Sign in with Facebook
Per Bylund’s Followers (28)
Per Bylund
More books by Per Bylund…
“Core to understanding the economy is recognizing that it is about human actions and interactions. In fact, the economy is people acting and interacting. It is little or nothing else. We tend to think of the economy in terms of resources, machines, businesses, and perhaps jobs. But that is a simplification that is misleading. Those are important, but they are all means to ends. The economy is about using means to attain ends. To put it differently, it is how we act to satisfy our wants, to make us better off. Simply put, the economy is about creating value.”
―
―
“The number and variety of goods available depends on the imaginativeness of entrepreneurs and investors. In other words, the entrepreneur, who imagines, envisions, and aims to create new valued goods, drives the evolution of production in the economy. The consumer is then, after the fact, the judge of which entrepreneurs’ productions are of sufficient value to be bought—and at what prices. The consumer, in other words, is sovereign and, through buying and not buying, determines which entrepreneurs earn profits and which entrepreneurs suffer losses.”
― How to Think about the Economy: A Primer
― How to Think about the Economy: A Primer
“The major problem entrepreneurs face is that the value of production effort is not known until it is completed. It is only when the finished good is sold that the entrepreneur learns if the investment was worth-while—if consumers want the good. In contrast, costs are known and incurred long before the good is completed and offered for sale. Note that these costs are not merely the inputs that make the output, such as the flour, yeast, and water that are turned into bread, but also the capital needed: the oven, the bakery, etc. Even in those cases when an entrepreneur takes orders and is paid before producing the actual good, some costs are incurred as part of the not-yet-produced good. Those costs include such things as setting up the business, experimenting with capital, figuring out how to make an oven, developing a recipe or blueprint for production. Investments must be made to produce the good, which can then be sold.”
― How to Think about the Economy: A Primer
― How to Think about the Economy: A Primer
Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite Per to Goodreads.
