Resources Or Means (Vermögen).
Resources, or means, in the sense in which we here use the term, are the aggregate of economic goods owned by a physical or legal person, after deduction is made of the person's debts, and all valuable and rightful claims have been added.[91] Hence, there are private resources, corporative resources, municipal resources, etc., state resources, national resources and the world's resources. In estimating the resources of a whole people, it is, of course, necessary to make deduction of the debts due by the individual members of the nation to their fellow countrymen.
Section VIII.
Valuation Of Resources.
It has often been made a question, whether the valuation of resources should be based on the value in use, or the value in exchange of their constituent parts.[92] The latter has, of course, no interest, except in so far as we are concerned with the possibility of obtaining the control of part of the resources, or means, of another, by the surrender of a part of one's own goods. In estimating the value of private resources, which require to be made continually an object of trade, this point is, of course, of the greatest importance. If certain of their component elements, lands, for instance, belonging to a fidei commissum, are incapable of entering immediately into the market, at least the revenue they yield is measured by its value in exchange.
It is quite otherwise, even with the resources of a whole nation. Such resources are, evidently, much more independent, and have much less need of being exchanged against their equals, than private resources. The foreign commerce, of the greatest and most advanced nations, has, hitherto, been but a small quota of their internal commerce.[93] A valuation, [pg 067] therefore, based on value in exchange, however interesting it might be to enable us to determine how property is shared by the different classes and persons that compose the nation, would afford but little information concerning the absolute amount of the national wealth. This, of course, applies in a much higher degree to the resources of the whole world.
If, now, we were to estimate the resources of an entire people, or even of the world, by summing up the value in exchange of their several component parts, many very important elements would be left out of the account entirely; as for instance, harbors, navigable streams, numberless relations which have, indeed, no value in exchange whatever, but which are of the highest importance, because promotive of the economy of the nation. The same may be said of made roads of every description, the politico-economical value of which may be much greater than the value in exchange of their stock, than their cost of production etc. The increase of the value in exchange of any of the branches of the resources of a physical or legal person contributes towards really enriching the nation or the world, only in case that the increased value in exchange is based on an increased utility in quality or quantity. Should an earthquake suddenly dry up a number of our springs, and thus give value in exchange to the drinking water from the remaining ones, we should, indeed, witness the introduction of a new object into the list of exchangeable goods; the owners of springs would be able to command a larger portion of the national resources, but at the expense of the rest of the population; and the whole country would have become poorer in goods by the catastrophe. Even the value in exchange of the national resources would not be increased; for all other goods, which, hitherto, as compared with water, had an unlimited capacity for exchange, would lose just as much of that capacity as water had gained, as compared with them.[94] On the other hand, if a new mineral [pg 068] spring should be discovered, the great value in use of the water of which gave it value in exchange, the resources of the nation would be really increased, not only in point of utility, but in exchange value; for no other goods, formerly known, would, in consequence of the discovery, lose in their exchange power.[95]