existence of a large fund, partaking of the nature of those monopoly and differential rents, long ago recognised in the ease of land, which furnish no stimulus to voluntary industrial energy, and which can be taken for public service by taxation without injury to industry.

Much of the material of this work was given in the form of lectures to students of the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1897,