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Commons Futurity pg. 395-401

 Commons next turns to highlight the important of Macleod and his impact on our understanding of economics. Macleod creates the conceptual apparatus on commodity market and debt markets. Commons also acknowledges that Macleod did do a few things wrong - but let's start with what Commons believes he did right.

Macleod made economics about the exchangeability of property rights and not the exchange of physical commodities.  He also made the first moments at least in economics towards what Commons would futurity or the fact that economic values are based on future uses. This was common knowledge for merchants, bankers and accountants but not in classical economics. To Quote Commons here (pg. 400), "property is the same as property rights; the material things have no value for economics except as they lawfully be owned and their ownership lawfully transferred." Macleod also specifically understood, and perhaps was the first as Commons acknowledges, that debt was a saleable commodity itself

Of course, they are a few problems with this definition that we would recognize today.  Certainly, economic value occurs with unlawful goods and services.  Also, this definition doesn't include what are now called externalities and the issue of non-market impacts from production and consumption decisions.

What did Macleod do wrong? He doubled counted property and property rights. The next post will explore what Macleod got wrong?


Next post 401-423 Macleod's double counting problem





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