Thus, in France, wine has been subjected to a multitude of exactions. And then a system has been introduced which restricts its sale abroad.
It is curious to observe what skips and bounds such burdens make in passing from the producer to the consumer. No sooner has the tax or restriction begun to operate than the producer endeavours to indemnify himself. But the demand of the consumers, as well as the supply of wine, remaining the same, the price cannot rise. The producer gets no more for his wine after, than he did before, the imposition of the tax. And as before the tax he received no more than an ordinary and adequate price, determined by services freely exchanged, he finds himself a loser by the whole amount of the tax. To cause the price to rise, he is obliged to diminish the quantity of wine produced.[68] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The consumer, then,—the public,—is relatively to the loss or profit which affects in the first instance certain classes of producers what the earth is to electricity—the great common reservoir. All proceeds from it, and after some detours, longer or shorter as the case may be, and after having given rise to certain phenomena more or less varied, all returns to it again.
We have just shown that the economic effects only glance upon the producer, so to speak, on their way to the consumer, and that consequently all great and important questions of this kind must [p335] be regarded from the consumer’s point of view if we wish to make ourselves masters of their general and permanent consequences.
This subordination of the interests of the producer to that of the consumer, which we have deduced from the consideration of utility, is fully confirmed when we advert to the consideration of morality.
Responsibility, in fact, always rests with the initiative. Now where is the initiative? In demand.
Demand (which implies the means of remuneration) determines all—the direction of capital and of labour, the distribution of population, the morality of professions, etc. Demand answers to Desire, while Supply answers to Effort. Desire is reasonable or unreasonable, moral or immoral. Effort, which is only an effect, is morally neuter, or has only a reflected morality.
Demand or Consumption says to the producer, “Make that for me.” The producer obeys. And this would be evident in every case if the producer always and everywhere waited for the demand.
But in practice this is not the case.
Is it exchange which has led to the division of labour, or the division of labour which has given rise to exchange? This is a subtle and thorny question. Let us say that man makes exchanges, because, being intelligent and sociable, he comprehends that this is one means of increasing the proportion of result to effort. That which results exclusively from the division of labour and from foresight, is that a man does not wait for a specific request to work for another. Experience teaches him tacitly that demand exists.